Upgrading Optiplex 380 with a Intel Q9505. Problem upgrading.

[tjgordon94]

Hey guys this is my first post on this forum and I was wondering if somebody on here could help me with an interesting problem that I'm having.

Okay first off the machine I'm working on is a Dell Optiplex 380 ( manufactured around 2010). I made some upgrades to it by adding RAM and adding a decent GPU to it. However recently I decided to try to get a faster processor for it, mainly looking for a quad core CPU as the one it came with was a Dual Core.

So I bought a Q9505 Quad Core for a very low price and when I tried to install it my machine would not POST. The power button turned to an amber color and the CPU fan runs full blast. The motherboard is not damaged because I reinstalled the old Dual Core CPU and it works just fine.

Now the interesting thing is that the Q9505 CPU is listed in the Optiplex 380 manual as a supported CPU and I have seen that other users have had no issue installing their CPUs.

One thing that I have been leaning towards is that my bios could be messed up, I did try to reflash the A07 bios and I had received some sort of firmware error during it. It might also be of note to mention that this PC is set to dual boot with one hard drive with Windows 10 and the other with Linux Mint.

I hope I could at least get somewhat of an explanation as to why this might be happening.

Thanks.

 

[Sam Poland]

What GPU? Are you running the OEM power supply? If so that power supply is probably not enough.

 

[tjgordon94]

What GPU? Are you running the OEM power supply? If so that power supply is probably not enough.

My GPU is the EVGA GT 730 and my power supply is the EVGA 500W W1

 

[william p]

http://www.userbenchmark.com/System/Dell-OptiPlex-380/1942 Not Seeing that CPU here. Lots of Xeons though which leads to.
http://www.delidded.com/lga-771-to-775-adapter/3/#dell The Optiplex 360 has issues with anything newer than C0 stepping. From what I saw above the 380 probably has the issue also. So check the stepping of your CPU. This can be found by searching the S- - - letter code on the CPU.

 

[adk2ndclub]

You were given a bad CPU, fan running full speed is a dead give away. I have one running that same chip no issues. I am an IT contractor and recently upgraded a medium size company and they were throwing these things away. They let me take as many as I could ft in my Jeep and I have specifically converted one to a NAS using that chip so it is compatible.

Also a side note The only Quad CPUs officially listed as compatible are the 1333Mhz FSB chips because while 1066 chips work fine, the BTX cooler dell uses on all the units cannot cool the 1066mhz quads for some reason (dual core 1066 FSB and quads at 1333 work fine). I assume the lower FSB requires a higher voltage and thus higher amount of heat created. My 9505 CPU runs fine, but the Q6600 CPU reaches critical temp in a few seconds under-load in the same system and same cooler, but fine in a ATX form-factor system with the stock 775 Intel cooler.

 

[william p]

The T9303 heatpipe cooler will fix that cooling problem.. It's in my E520 running benchmarks at 3.72GHz QX6800.
https://www.ebay.com/i/263025347339?chn=ps&dispctrl=1

i see these running Q9650 so THe C0 stepping limit doesn't apply, I see Xeon X5460 running which is 120W so the usual Optiplex 95W limit doesn't apply. Maybe a QX9650 might work, or the X5470 3.33GHz.
http://www.userbenchmark.com/System/Dell-OptiPlex-380/1942

 

[adk2ndclub]

The T9303 heatpipe cooler will fix that cooling problem.. It's in my E520 running benchmarks at 3.72GHz QX6800.
https://www.ebay.com/i/263025347339?chn=ps&dispctrl=1

i see these running Q9650 so THe C0 stepping limit doesn't apply, I see Xeon X5460 running which is 120W so the usual Optiplex 95W limit doesn't apply. Maybe a QX9650 might work, or the X5470 3.33GHz.
http://www.userbenchmark.com/System/Dell-OptiPlex-380/1942

The OP was about issues with the Q9505 which I can confirm works in two of the 380's I have (one with original bios, one flashed), his issues was he was sold a bad CPU.

http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/04/business~solutions~engineering-docs~en/documents~optiplex-380-tech-guide.pdf
Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q9650/3.00GHz, 12M, 1333FSB
Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q9550/2.83GHz, 12M, 1333FSB
Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q9505/2.83GHz, 6M, 1333FSB
Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q9400/2.66GHz, 6M, 1333FSB
Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q8400/2.66GHz, 4M, 1333FSB

One of the companies I have under contract used these units from 2010 until last April, and for the last five of those years I serviced and maintained all 150 of the units they had deployed, I know these units inside and out, and have two on my overflow bench right now, waiting for ram and SSD upgrade and given away at Christmas time. I have re-purposed a few in my own office as a NAS and another just to run the software for my Unifi Access points.

 

[william p]

The heat pipe cooler was for your cooling problem not the OPs.
The Opti 380 is very uncommon so it's nice someone with firsthand experience could help.
I'd like to try overclocking one.

 

[adk2ndclub]

The heat pipe cooler was for your cooling problem not the OPs.
The Opti 380 is very uncommon so it's nice someone with firsthand experience could help.
I'd like to try overclocking one.

Well thanks for the info on the cooler, I will definitely be ordering a few. Sorry if I came off a bit snarky, I have done a lot of projects with these, and I am a bit obsessive so I have done allot of research as to what is compatible.

Ram: 4GB modules will work for a max of 8GB, but for whatever reason its very picky with 4GB modules but not 2GB and 1GB, if your gonna max at 8GB stick with Crucial.

CPU: It will work with most Core2 and Xeon (with modifications) but only the ones listed in dells manual will work with the stock dell cooler, the Q9505 is the sweet spot when comparing ebay price vs geekbench results

CPU -----Geek Bench -----Avg Ebay price
Q8400--------4414---------------- $10
Q9400--------4632----------------$15
Q9505--------4905----------------$18
Q9550--------5172---------------- $35
Q9650--------5439----------------$50

I was gonna go 10GBe with the NAS build, but It only has one PCIe slot so If I occupied it with the 10GB NIC, i'd have to use standard PCI for the RAID and since PCI data bus speed is only 133MB and since a bit is 1/8th of a byte I would only be getting gigabit speed at best away, so I scraped that and used the on-board gigabit NIC and the PCIe slot for the SATA III controller.

The one I had put the Q6600 in is my emulator machine (wife likes SNES Tetris and PS1 Spyro) in the bedroom, and I used the PCIe slot on that one for a USB 3.0 controller for the USB AC wireless, I am not concerned as much for heat issues because its open space on my dresser and the CPU load is always low, but I am gonna get that cooler and try and overclock now!

One of the two on my bench is going to a kid who's mobo just died on his old rig, the 8GB and SSD from his old one and his R7240 (all he plays is neverwinter and older source/ orange box games) is going in the Dell and i'm giving it to him as a freebie (tiss the season to be generous and hes been a client of mine for over 6 years). Anyways I have hijacked his thread enough.

so tjgordon94, you got a bad CPU, order any of the ones I listed the GeekBench and Ebay prices for and you will be fine, just stick to top rated sellers to avoid another DOA unit, you can also go with the 1066mhz Core2Quads but you will need the cooler william p listed.

EDIT, PS: I am using the stock PSU in most of my projects (except the NAS that needed 6 SATA power connectors), so its definitely a bad CPU and not a power issue.

 

[william p]

I picked up one of these for $20 and got 8GB DDR3 1333 to run, and Q9505S ($20)on the A02 BIOS. Zotac GTX1050Ti 4 GB (sharing 3.7GB RAM in Windows experience page).So if you use your RAM a lot then GTX1050 2GB might be better.The 255W PSU was DOA, so a Dell 305 went in (cost $0) I pull these out of very free Dell PC I get. The WIN7 key was good so no OS cost. I put in a spare 120GB SSD I had lying around ($40). All that but no NIC drivers due to the OS SSD swap .I don't count the GPU cost since it will move forward to another system. No XEON swap or OC yet. But it's coming.