Advise on CPU upgrade for inspiron 570

[zr0w69]

I just recently bought a dell inspiron 570. It comes with the duel core cpu but im upgrading to a AMD Athlon II x4. This is my first time installing and i have a few questions.... 1. Do i have to do a fresh intall of win7 or can i just update the bios? and how much heat sink do i apply and how do i spead it?

 

[sulumordna]

if everything is up to date all you "should" have to do swap the cpu, no bios update. windows will be ok as is. as for the thermal compound, there are many different methods and opions on this. the most common is the "pea" method, where you put a dab of compound (pea sized) in the middle of the cpu then put you HSF on. that dell model can be bought with an athlon ii x4 or phenom ii x4 in addition to the dual core so you should be good to go just swapping cpus like i said. make sure you clean the old compound off first, cotton swabs and alcohol work good for me, just don't get on the motherboard.

 

[zr0w69]

I just bought this PC about a month ago, so the bios should be up to date, but I will make sure before i install the new chip. the chip i'm installing is the AMD Athlon II X4 645 Propus 3.1GHz Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor ADX645WFGMBOX. I have a good friend who knows his stuff and said this should work fine. My board is AM3 and my current x2 is a 95W so it should be fine. He also advised me to use the "pea" method as to applying the heat sink. Thanks for the advise on cleaning the old compound! I prolly would have forgotten. I just put a 600W psu in this but prolly would have been good with just the stock but just in case I upped it a bit. I'll let you know how it turns out, I should have the CPU in about a day or so! if you wanna check it out and give me feed back, here is where i got it: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103885

 

[sulumordna]

not a bad cpu at all, my "phenom ii" is just a hair faster, 200Mhz and i love it. it's an unlocked athlon ii x3 455 with no L3 cache, big step up from my dual core aii 250. i think your friend is right, i don't think you should have any problems. just be careful of static electricity and with the thermal paste. good luck and congrats on your "new" rig