New brain for old brain
February 27, 2023 3:38 PM Subscribe
I am considering upgrading my ancient PC's CPU. Can it be done? What processors are compatible?
I previously asked about upgrading the computer's graphics card. I decided against upgrading the computer for games but now I'm considering beefing it up for 4k video work. (A new CPU + GFX card + memory.) I see there are plenty of cheap used CPUs on eBay and wondered if I could get myself a decent video workstation on a budget.
The computer is a Dell t3600. It's current cpu is an Intel Xeon 3.6Ghz E5-1620.
What upgrade options do I have? Can I get a CPU that is much better? What do I need to look for on eBay?
I previously asked about upgrading the computer's graphics card. I decided against upgrading the computer for games but now I'm considering beefing it up for 4k video work. (A new CPU + GFX card + memory.) I see there are plenty of cheap used CPUs on eBay and wondered if I could get myself a decent video workstation on a budget.
The computer is a Dell t3600. It's current cpu is an Intel Xeon 3.6Ghz E5-1620.
What upgrade options do I have? Can I get a CPU that is much better? What do I need to look for on eBay?
from your dell t3600 link, the supported CPU options are listed in this subheading.
> What do I need to look for on eBay?
a more recent computer. similar to my answer in the previous thread, trying to upgrade a (+-)10 year old machine to get more performance in 2023 is a fools errand unless you're an extremely avid computer hobbyist with almost nothing better to do with your time. you will not see useful performance improvements vs the time and effort you spend messing with this. imo the proper use for this machine is repurposing it, mostly as-is, to something else like a NAS or a router or a pihole dns box or a OS experimentation playground, and spending a few hundred bucks on a newer used workstation.
posted by glonous keming at 4:03 PM on February 27, 2023 [16 favorites]
> What do I need to look for on eBay?
a more recent computer. similar to my answer in the previous thread, trying to upgrade a (+-)10 year old machine to get more performance in 2023 is a fools errand unless you're an extremely avid computer hobbyist with almost nothing better to do with your time. you will not see useful performance improvements vs the time and effort you spend messing with this. imo the proper use for this machine is repurposing it, mostly as-is, to something else like a NAS or a router or a pihole dns box or a OS experimentation playground, and spending a few hundred bucks on a newer used workstation.
posted by glonous keming at 4:03 PM on February 27, 2023 [16 favorites]
There isn't a significant upgrade to be had here. You might be able to get a few percent more CPU performance out of an Ivy Bridge (E5-2xxx) CPU, assuming your motherboard's BIOS supports it, but that's it.
If you really wanted to, I guess there are some 6 and 10 core parts that might work, but I can't say that the overall experience would be much better given that they don't run at as high of a clock speed.
The only guaranteed upgrade is listed right there on the page you linked, the E5-1660. Six cores instead of four, and slightly higher clock speed. It's not going to make a huge difference, but if it were like ten bucks and you already have the thermal paste on hand, sure, it might help for some tasks.
I'd probably buy a video card that was well supported by my video editing software instead, though. You're going to get way more improvement out of GPU offloaded video encode/decode than you will out of any CPU that's physically compatible with your motherboard. Even the most modern video cards will function (assuming they don't draw too much power) with PCIe 3.0.
posted by wierdo at 4:04 PM on February 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
If you really wanted to, I guess there are some 6 and 10 core parts that might work, but I can't say that the overall experience would be much better given that they don't run at as high of a clock speed.
The only guaranteed upgrade is listed right there on the page you linked, the E5-1660. Six cores instead of four, and slightly higher clock speed. It's not going to make a huge difference, but if it were like ten bucks and you already have the thermal paste on hand, sure, it might help for some tasks.
I'd probably buy a video card that was well supported by my video editing software instead, though. You're going to get way more improvement out of GPU offloaded video encode/decode than you will out of any CPU that's physically compatible with your motherboard. Even the most modern video cards will function (assuming they don't draw too much power) with PCIe 3.0.
posted by wierdo at 4:04 PM on February 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
The hardware specs you link lists compatible processors, and yours is basically mid-range for that era. That said, depending on what you're using it for, the processors you can pick from may not be a great buy. The top of the line E5-2665 tops out at 2.4 GHz, so while you're getting 4 more cores than what you currently have, they're running more than 1 GHz slower for any single-threaded task, and all of the compatible 6-core processors are still running a bit slower at top speed for single-threaded stuff. Of those, only the E5-1660 looks at all tempting; you give up a bit of turbo speed for a larger cache size and 2 more cores. You can get these parts on eBay for less than $50, so it's not like it'd break the bank, but unless you know you're processor-bottlenecked on a multi-threaded application, I wouldn't bother.
Video was pretty thoroughly addressed in your last question, so I'm not going to rehash that. Proprietary power supplies and connectors may be an issue with graphics card upgrades so double-check that your power supply is either standard and upgradeable or that it has both the wattage and connectors you need for the card you want.
You probably have the best memory for the system already in there, but you could potentially add more if you have free DIMM slots.
Overall opinion: you'll get better bang for buck going new.
posted by Aleyn at 4:05 PM on February 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Video was pretty thoroughly addressed in your last question, so I'm not going to rehash that. Proprietary power supplies and connectors may be an issue with graphics card upgrades so double-check that your power supply is either standard and upgradeable or that it has both the wattage and connectors you need for the card you want.
You probably have the best memory for the system already in there, but you could potentially add more if you have free DIMM slots.
Overall opinion: you'll get better bang for buck going new.
posted by Aleyn at 4:05 PM on February 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
As an addendum to my overall opinion: Of potential upgrades you can make on that machine, I might upgrade the video since that would be straightforward to transplant to a new machine, and money you sink into it would therefore not be wasted by upgrading to a new machine later. Otherwise I'd either use the machine as-is and muddle through with lackluster performance, or go new. The processors you can put in won't be a major upgrade, and DDR3 RAM isn't very much cheaper than the current stuff, and both will be useless when you try to go to a new machine.
posted by Aleyn at 4:17 PM on February 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Aleyn at 4:17 PM on February 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Make sure it's worth it, even for a cheap processor. Total cost of ownership and all that.
Looks like all the CPU upgrades for your box are 130W TPD and aren't going to give you that big a performance bump, relatively speaking. There are significantly faster processors in the current gen from AMD and Intel that use almost half the power, and can do 4k, some even without the discrete GPU.
I used to obsessively upgrade computers until the wheels fell off. Then I realized replacing with newer, power efficient kit was more cost effective (and lower hassle) than cruising eBay for the odd obsolete part just to keep some old box useful. I do keep one 64-core beast in the rack for when I really need the compute, but it only gets turned on when I run a job that really needs it.
posted by kjs3 at 4:19 PM on February 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Looks like all the CPU upgrades for your box are 130W TPD and aren't going to give you that big a performance bump, relatively speaking. There are significantly faster processors in the current gen from AMD and Intel that use almost half the power, and can do 4k, some even without the discrete GPU.
I used to obsessively upgrade computers until the wheels fell off. Then I realized replacing with newer, power efficient kit was more cost effective (and lower hassle) than cruising eBay for the odd obsolete part just to keep some old box useful. I do keep one 64-core beast in the rack for when I really need the compute, but it only gets turned on when I run a job that really needs it.
posted by kjs3 at 4:19 PM on February 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
There is no practical upgrade for your system without replacing the motherboard and I personally wouldn't trust a Dell from that era to be standardized enough to take a modern motherboard. You can't just throw in a modern CPU and have it work - the motherboard supports decade old 5th generation i series CPUs. Even the best CPU from a decade ago is modest compared to what a modern one can do, generally at a fraction of the power consumption.
The CPUs from the era that your motherboard supports are both quite old in computer terms at this point and heavily impacted by the CPU vulnerability fixes (Meltdown, Spectre, and others). Unless you can be sure that a modern motherboard will fit in the case and have the power connectors it needs, I'd agree that you're better starting from scratch and building a new system.
posted by Candleman at 4:49 PM on February 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
The CPUs from the era that your motherboard supports are both quite old in computer terms at this point and heavily impacted by the CPU vulnerability fixes (Meltdown, Spectre, and others). Unless you can be sure that a modern motherboard will fit in the case and have the power connectors it needs, I'd agree that you're better starting from scratch and building a new system.
posted by Candleman at 4:49 PM on February 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
OS longevity--and thus security, application, & card longevity--also favor a new box. For example: Windows 11 specs and online check.
posted by gregoreo at 6:50 PM on February 27, 2023
posted by gregoreo at 6:50 PM on February 27, 2023
The simplest updates you can do are more ram and a solid state hard drive (SSD). They won't make it a new machine, but they will make it feel faster.
posted by AugustusCrunch at 7:14 PM on February 27, 2023
posted by AugustusCrunch at 7:14 PM on February 27, 2023
trying to upgrade a (+-)10 year old machine to get more performance in 2023 is a fools errand unless you're an extremely avid computer hobbyist with almost nothing better to do with your time.
Agreed. This is the equivalent of saying "I have a 1920 Ford pickup, how can I easily replace the engine to make it work like a new car?"
Get a new PC.
posted by mmoncur at 7:43 PM on February 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
Agreed. This is the equivalent of saying "I have a 1920 Ford pickup, how can I easily replace the engine to make it work like a new car?"
Get a new PC.
posted by mmoncur at 7:43 PM on February 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
Hi, I really like those older Dell workstations, manage org-wide IT and hardware for a nonprofit, and have opinions!
The T3600 is in an annoying spot re: CPU upgrades. There's nothing about them mechanically that would prevent them from using the newer Ivy Bridge EP Xeons (E5-v2), but Dell opted to not release a BIOS update to add compatibility for the next generation of CPUs, and instead released a minor hardware revision, the T3610, with E5-v2 compatibility. If you were running a T3610, I'd wholeheartedly recommend the inexpensive upgrade to a used E5-2667v2 and 32GB of RAM to squeeze another few years of life out of it. That said, the T3600 is juuuuuust on the wrong side of the upgrade value proposition these days, by my reckoning, unless it's in a very low-spec configuration--yours is solidly mid-spec, and as such the available upgrades don't provide a particularly significant performance boost, especially compared to a full-machine upgrade.
1st-gen (Skylake) Xeon W Precision workstations have just started dipping below $300 USD on the used/refurb/off-lease market, which is probably what I'd recommend as your best whole-machine budget-tier upgrade path if you were in the States... but in the UK prices on used gear tend to stay a good bit higher for longer. Instead, I'd recommend something like this as your best bet (link purely illustrative, I have no connection to or experience with that eBay seller).
A T5810 with an E5-1650v3 would be a pretty good upgrade for £150.00 + P&P. Single-core CPU tasks would only be 15-20% faster, but multi-core workloads would be roughly twice as fast. The T5810 is significantly more modern and upgradeable in many ways as well; they run DDR4 memory as opposed to DDR3, can boot from a modern NVMe SSD with a cheap PCIe adapter, and unlike the T3600/5600/7600 series, Dell did release BIOS updates for compatibility with the E5-v4 Xeons, (the top-end ones of which are competitive with much more modern CPUs, and getting quite inexpensive on the used market).
posted by drumcorpse at 3:40 PM on March 4, 2023 [3 favorites]
The T3600 is in an annoying spot re: CPU upgrades. There's nothing about them mechanically that would prevent them from using the newer Ivy Bridge EP Xeons (E5-v2), but Dell opted to not release a BIOS update to add compatibility for the next generation of CPUs, and instead released a minor hardware revision, the T3610, with E5-v2 compatibility. If you were running a T3610, I'd wholeheartedly recommend the inexpensive upgrade to a used E5-2667v2 and 32GB of RAM to squeeze another few years of life out of it. That said, the T3600 is juuuuuust on the wrong side of the upgrade value proposition these days, by my reckoning, unless it's in a very low-spec configuration--yours is solidly mid-spec, and as such the available upgrades don't provide a particularly significant performance boost, especially compared to a full-machine upgrade.
1st-gen (Skylake) Xeon W Precision workstations have just started dipping below $300 USD on the used/refurb/off-lease market, which is probably what I'd recommend as your best whole-machine budget-tier upgrade path if you were in the States... but in the UK prices on used gear tend to stay a good bit higher for longer. Instead, I'd recommend something like this as your best bet (link purely illustrative, I have no connection to or experience with that eBay seller).
A T5810 with an E5-1650v3 would be a pretty good upgrade for £150.00 + P&P. Single-core CPU tasks would only be 15-20% faster, but multi-core workloads would be roughly twice as fast. The T5810 is significantly more modern and upgradeable in many ways as well; they run DDR4 memory as opposed to DDR3, can boot from a modern NVMe SSD with a cheap PCIe adapter, and unlike the T3600/5600/7600 series, Dell did release BIOS updates for compatibility with the E5-v4 Xeons, (the top-end ones of which are competitive with much more modern CPUs, and getting quite inexpensive on the used market).
posted by drumcorpse at 3:40 PM on March 4, 2023 [3 favorites]
« Older Looking for a specific children's book from the... | Fashion Documentaries for Today’s Teen Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.
https://www.dell.com/community/Precision-Fixed-Workstations/T3600-cpu-upgrade-without-regard-for-cooling/td-p/8115514
posted by thewumpusisdead at 3:58 PM on February 27, 2023 [1 favorite]