[SOLVED] Upgrading option questions and possible limitations

[mulaxin]

I am getting a good work comp for free, although it may be dated. Goal is to use for gaming and add upgrades if worth it. Not a huge gamer, but really enjoy the process of trying to upgrade.

Question 1: I am reading the board specs and confused on the following inputs listed: Serial ATA (hard drive), Serial ATA (optical Drive), and SATA 1.0 and 2.0 inputs (1.5 Gbps and 3.0 Gbps). Does this mean I cant use a new 6.0 Gbps SSD? Whats your opinion on if this limits me overall if trying to upgrade (3Gbps vs 6 Gbps).

Question 2: The processor is listed as Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2630 0 @ 2.30GHz (12 CPUs), ~2.3GHz. I am not educated on processor specs and just looking for a general reaction like "that thing sucks", "its old but good enough", "you would want at least this___ now".

Question 3: What other upgrade would be best if using this board (listed below Dell T5600), pcu, and RAM?

Question 4: Wheres the GPU listed? Can this board take a GPU upgrade?

Question 5: Since this is a pre-build non retail, do you agree that trying to change the case would be a pain since it may not fit other cases?

I appreciate any help y'all

The only decision Ive made is I will get a 500Gb SSD and install Win10. Then have an HDD for rando files and programs. I might also get a new case (can i with that board tho?) and remove the DVD drives. Thinking about getting a new modular power supply too.

It would be funny if I ended up just buying a whole new build, but I fear the wife.


System Information
------------------
System Manufacturer: Dell Inc.
System Model: Precision T5600
Processor: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2630 0 @ 2.30GHz (12 CPUs), ~2.3GHz
Memory: 65536MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 65494MB RAM
User DPI Setting: Using System DPI
System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
DxDiag Version: 6.01.7601.17514 64bit Unicode

 

[tennis2]

Q1 - SATA is backward compatible. You can use a SATA3 (6Gbps) drive on a SATA 1 or 2 port, it just may not perform to its maximum. Mechanical hard drives won't saturate a SATA 2 port anyway (~280MB/s actual). An SSD won't make it's rated 550MB/s transfers obviously, but you'll still benefit from the latency benefits of SSDs.

Q2 - 6C/12T from 2015 isn't bad. However, the 2.8GHz max frequency is probably going to hurt a bit in games since they mostly use 3-6 threads and want maximum frequency.

Q3 - I'm wondering how they got 65.5GB of RAM.....haha

Here's the list of supported CPUs maybe an E5-2680 (2.7-3.5GHz) = $57

Q4 - Yes the mobo has an x16 slot where you'd put a GPU.

All my google searches for the Precision T5600 are coming back with this being a mobo with dual CPU sockets....? Assumedly only one socket is populated in your machine.

Overall, this is quite a bit of PC for FREE

 

[mulaxin]

Tennis2 thanks so much for the quick reply. I'll have to figure out if this has dual CPU sockets and what the heck I can do with that. I've never replaced a CPU; I'll look into that since I just dont know if its feasible here.

Here's my plan:
Look into the dual CPU and/or replacing current CPU (unsure)
Keep Mobo, drives, power supply, etc in place as is in the current case
New 500Gb 6Mbps SSD
Add HDD
New GPU (Ill have to research this on my own)

Thanks again

 

[tennis2]

Removing/Installing a CPU is pretty straightforward. YouTube can help.

You won't get any benefit out of running dual CPUs for your usage. I don't even think Windows 10 supports dual CPUs (?)

Sticking to the Nvidia GTX10xx series (aka, GTX1060 or 1070) would be a safe bet since this is an OEM machine.