Will this Dell T3500 boot after upgrades? - #24

[@JuanGonzalez-hv6vs]

You are very handy doing all of these upgrades with one hand. You have some skills, bro!

[@AllThingsOnePlace]

ha

[@paladinew]

Ive had my t3500 since it was brand new. Upgraded to 48gb ram in triple channel, w3690 cpu overclocked to 4ghz, dual ssd's in raid 1 for boot drive, and most recently, a GeForce RTX 4060ti, lol. Shes's beastly! Oh, I also added 5 extra fans but had to use a controller with manual control since I couldnt find a way to use the built in pwm fan port. Anyone have tips on that? Im thinking she should last another 3-4 years before its time to move on. Im wondering what's next? What would be the equivalent machine available today that will be as upgradable and affordable (yet punches way above its weight class) like this beast?? Enjoy!

[@AllThingsOnePlace]

ha, wow. That is impressive! I don't want to think about the power consumption. Todays machines will certainly beat it on efficiency and really performance, probably quite easily, but as long as the power bill isn't too unreasonable no reason not to keep it going but yeah modern system maybe 2 generations and the RAM or the CPU socket or the PCIe will be out of date and not upgradable.

[@paladinew]

​@@AllThingsOnePlace I haven't recently checked my power usage, but I have a kilowatt meter, so I plan to do that during a gaming session later. By the way, I upgraded the PSU to a Corsair 1000 watt unit to support my GPU, but in retrospect, I might have been fine with a lower power option. The CPU, with the Artic MX-6 paste and overclocked, stays under 60°C even under full load, which is pretty good considering it's using the stock cooler with additional fans zip-tied to it. To connect my fan controller to the PWM fan port, I found some 5-pin to 4-pin adapters for the proprietary Dell fan cable. I'll test it out when I open up the system to install the new 10GB PCIe ethernet adapter. As for my next project, I'm on the lookout for any AMD Epyc 96-core CPUs, but they need to become more affordable than the current exorbitant $12,000+ price! 😲

[@strawberrysherbet96]

Goddamn sounds like a beast I wanna build a retro t3500. I like how it has the sd card slots. Old school feel to it

[@98LuckyLuk]

Your GPU is useless with this CPU.

[@paladinew]

Respectfully I disagree. I'm getting 160+ fps in many games. If you compare the CPU to more modern ones, it still holds up extremely well. The value/performance ratio is unmatched IMO.

[@Aspiring-Hobo]

I have one, technically the X5687 , 4 core with Hyperthreading, boost clock is 3.86GHZ . I upgraded from an x5660 but I didn't really gain much by it, maybe in some games. USB 3.0 or better is a must have upgrade for these. It's too bad you can't upgrade to SATA III. I didn't know where to get a 2.5" SSD adapter, the blue one, so my SSD is taped in. You really should zip tie an 80mm fan to the back of the CPU cooler, as the two huge front fans stay at a super low idle until or unless the CPU temps get very close to TJmax The T3500 was an awesome PC but it had flaws and that was a major one. You never heard those fans ramp up, and when they do it sounds like a server room.

[@AllThingsOnePlace]

Yeah, I was supposed to make part three of this like a year plus ago... haha. I have an 1050TI which I think is a reasonable pairing for this machine and a new CPU cooler cause yeah it gets hot.

[@jasonputtock4428]

You should upgrade to X5680 or 5690 6 core. 3.33mhx to 3.4 can turbo upto 3.8 ish. Upgrade your CPU heatsink with a built in fan version designed for DELL. Upgrade the bios to the 17version 1st. This will allow you to upgrade install the RX570 in theory. GTX560Ti works just fine.

[@AllThingsOnePlace]

I was actually thinking of replacing the whole system finally. Maybe I can do one more upgrade.

[@manojgupta3770]

You should have upgraded/replaced that aluminium CPU heat sink with Dell copper pipe heat sink instead first before all these upgrades.

[@AllThingsOnePlace]

Thanks. Yeah. I didn’t think about it at the time of the video that the cooler wasn’t going to be enough.

[@wacio]

Mine came with W3690 but I have added MVME drive to it. Samsung 950 pro will boot in PCIe adapter. This thing supports 48Gb of RAM (6x8Gb).

[@AllThingsOnePlace]

Nice. Mine refuses to boot from the NVME drive. What adapter are you using? The CPU changes the memory support, some only support 24 but yeah I've heard of 48 in some cases.

[@wacio]

@@AllThingsOnePlace There are very few NVME drives that will boot. Adapter has nothing to do with it. Its just PCB with connectors (connecting drive to right PCI lanes and power). Samsung 950 pro internally emulates SATA adapter - this is why it works. BIOS recognizes 950 pro as drive and data transfer speed is 2900Mb/s (limited by PCIe gen 2)

[@gingerspice6356]

May I know the purpose of sata power in USB 3.1 Gen 2 10gbps card that you installed in your computer??

[@AllThingsOnePlace]

The module I installed also has QC charging capability, so it can deliver 30W on the two green USB A ports. A little out of date these days with everything being USB C now.

[@nathanwardlow1342]

Can you put the parts in the description? Please and thank you

[@AllThingsOnePlace]

Hello, I added the parts in the description for part 1 and 2. Total fail on my part for not putting that in from the beginning.

[@nathanwardlow1342]

I really like the front panel ports set up

[@98LuckyLuk]

I doubt the Ethernet and USB-C cards will reach 10Gbit/s. Theoretically the PCIe x4 interface can handle roughly 16 Gbit/s, but with all the protocol overhead and the relativily slow CPU it probably will not reach it.

[@AllThingsOnePlace]

Yep, realistic speeds are more like 5 with two interfaces active at once. I still have the system but it’s days are numbered.

[@98LuckyLuk]

@@AllThingsOnePlace Still impressive for such an old machine. If the PCIe-Interface of your cards would‘ve been x8 it could‘ve worked.

[@capt.pakistangaming492]

Hi! I have a t3500 with w3530 processor. I wat to upgrade the processor with w3680 which is a 6 core processor (You may already know). So what kind of performance upgrade I'm looking at specifically comparing to an ''i'' series processor. BTW I play games.

[@AllThingsOnePlace]

The higher clock speed CPUs do tend to offer better gaming performance on this system. In terms of raw performance the W3680 is about twice as fast. That won't directly translate into FPS of course. Depending on what graphics card you have and other system parameters this system should be a decent mid-tier performance option. I wouldn't pair with anything more powerful than a GTX1650 Super as this CPU is still 10 years old. I am not sure on "i" series processor. There are some "E" series processors that fit in this system.

[@dolphinjani4723]

rx 570 would be perfect for your build

[@hivepark6844]

Did you upgrade the turbo?

[@AllThingsOnePlace]

Did you know the turbo button actually slowed the computer down for software compatibility?

[@daddycoco96]

yoo, i have the t3500, today i buy a slot of ram ddr3 4gb 1600mhz, the cpu beep thats he beep u, what i doing for the pc turn on with the slot ?

[@AllThingsOnePlace]

I am not sure what the question is. DDR3 4GB RAM (ECC non-registered or NON-ECC) should work in the system without any problem.

[@Fawad06]

Hi i upgraded my processor from w3530 to w3690 in my t3500, but when i booted task manager was ahowing 3 cores 6 threads and cpu frequency was stuck at 3.47, i tried to turn on off multicore, hyper threading and turbo boost technologies but no effect. Then i reinstalled windows it also did nothing, no matter how high or low cpu load is clock speend never changes, i upgraded bios from a08 to a13 then a17 but still no luck, i also checked in msconfig.exe in boot tab advance menu "Number of Processors" was unchecked. But if i change clock speed manually through intel xtu it goes higher but the lowest it can go is base clock. Now, if the issue is in my processor because w3530 was working fine on this machine, why is device manager showing me 12 processors instead of 6. Also in bios system info it shows hexad after multi core support field. Or the seller locked cores and clock idk if thats possible. I need help please if you know something that can help reply me..

[@Fawad06]

And 1 more thing, I'm using 2x4gb 1600mhz ram stick on dual channel configuration, and gtx 970 as gpu

[@AllThingsOnePlace]

That is certainly a strange effect. I am having no such issues, but I am also not using windows. The RAM configuration is a potential limiting factor for speed as the XEON W3690 is a 3 channel system but this shouldn't cause any of the issues you are seeing, the system will boot fine with one stick of RAM. On the tough problems I usually try stripping the system down as much as possible. Also, try a full BIOS reset back to default values. Since the issues appear to be revolving around the CPU, ideally swapping the CPU will show some changes. My motive to upgrade the CPU on the system I have was one of the RAM controller channels wasn't functioning anymore so I couldn't use 6 sticks of memory and some software has a 16 GB minimum memory requirement. I would try moving the RAM around in the system to see if any memory channels aren't working correctly. If this creates any errors then this confirms the CPU has lost some functionality. If swapping the CPU fixes the error then that is the issue. If neither of these work then I would look at the motherboard. There is always a full system teardown and clean up. Check bent pins on the CPU socket, voltage rails, connectors, etc. The list goes on... Did you check CPU Z? Sometimes that identifies fake components. Diagnosis is a bit like a dart board. One step at a time and hopefully something will fix the issue. There is always risk involved when upgrading a 10 year old computer unfortunately. I gave my CPU upgrade about a 50/50 chance of working and thankfully the CPU upgrade worked... Now if only I got the memory right, there will be a part II. That still doesn't fix your problem though.

[@Fawad06]

@@AllThingsOnePlace thaniks for replying..i found my issue when i returned the processor i found a few (i think they are) resistors under the processor chip were broken so i think that was causing the issue..

[@spartan958]

A mí me vino con desipador de cobre con aluminio

[@AllThingsOnePlace]

Nice, yeah, I still need to replace the stock one in mine. It's still working so I keep using it...

[@dolphinjani4723]

the way you were installing the CPU is disturbing and risky

[@AllThingsOnePlace]

I am surprised you are the first person to comment on that.

[@targaR32]

Don't upgrade the T3500. We need to protect John Connor in this timeline.

[@AllThingsOnePlace]

Uh oh, it's gone sentient. All over now.

[@magicroomstudios]

Have 48 gigs in mine...

[@AllThingsOnePlace]

Yeah, with the later bios update it supports more.