To cool or not to cool and how to do it.

[Conumdrum]

Remember, you won't get much of a meaningful CPU upgrade without changing the motherboard.

You have a DELL Mobo. It's VERY limited for ANY upgrades. If you even could upgrade the CPU it would be a pain in the butt, and a very small upgrade where we are now. CPUs get much better, but new mobo and ram is needed to get the benefits.

It's not a bad PC to start with, but once you decide to really upgrade, even the case, it's DELL propritary ways etc means the case even needs to be tossed, mobo, ram, etc.

Get it fixed, a good PC for now and a better GPU down the road with a better PSU keeps it at the 70% use for a year or 3. Nice to have a good web/etc rig laying around when you need it.

Fix your cooling issue, I'm sure that's why it went into the heap bin in the first place.

 

[txus.palacios]

You have a DELL Mobo. It's VERY limited for ANY upgrades. If you even could upgrade the CPU it would be a pain in the butt, and a very small upgrade where we are now. CPUs get much better, but new mobo and ram is needed to get the benefits.

It's not a bad PC to start with, but once you decide to really upgrade, even the case, it's DELL propritary ways etc means the case even needs to be tossed, mobo, ram, etc.

Get it fixed, a good PC for now and a better GPU down the road with a better PSU keeps it at the 70% use for a year or 3. Nice to have a good web/etc rig laying around when you need it.

Fix your cooling issue, I'm sure that's why it went into the heap bin in the first place.

^This.

 

[CaGeRit]

Remember, you won't get much of a meaningful CPU upgrade without changing the motherboard.

Lets not get ahead of ourselves here. I'd like to get this machine operating before even looking at cpu/mobo upgrades. A discussion for a different thread probably a year into the future if not longer.

Anyway order had been placed, will probably have it installed by this weekend. Will post results and change the tag of the thread to solved (if it has been solved) at that time.

Thanks to everyone for helping guide me through this.

 

[GeneO]

^
As everyone else said, don;t try the upgrade path.

It may just require a reapplication of thermal paste on the heat sink. I had that problem when I had a Dell back then. New thermal paste cured it (no pun intended).

 

[CaGeRit]

Alright my new cooler arrived yesterday, was too tired to make an attempt when it came in, but got around to doing to today.

Short Version: Success, old CPU temps were 100-105C at 25% load, new temps are 70-75C at 100%. Interestingly enough idle temps have not changed, both coolers idled at 50-55C.

Long Version: I went with the Noctua NH-U9DX. Don't ask why I seem to have a fetish for Noctua, I don't know.
Install did not go without hitch. After removing the Mobo I found that there was no backplate to the old cooler, the holes simply plugged into the other side of the case. Furthermore the screws were different, after swapping the screws I found the the old springs were too taught and wouldn't engage, after swapping springs (OEM screws with Noctua springs for those as lost as I was during the process). Finally I managed to get everything tightened down nice and snug, fired her up and ran a bench giving results stated above. It has been a learning experience all round and I thank everyone for their input.

Also I don't think reapplying the paste to the old cooler would have helped, as you can see above, the copper centerpiece was the only thing in contact with the cpu. However by best estimate it only covered 2/3rds of the CPUs total surface. Oh, and I took the opportunity to pop out the cpu when removing the old cooler and have a good look at it. Not sure why its worth mentioning, but I sorta geeked out about it.

Oh and picture: