WIll an AMD Phenom 9650 work with my Dell Inspiron 546

[ryn122]

Hello, i was just wondering if an AMD Phenom 9650 work with my Dell Inspiron 546.

The motherboard is on a 780g chipset
The motherboard code is 0F896N.

The current processor i have is to be polite terrible. Its a AMD Sempron LE-1250.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[WR2]

Is that motherboard a 0F896N A02 by any chance? If so you're good up to Phenom II quad cores

It will work if the proper BIOS is installed.
I hope you're getting an EXCELLENT price on the Phenom 9650 because there are lots of better choices out there these days.

Athlon II X2 260 Regor 3.2GHz $75 or Athlon II X4 640 Propus 3.0GHz $108 and Phenom II X4 945 Deneb 3.0GHz $140

 

[WR2]

A prior topic on the same question: Does my motherboard support quad cores?

 

[jitpublisher]

This can get you into trouble. The board SHOULD support that processor. But you have to remember, Dell, especially the more inexpensive models, are pretty much built with the minimum components required to run the hardware that is in them, and that includes the motherboard as well. To save money, that board will be stripped of any performance enhancing features that a retail version of that board would support.

The only people who can tell you if your processor upgrade will work, is Dell. A BIOS update may, or may not be all that board needs to be able to run the processor you are thinking about.

Contact Dell to find out for sure.

 

[WR2]

Better yet... check the Dell forums to see what other Inspiron 546 owners have done for successful upgrades.
The quality of [strike]H[/strike]Dell Support can often make you laugh or make you cry. Or just confuse you.

Thanks to the magic of the internet 'way back machine' we can see that the Inspiron 546 offered the Phenom X4 CPU as an option.

 

[jessterman21]

To everyone who owns an inspiron 546, you can upgrade to a better CPU, provided it's one that was originally sold by Dell with the computer!!! (i.e. Athlon II x2 250, Athlon II x4 630, or Phenom II x4 945) Make sure to get 95w or less, and the C2 revisions (harder to come by than C3-stepping versions). Have not tested a C3-stepping processor, doubt it would work because they did not come out until after the 546 was discontinued.

 

[jessterman21]

^+1
but needs to be explained better..

Yeah, but I'm no expert. I was just thrilled when my new x2 250 worked perfectly right after install. I bet more athlon/phenom ii cpus would work with this mobo, but who has the cash to test all of them?