Dell upgrade

Hey everyone, My boss wants to upgrade our dell precision workstation for the new release of a CAD/CAM software we are getting, and I was wondering if anyone knew wether or not the CPU's in dell's machines are non-standard LGA 775 types. I was hoping to just swap out the 1.8 ghz dual core with a q6600. Likewise I want to exchange the RAM. Standard 240 pin DDR2 DIMM?
thanks

I would honestly be shocked if they didn't use standard sockets. Otherwise Intel would have to make special processors for that vendor, that would be a HUGE waste of money.

Make sure the chipset will support the processor.

All Dells use standard processors, and always have. (Some early ones had 'em soldered in, but they were standard nonetheless.) Likewise with the RAM, with the exception of some of the laptops in the early '90s, it's always been standard. Some machines use ECC, but I'm pretty sure yours doesn't. Regular DDR2 should work fine.

A Dell Precision with a 1.8GHZ Core2, I'm guessing that's a Precision 390? Those have the 975 chipset. I know it'll take a Q6600, as there was a version that came stock with a Q6600. I wouldn't try any CPU newer than that, though, because AFAIK it only supports a 1066FSB and no 45nm chips.

A Q6600 should drop in without an issue. 45nm would be more of a crap shoot as most motherboards needed to BIOS flash to take them, I wouldn't bet the farm that Dell did that. Most likely the contrary. Make sure that the system can accomadate proper cooling. I have seen some Dells with "interesting" cooling solutions that would have no hope of accommodating a quad. As long the motherboard uses standard 775 cooling hole locations you should be able to use a stock Intel cooler just fine. Just another thing to check before pulling the trigger.

45nm would be more of a crap shoot as most motherboards needed to BIOS flash to take them, I wouldn't bet the farm that Dell did that

Click to expand...

Assuming it's the model I think it is...

45nm CPUs aren't officially supported on the 975X chipset at all... I know some boards will work with them, but you can be pretty certain that a Dell board won't. You can also be pretty certain that it won't handle the 1333fsb that most of the 45nm quads use, since the chipset only officially does 1066.

The stock Dell cooling should be fine for a Q6600, they use pretty hefty coolers on their business/pro machines, generally better than the stock Intel ones, in fact. Since the quad was an option on that machine anyway, the heatsink should handle it without trouble. (They only tend to use one kind of heatsink per model, to cover all the CPU options.)

thanks everyone for the advice. This forum is a life saver.