What processor to upgrade to? Dell Optiplex 755

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Shaner686868

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Jan 8, 2005
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Hey everyone. Well here is the quick and dirty. My school issues (we are forced to buy) desktops Dell Optiplex 755 with the Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 2.4 GH, PNY VertoGeForce 8500 GT, and a 305 wat psu. Now i have plenty of ram and hdd. But I want to upgrade the following andnot really looking for extreme i just have some money to spend and wouldnt mind upgrading

Please try to answer the following questions:
  1. What processor type/architecthure am i limited too
  2. Can that processor be faster dual core or even tripple?
  3. Is my video card Pci-e 1 or 2.0?
  4. What video card if any would you suggest.
  5. I would like to keep vid and processor around 100 each
 
1. You can use LGA-775 processors.
2. You can get a faster dual core or a quad core. There are no triple core processors.
4. What's the application?

PS, can you not buy your own systems?
 
1. It depends on which form factor you have. See this page: http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/optix_755?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04 Some models support up to 45nm quad core and some only support dual core. From the PSU it sounds like you have a mini tower, so up to 45nm Q9550.
2. Yeah, most likely
3. PCI-E 1.0a. PCI-E 2.0 cards are backwards compatible and PCI-E 1.0a cards work in PCI-E 2.0 slots. It's not a big deal.
4. Depends on whether you play games or not. Any mid- to low- range card will be fine if you don't play games. Current cards in that segment are ATI HD 4350 and HD 4650/4670 and nvidia 9400GS and 9500GT/9600GSO.
5. You can get a HD 4830 and 9800GT cards for around $100. If you can't overclock, there's not much under $100 that will be an upgrade to the e4600. For around $120 shipped you can get an e7300 (2.66GHz). Even that's a pretty marginal upgrade. You're looking at maybe a 15-20% performance increase vs the e4600.

If you're not going to upgrade the PSU, it's probably better to stick to a lower power card instead of a 9800GT (9600GT uses less power and is cheaper). The HD 4830 would be fine too.
 
Shaner686868 said:
Hey everyone. Well here is the quick and dirty. My school issues (we are forced to buy) desktops Dell Optiplex 755 with the Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 2.4 GH, PNY VertoGeForce 8500 GT, and a 305 wat psu. Now i have plenty of ram and hdd. But I want to upgrade the following andnot really looking for extreme i just have some money to spend and wouldnt mind upgrading

Please try to answer the following questions:
  1. What processor type/architecthure am i limited too
  2. Can that processor be faster dual core or even tripple?
  3. Is my video card Pci-e 1 or 2.0?
  4. What video card if any would you suggest.
  5. I would like to keep vid and processor around 100 each
Click to expand...

I have an Optiplex 755 here. There are several variants of the Optiplex 755. Worth mentioning that I do work for Dell.

Do you have the Mini-Tower, Desktop, Small Form Factor or Ultra Small Form Factor variant?

If you have the mini tower than you are in luck. It uses a G35 Intel Chipset and you CAN use a single slot cooler based video card in it's PCI Express slot. The slot itself is x16 PCI Express 1.1 but you can use a 1.0 or 2.0 card as well.

The limiting factor is the power supply. My own Optiplex 755 came equipped with a Q9550, 2GB PC6400 and an ATi Radeon HD 2400XT.

This should let you know that you can really push the CPU power of this particular machine. It's also worth mentioning that any ATX regular size power supply will fit in the case as I replaced the Dell PSU in mine with a Corsair 600W unit.

I'd suggest a more robust 600W good quality PSU and a Radeon HD 4850 single slot video card. Also might want to bump up your CPU power as well. An E8500 should suffice.
 
Just installed an Intel E5200 in my Optiplex 755 to replace the E2160 that was in it. The weird thing is that in spite of falling within the guidelines of what should work in this unit, I get a not supported by system error on bootup accompanied by the usual "press F1 to continue" which, when I use that option, it works fine. The processors are both the same specs (bus speed and thermal rating, etc) and the bios sees and correctly identifies the processor, as does Windoze. Any clues as to what causes this and a fix, short of a new processor?
BTW, I forgot to mention that Windoze seems to run glitch-free (or as close as it can) with the E5200, so there seems to be no real compatabilty issue except in the boot error message.
 
i own an optiplex 755 and just did install a q9550 after updating bios to a20 and the thing is a rocket now,video card is a gt220(hdmi out to 32"lcd sony bravia) and 4gb of ddr2 800mhz ram.i use a cpu cooler from a dimension 9200,which is more effective than the original one and a second 120mm fan at exit of the duct to raise the air flow.then ,a little safe setup in bios to crank it up and it's flying cool.
 
Shaner686868 said:
Hey everyone. Well here is the quick and dirty. My school issues (we are forced to buy) desktops Dell Optiplex 755 with the Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 2.4 GH, PNY VertoGeForce 8500 GT, and a 305 wat psu. Now i have plenty of ram and hdd. But I want to upgrade the following andnot really looking for extreme i just have some money to spend and wouldnt mind upgrading

Please try to answer the following questions:
  1. What processor type/architecthure am i limited too
  2. Can that processor be faster dual core or even tripple?
  3. Is my video card Pci-e 1 or 2.0?
  4. What video card if any would you suggest.
  5. I would like to keep vid and processor around 100 each
Click to expand...

Since it has a C2D installed, it *should* be just as capable of swallowing a quad-core of the same socket (at the very least, Q6600); surprisingly, despite its age, the original bang-for-buck quad-core still has plenty of life in it. I transplanted a new CPU into Mighty Mouse (the aforementioned Q6600) and, despite being clocked stock, it thoroughly chews up (and swallows whole) anything I've thrown at it.

The GPU is PCIe 2.0 (and slightly less powerful than my current HD5450, which I am quite aware is a bottleneck) - seriously consider something in the GTS 4xx/5xx line (nVidia) or HD67xx line (AMD); I'm looking at HD6750 or HD6770 at minimum. The CPU should be buyable used for no more than $40 including shipping (I bought one from a forum member for a total cost of $33 - including shipping), leaving the rest of your budget for the GPU.
 
Unfortunately just because the chipset can support a CPU it does not mean that every motherboard using that chipset can. There are plenty of ways for MB vendors to screw stuff up.

BTW for anyone who has the desktop model of 755 dell do a riser assembly which lets you put in a full-height graphics card, you aren't stuck with low profile crap.
 
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