Remove Fan/Passive Cool In Old Optiplex?

[sjamz]

Ok so here’s the deal.

Found an old Optiplex 745 in my attic covered in cobwebs and whatever else. After an hour or messing about I managed to get it to boot up.

I’ve since installed 8GB ram and added an R7 250 2GB card - this is a curiosity project to see what I can do with the old girl.

Only problem is, the temperature sensor seems to be broken and the fan runs at full speed which, on this old system, is crazy loud.

The model I have has a huge copper heat sink block on it and the fan sits in front.

I’m wondering if this would be enough to keep the CPU cool (C2D E6300 1.86ghz) without the fan attached?

Side note: planning to upgrade the CPU to a Q6600 should everything work smoothly.

 

[william p]

That's not a passive cooler. The BTX layout is one fan to cool everything. The fan will run full speed if the blue PWM connection isn't good. Also go into the BIOS and clear out any error messages in Maintenance/Syslog. They don't reset themselves. Heatpipe cooler D9729 will solve any cooling issues.Be sure you have the latest BIOS from Dell. Those were originally P4 systems and w/o the later BIOS they might not recognize C2D CPUs.
Maxxed out for that would be QX6800 SLACP with a Throtttlestop overclock to about 3.45Ghz. Zotac GTX1050 Mini 2GB will drop right in. The 305W PSU is more than enough. The Zotac GTX1050Ti Mini will work also but sometimes the 4GB GPU will bump heads with the 8GB RAM limit.
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/throttlestop-overclocking-desktop-pcs.235975/page-10
https://www.hardwareinsights.com/dell-h305p-01-power-supply-review/
There are a couple links in my sig. also.

 

[william p]

You should remove the cooler and shroud. Inspect all the capacitors for swollen tops or staining in the grooves there. If you see any then give up on it now.
If they look good clean the CPU/cooler and apply new thermal paste and reinstall the cooler. Any cooler will work for the E6300.
The OC QX6800 SLACP will perform about equal to a Q9650.
The Q6600 is a dog. Q6700 2.66Ghz. and base clocked QX6800 2.93GHz are both better and will run in that.
For cheap thrills a QX6700 can go about 3.2GHz.