Update: thank you ALL for all your input! 💐 After some back and forth with @thorry@feddit.org , I decided to simply swap between the two capture cards whenever I need to, in order to make room for my old 3080 and call it a day. This way, I won’t have to spend any more money on this project and I retain the processing power of the 3080 when I start encoding my raw captures.

Here I thought I had been insanely smart to buy a GPU from 2010 for $10 since the CPU is going to do all the encoding anyway. And because my previous card, a honking 3080, wouldn’t have allowed for the other two capture cards to be installed, taking up all the real estate.

I have been trying to setup an Artix system on my own for two hours now, but GRUB won’t install in CSM mode… I’ve tried UEFI on GPT, BIOS on MBR, BIOS on GPT… 😅 Boot partition with and without file system… 💀

I’ll just buy a more modern yet slim card, I guess? Unless I wake up tomorrow and give researching the issue a chance.

Night👋🔌

  • Thorry@feddit.org
    2·
    3 hours ago

    Look for second hand stuff and something like a 6000 series from AMD. Don’t buy cheap videocards new, they always suck.

      • SteveTech@aussie.zone
        2·
        6 minutes ago

        Ignore the other guy on this, I have an A770 in my gaming ring and a B60 in my server. The drivers are amazing on Linux, and much better than NVIDIA.

        If all you need is encoding, then VAAPI just works. There are some other caveats with the Alchemist series, which is mostly it was made during the transition to xe, which means you either pick better encoding with i915 (default) or better gaming performance with xe. For your use case I’d leave it with the default i915, though there are encoding patches for xe if you must use the newer driver. Both drivers are mainlined and officially supported by Intel.

      • Thorry@feddit.org
        2·
        3 hours ago

        The A series is pretty limited, I would go for a B series if you can find it. But keep in mind drivers for Intel on Windows are terrible and on Linux even worse. So that would not be a good time.

        There’s plenty of cards that would fit in 40mm, but your airflow would be pretty bad. Do you have a pic of the inside of your system? There has to be a way to make something more fit.

        But most 6600, 7600 and 9060 cards should be able to fit in 40mm. And with AMD the drivers on Linux are very good.

        • printf("%s", name);@piefed.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
          2·
          3 hours ago

          Thanks for all the advice! I really appreciate it!

          2h26TW2Z9Hncu8w.jpg

          kXJFR8bZIR5PVs9.jpg

          I just removed the GPU, which sat in the PCIe 4.0 slot - which I guess really doesn’t matter, since capturing shouldn’t rely on the GPU, right? (Perhaps when I encode with ffmpeg though… Even then, I don’t mind letting it encode through the night.) The top and bottom cards are the capture cards.

          • Thorry@feddit.org
            2·
            3 hours ago

            That’s tight fit. If you really need the two capture cards then that’s the room you’ve got to work with. If you can bring it down to just one card at the top that would be a lot better. I personally use a capture card that’s connected using USB3, which works very well and doesn’t require room inside the computer (even though I would have room).

            Most videocards have two or three fans on the bottom these days, with such a tight fit one of the fans can easily collide with the capture card. And even when it doesn’t it will have a hard time sucking in air from there. You can try and find a blower type card, but that would be a bit harder to find.

            And you wouldn’t happen to have a GPU inside the CPU? Because the iGPUs from AMD are very solid if you don’t need much in terms of performance (easily faster than the 1030 you mentioned). Otherwise two capture cards and a GPU is a big ask in such a small case.

            • printf("%s", name);@piefed.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
              2·
              2 hours ago

              Thanks! You just gave me two ideas:

              1. I already have all the hardware I need: if I do as you say, and only work with one capture card at a time - namely, FireWire or VGA - I can simply swap them whenever I need to. Cards as small as these won’t be to much of a hassle to swap, especially since the side of the case/chassi simply pops off/comes off with a click. I would then be able to use my 3080 and call it a day. And have huge processing power.
              2. I could just buy an ATX chassi and put the 3080 at the bottom, thus fitting all the cards.
              3. Bonus: I too have an HDMI to USB capture card, but that’s for digital only. The whole reason that I bought the card at the top is because it takes digital and analog. Which sounded cool.

              I think I’ll try #1 before investing any more money at the moment. Again, thank you so much for taking your time! 🥰

              • Thorry@feddit.org
                2·
                2 hours ago

                Sounds like an excellent idea! If you ever get tired of swapping, an USB capture card is a lot cheaper than a new GPU with current prices. Good luck!