Dell Workstation Owners Club

[ManGupta]

The very early T5500 MB D883f had active SB cooling. 0G422G is the part#. Prices vary wildly on this item and other MB wont have the 4 pin header to run the fan.

G422G - Google Search

Here's one from china with a relaistic price.

[USD 10.40] DELLT5500 motherboard chip fan t7500 motherboard chip fan 0g422g North and South Bridge fan - Wholesale from China online shopping | Buy asian products online from the best shoping agent - ChinaHao.com

buy DELLT5500 motherboard chip fan t7500 motherboard chip fan 0g422g North and South Bridge fan at taobao agent Computer hardware monitors computer peripherals

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Actually the issue is not getting a decent SouthBridge Cooler.

The issue is that the SouthBridge Cooler is coming in way of Graphics Card, no matter in which of the two pcie X16 slot Graphics-card is being mounted.

Because all mid range gaming Graphics Card are at least Dual Slot Wide and even the mini version is at least 17 cm long.

Because there is very little distance between X16 Slots and the SB area.

 

[Retrorockit]

I have glued 4x RAM heatsinks on a chip like that. Anything that's thin enough to fit under the GPU latch should work.
I stuck a pair of GTX 1060 2 fan GPUs on my t5500 MB and there is room there. I put an 11mm thick heatsink in and it touched the lever. There are 9mm thick copper RAM heatsinks that should work. I've seen 5mm thick listed also.

Enzotech RAM-cooler BCC9 Low Profile - passive - Newegg.com

Buy Enzotech RAM-cooler BCC9 Low Profile - passive with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

If those aren't available to you I take heatsinks off of old low end GPUs and cut them to size as needed. It won't have a fan but it should be much cooler anyway.

 

[ManGupta]

I have glued 4x RAM heatsinks on a chip like that. Anything that's thin enough to fit under the GPU latch should work.
I stuck a pair of GTX 1060 2 fan GPUs on my t5500 MB and there is room there. I put an 11mm thick heatsink in and it touched the lever. There are 9mm thick copper RAM heatsinks that should work. I've seen 5mm thick listed also.

Enzotech RAM-cooler BCC9 Low Profile - passive - Newegg.com

Buy Enzotech RAM-cooler BCC9 Low Profile - passive with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

If those aren't available to you I take heatsinks off of old low end GPUs and cut them to size as needed. It won't have a fan but it should be much cooler anyway.

I used a very old and dead laptop's heat sink, it cools the Southbridge very effectively and without coming in the way of GPU and any other components.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I used a very old and dead laptop's heat sink, it cools the Southbridge very effectively and without coming in the way of GPU and any other components.

Those picture are something that would be right at home in the following thread;

Ghetto Mods

Post Your own or Found Ghetto / DIY style mods here:D EXAMPLE : FOUND 3870X2

www.techpowerup.com

Very cool and creative, but very ghetto! LOL!

 

[imrazor]

I've read through some of the earlier posts, but didn't see a conclusion. Did anyone ever get a W3680/90 running in a T5500?

I currently have a T5400 that OC's nicely with SetFSB and a very particular 4x2GB memory configuration. This old DDR2 RAM runs super hot when it's overclocked. Any tips on cooling it?

The T5400 might be useful for gaming, but I keep running into games that require instructions that the poor old Xeon in this thing can't run. I guess I'll have to relegate it to retro gaming (Pre-2010).

I do have a much more useful T5500 running dual X5670s. I'm considering trying the SetFSB method to OC one of the X5670s, then try to double the fun. Does anyone know what model of clock chip the T5500 motherboard uses?

 

[Retrorockit]

We've found that the T5500 requires dual QPI CPUs. This means none of the unlocked Xeons will work.
X5687 is the fastest clocked CPU 3.6 base, and 3.86 turbo. 32nm 4c/8t.
We'd like to see your T5400 OC results either here or in the Throttlestop Overclocking thread.
The FBDIMM memory has a controller chip on each module and they are what's producing the heat. Fans and heatsinks are about the only solution. The Apple Mac Pro FBDIMMs had huge heatsinks but you would have to space the modules apart to use them.
There were several versions of the T5500 MB. They may or may not all use the same PLL chip.
My early one has an ICS 932S42BGLF. There is a virus warning at the SetFSB page. I unplug my SSD/HDD boot a Linux live DVD and go there anyway. Support ended there around 2010 so not much newer PLL support.
There is also RWEverything if you can do manual editing of the PLL yourself. IDK how.
FWIW the T7400 has native support for 400fsb CPUs. So maybe a pinmod on one of those beasts will get you something. Maybe read the PLL on one with RWE and see what the difference is?
I always wanted to try a reverse LGA771 mod on a QX9650 to see if switching the 2 pins with the LGA775/771 adapter tape will produce an unlocked LGA771. There is the QX9775 unlocked LGA771 CPU. TS should get one or 2 of those going for you. Haven't looked at prices in a while. Congrats on the SetFSB workstation OC. The consumer Dells have that pretty much locked down.
The Dell T3400 goes 4.15GHz with a TS overclock and QX9650 easily.

 

[imrazor]

I’ve only OC’d by 500Mhz to 3.495 GHz. The main limiter I’m running into is the FB-DIMM temps (at 90C in the photo.) In order to get SetFSB to work with two banks of RAM in quad channel, I had to put 2 533Mhz DIMMs in sockets 1 and 5. This slowed the bus down which allowed me to OC the E5450 to 3.5GHz. Otherwise SetFSB would just lock up the workstation.

The two 533Mhz DIMMs do not have heat spreaders, which is why they get so toasty. Can I just get some aftermarket spreaders and put them on? Where would I get some?

 

[lexluthermiester]

The main limiter I’m running into is the FB-DIMM temps (at 90C in the photo.)

This is solved by arranging a fan over the DIMM's to keep them cool.

Can I just get some aftermarket spreaders and put them on? Where would I get some?

Depends, but yes. If your FB-DIMM's are standard height, then any heatspreader should work. If they are extended height FB-DIMM's than you'll be out of luck.
Presuming you're in the US;

ram heat spreader in "Computer Fans, Heatsinks and Cooling Components": Search Result | eBay

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[Retrorockit]

The FBDIMMS mostly came with spreaders. The big controller chip in the middle means normal RAM heatsinks probably wont fit. I think the the Mac Pros had faster RAM also.

FBDIMM at DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo. Privacy, Simplified.

duckduckgo.com

If you started with a 10x fsb X5470 you would have a decent overclock to 3.83Ghz. My X5470 came with 1.345V. but runs Prime 95 at 1.1125V so there seems to be some headroom on those CPUs. All I get out of SetFSB is 3.37GHz.

I've read through some of the earlier posts, but didn't see a conclusion. Did anyone ever get a W3680/90 running in a T5500?

There might be a way to do this mod. On the Dell LGA775 Optiplexes that can run LGA771 CPUs one way the BIOS gets modded is by changing the Platform identifier of the CPU family. This removes support for LGA775, and adds it for otherwise identical LGA771 CPUs. The CPUID, and steppings stay the same. You might ask at BIOS Mods.com.
If you don't have the 2nd CPU riser this might make sense. The VRM on the T5500 has a few more chips in it than the T35000 and active chipset cooling. This would be going the other way. Removing 2 QPI support and replacing it with single QPI CPUs, some of which are unlocked. It might be possible to splice the needed data from a T3500 BIOS into a T5500 BIOS. I would upload a couple BIOS files there for them to look at and see what happens.
Genius239 is one of the modders that does this mod.

 

[Retrorockit]

There is a guy at OCN who successfully overclocked his T7500. That should be worth a look also.

How To : Overclocking Dual Xeon Dell Precision T7500

www.overclock.net

 

[unreviewed]

I just picked up a T7610, DDR3 and USB 3.0 vs the T7910, DDR4 and USB 3.1. The T7910 also has chipset support for bootable NVME. But at half the price The T7610 is a much better deal for my use case. I picked up two Dell Precision T7610 Workstation 2X E5-2690 Eight-Core (16 Cores) 2.9Ghz Max Turbo Frequency 3.80 GHz. They have plenty of PCIe expansion slots so the upgrade to USB 3.1 and NVME is under $100. To boot from NVME I use Clover, a software bios emulator (FREE), I can boot from my NVME Samsung 970 pro plus. So really the only thing I had to give up was the DDR4 ram. I'm not using this for gaming so ram quantity over speed will help balance that for me. This is my first Dell and I'm very impressed with the quality and elegant design of these systems. The cooling is amazing and the machines run almost silent.

 

[sepheronx]

im still waiting to get new fans for my t3500 as it was idling around 60C for the W3680. Its such a wonderful machine but temps were climbing. So I got lots of work ahead of me in order to reduce heat and noise.

 

[ManGupta]

im still waiting to get new fans for my t3500 as it was idling around 60C for the W3680. Its such a wonderful machine but temps were climbing. So I got lots of work ahead of me in order to reduce heat and noise.

Cooling T3500 is not very difficult. Its rather easy.

in India room temp can go over 40° C during summer.
My T3500 cpu temp never go above 71°C under P95 / AIDA64 stress testing.

CPU's idle temps are in 30ies. at present ambient temp here is 23°C.

I just picked up a T7610, DDR3 and USB 3.0 vs the T7910, DDR4 and USB 3.1. The T7910 also has chipset support for bootable NVME. But at half the price The T7610 is a much better deal for my use case. I picked up two Dell Precision T7610 Workstation 2X E5-2690 Eight-Core (16 Cores) 2.9Ghz Max Turbo Frequency 3.80 GHz. They have plenty of PCIe expansion slots so the upgrade to USB 3.1 and NVME is under $100. To boot from NVME I use Clover, a software bios emulator (FREE), I can boot from my NVME Samsung 970 pro plus. So really the only thing I had to give up was the DDR4 ram. I'm not using this for gaming so ram quantity over speed will help balance that for me. This is my first Dell and I'm very impressed with the quality and elegant design of these systems. The cooling is amazing and the machines run almost silent.

What was your total cost for this system ?

 

[unreviewed]

Total cost per unit not including the Samsung 970 and other NVME SSD's was about 2000 CAD or about 1500 USD, the systems also came with a 1tb SATA SSD. The T7610 was made in 2013, the T7910's came out in 2014. I would have prefered the T7910 but not at double the price for a similarly equipped box. Purchased VIA Amazon, got to love that free shipping.

 

[Aaron_Henderson]

It would probably be nearly as cheap to buy new FB-DIMM than to try to find heatspreaders for them...the controller thing in the middle of the chip is what gets super hot, even with proper heatsinks attached. I remember FB-DIMM being very inexpensive, but haven't checked in awhile. I've used generic heatspreaders from ebay, still using some, but they wouldn't work on FB-DIMM...and honestly, I doubt they do much of anything except make the RAM look better.

 

[Retrorockit]

im still waiting to get new fans for my t3500 as it was idling around 60C for the W3680. Its such a wonderful machine but temps were climbing. So I got lots of work ahead of me in order to reduce heat and noise.

In the Throttlestop Overclocking thread post #706, and #605 pages 25 and 28 there is a fan mod shown and some part numbers. This works with the stock heatsink also. Do you have the HDD tray and RAM shroud installed. Those form a duct around the CPU cooler. 60*C. idle something is definitely wrong.

@ Aaron Hemderson
How does that W3570 perform at 4GHz? A $20 unlocked CPU! Much cheaper than the similar QX9650 and Hyperthreading too.

 

[ManGupta]

So really the only thing I had to give up was the DDR4 ram. I'm not using this for gaming so ram quantity over speed will help balance that for me. This is my first Dell and I'm very impressed with the quality and elegant design of these systems. The cooling is amazing and the machines run almost silent.

If I am not wrong, T7610 supports ddr3 1600 MHz in quad channel.

Quad channel 1600 MHz is almost equivalent to dual channel 3200 MHz.

 

[Aaron_Henderson]

@ Aaron Hemderson
How does that W3570 perform at 4GHz? A $20 unlocked CPU! Much cheaper than the similar QX9650 and Hyperthreading too.

I honestly haven't ran any benchmarks really. It's not at 4GHz, well, 1 core is 4GHz, any more and it's at 3.86GHz. If I have 4 core load at 4GHz, I get random crashes from time to time. I have a fan on the NB heatsink, bare SB. My AIO cooler died recently and replaced it temporarily with a Deepcool Gammaxx 400, but temps are still fine. Really though, despite no benchmarking, it has done everything I have needed it to, to the point of still not buying a W3680...still plan to, but I think I might replace my GPU first...the fans died awhile back, and I have 3x80mm server fans on it, and it's basically a rocketship. I really only use my computer for gaming, web browsing, and occasional streaming / recording with AMD driver, and it's been great. I somewhat competitively play Quake Champions with it, and do well enough. I have more than got my use out of cheap CPU, that's for sure. I don't think I'll really "need" to build a new PC for some time...new GPU and the W3680 will probably satisfy my needs for at least another year or two, I guess. I think clock for clock, there is a small performance difference between W3570 and QX9650? Also, triple channel RAM, upgrade path...W3570+T3500/z400 board is still tough to beat, IMO.

 

[sepheronx]

In the Throttlestop Overclocking thread post #706, and #605 pages 25 and 28 there is a fan mod shown and some part numbers. This works with the stock heatsink also. Do you have the HDD tray and RAM shroud installed. Those form a duct around the CPU cooler. 60*C. idle something is definitely wrong.

@ Aaron Hemderson
How does that W3570 perform at 4GHz? A $20 unlocked CPU! Much cheaper than the similar QX9650 and Hyperthreading too.

I cannot get the Ram shroud back on as after everything I put in it, and replacing the PSU (which the cables do not fit behind the motherboard), it cannot go back on. So the next best thing I am able to do is use the fan splitter device I purchased and the Dell 5 pin to 4pin adapter, is to replace the two front 120mm fans with Noctua 120mm's, zip tie a noctua 80mm to the CPU heatsink and two 80mm noctuas on the back. Initially I had zip tied Aerocool 80mm fans I had and just used a splitter to a 2pin fan adapter and then connected it directly to the powersupply but it ran very very loud. So I couldn't handle that anymore. So I am gonna go and spend money I dont have on some fans. lol.

 

[unreviewed]

Quad channel 1600 MHz is almost equivalent to dual channel 3200 MHz.

Yes, good point. It's not the speed with Quad, it is the bandwidth. So not much help with gaming, but for large database sets and video editing, it make all the difference in the world.

 

[Retrorockit]

Yes, good point. It's not the speed with Quad, it is the bandwidth. So not much help with gaming, but for large database sets and video editing, it make all the difference in the world.

I don't think that's the whole story.
From what I see here-

RAM Memory Speeds & Compatibility

Better understand your computer's RAM speeds & the compatibility of different types of memory to work out how to get the most from your desktop or laptop.

www.crucial.com

bandwidth (peak transfer rate) is the same.
The latency chart (in n/s) shows an advantage to the fastest CL6 DDR3 1600 7.50ns vs. CL14 DDR4 3200 8.75ns

CAS latency - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

This is due to the increase in latency being higher than the increase in clock speed.
of course you can find slower DDR3 that can't keep up.
This just equals the latency of CL4 DDR2 1066 7.5ns. LOL
Fastest latency on the chart in is the 7CL DDR3 2200 6.3ns. So I don't think DDR3 4 channel is quite dead yet.

 

[Mikelly VR]

Random question? Does anyone else have a Dell T3610 with a GTX 1070 with no issues at all? Mine black screens randomly and never leaves a trace of what went wrong. I've been troubleshooting it forever and am wondering if there are just compatibility issues with this specific setup. I've literally tried everything I know how to do

Any tips would be amazing. If I can't fix these random blackouts I'm considering selling them separately, so I don't sell someone a system with issues. I really think it may come down to compatibility unless there's some random thing I haven't tried. Here are my specs if it helps.


UserBenchmarks: Game 73%, Desk 71%, Work 58%
CPU: Intel Xeon E5-1650 v2 - 71.9%
GPU: Nvidia GTX 1070 - 78.2%
SSD: Kingston SSDNow KC400 512GB - 94.5%
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 500GB - 71.2%
RAM: Hynix HMT325U6EFR8C-PB 8x2GB - 97%
MBD: Dell Precision T3610

 

[lexluthermiester]

I've literally tried everything I know how to do

Have you tried a new PSU?

 

[Retrorockit]

There are 2 different PSU listed for that. 425W and 685W on page 62 of the manual.

https://topics-cdn.dell.com/pdf/precision-t3610-workstation_owners-manual_en-us.pdf

The GTX 1070 is right at the limit for single GPU power on those. It may be sensing an overload on that rail, especially if the GPU is overclocked, or other devices on that rail. If you could underclock the GPU and see if the problem goes away that would be an indicator. Those were offered with 2 GPU setups. Unfortunately the manual says nothing about GPUs at all. If you could get the bigger PSU and harness the power for both to run the 1 card it might solve the problem.

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I believe that is an unlocked CPU. We would love to see one of those in the Throttlestop Overclocking thread.
This one looks like an overclock. https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/21548648
I personally haven't seen one of these machines. Each rail from the PSU will have it's own color code. White, yellow, and blue for 12V. Perhaps you can get an idea whats going on from that.
There are GTX1080 ,and 2080 running in those at userbenchmark. So I don't think it's hopeless.

T3610 and GTX 1080 power with 685 watt PS | DELL Technologies

I've read a few posts on this but was unable to reply because the thread was locked. Just wanted to let people know that a Dell T3610 can run a GTX 1080 fine on a 635 watt (from T3600) or 685 watt...

www.dell.com

 

[Mikelly VR]

Thanks so much for the responses guys. Power was my first concern as well. I may still be missing something about power consumption though but this is what I've done to test that.

I have the 685 watt power supply and am running two 6 pin connectors to the one 8 pin connector that is on the card itself. The other thing that confuses me is I can run furmark at 100% (and overclocked the GPU just to try to make it purposely draw too much power, It was drawing as much as 178 watts at times) while also running a CPU burner for all 12 threads at 100% for literally hours and haven't been able to reproduce the black screen on purpose.

I've been logging sensor readings as well and there seems to be no rhyme or reason to any consistent number that pushes it over the edge. I can run my card at 85 degrees forever (I don't normally, I usually have an adjusted fan curve that keeps it at about 70 degrees. it has black screened at both temps.) in testing and then it will black out when it's in the 60's or the 70's. It happens most often when I'm playing virtual reality but has happened when I'm not as well. Just not as often... (even if the readings show that nothing is being pushed overly hard. GPU bouncing between 70 and 90 something percent and CPU maybe at 50%-70% max, even on individual cores.

Seriously thanks for the responses @lexluthermiester and @Retrorockit , please let me know if I'm totally missing something. Thoughts?

edit: just trying to clarify/fix my jumbled mess haha