Zeddivile
I would not wait for Ampere and then attempt to run it on that motherboard. Personally I would not test any GPU of value on that motherboard at this point.
Idk why no one is saying this but AFAIK HP cuts ALL its corners on motherboards. Which is most likely why when you plugged a real PSU into it you ended up here on the forum with burn marks on components.
Is the HP out of warranty? IF not HP is the route I would go with the HP chassis and related components. Propriety OEM is not engineered to play nice with enthusiast so to speak....
If budget is a concern a decent z170 motherboard can be found for 100$. I was not able to find the HP Z170 replacement for less than 190$...
If upgrading is your plan the sky's your limit.
Just to clarify, the original PSU broke about 2 years after buying it, then I ran it with the original G2 with no problems until recently, and the GPU only burned because I started it without plugging the GPU's auxiliary power connectors in. Does your advice still hold? I am not sure if damaged psi-e traces can fry a GPU?
It's 4.5 years old, which is twice its warranty, I was working under the impression that only the memory and PSU are suitable for upgrading, and I think the memory is 2133, so shouldn't be used with Ryzen.
As for the motherboard replacement, I think that might be a bit too expensive, the amount of weird and wonderful problems I've had one the past few weeks suggest that there may be other things wrong, and I'm unsure what. For interest, when it boots up now, it looks like 420p, and I can't change the resolution from 1024p, there is no way it is actually showing anything close to 1080p. So I think there may be a cpu issue as well, I was just hoping it would be enough to tide me over to when Vermeer comes out...
btw, when will good aftermarket cards come out and actually be available after Ampere's launch, I've been reading that we should expect two months?