• Welcome to TechPowerUp Forums, Guest! Please check out our forum guidelines for info related to our community.

Dell Workstation Owners Club

unoproph

New Member
Joined
Aug 18, 2020
Messages
29 (0.02/day)
Hello again all. I'm dropping a line again about my W3680 PC. Back a couple months ago I was looking at GPUs and just decided to stick with a GTX 1060 6GB for then and wait to see what happens with the used GPU market when new ones came out. Well they did and it was as we all know enthusiast grade GPUs and more powerful than what the old X58 platform really can utilize, but during all this I read about the upcoming RTX 3050 TI and how it may outperform a RTX 2060 Super. Do you guys feel that would be a good match? For under $200 I'm excited about tlwhat that GPU has to offer.

I may be looking into getting a used workstation of some sort. Don't care too much about the brand... but it has to be a full tower (not some silly SFF thing) and it needs to be able to accept a decent graphics card. Not sure if these workstations come with power supplies that even have any pci-e connectors, or if the power supplies are proprietary?

Preferably, it should come with one already installed, something around 750Ti level at least.

It really depends on what you can find around you and time and scrounging the second hand markets because chances of finding what you are looking for people are going to be asking more. About 5 months ago I found a T3500 with a low end 4c/8t processor for $50 and threw in a $60 GPU R9 380 4gb at first. I did some searching and buying and selling to upgrade ram and find better GPU and better CPU and ended up at about $150-$200 into the PC and running a W3680 OCd to 4.13ghz as recommended by the group here with the 1060 6gb. .
 
Last edited:
Joined
Jul 5, 2013
Messages
27,513 (6.63/day)
but during all this I read about the upcoming RTX 3050 TI and how it may outperform a RTX 2060 Super. Do you guys feel that would be a good match? For under $200 I'm excited about tlwhat that GPU has to offer.
I have an RTX2080 in my T3500 paired with a W3680 and I'm having no problems. There are a few games that have a bit of CPU bottlenecking going on, but not enough to be a big deal. An RTX3050/3060 will run just fine with yours.
 
Joined
Sep 28, 2005
Messages
3,299 (0.47/day)
Location
Canada
System Name PCGR
Processor 12400f
Motherboard Asus ROG STRIX B660-I
Cooling Stock Intel Cooler
Memory 2x16GB DDR5 5600 Corsair
Video Card(s) Dell RTX 3080
Storage 1x 512GB Mmoment PCIe 3 NVME 1x 2TB Corsair S70
Display(s) LG 32" 1440p
Case Phanteks Evolve itx
Audio Device(s) Onboard
Power Supply 750W Cooler Master sfx
Software Windows 11
Last edited:

unoproph

New Member
Joined
Aug 18, 2020
Messages
29 (0.02/day)
I'm still going to wait till the 3050 TI gets released in February to see where I want to go with my money. If it is real with it being faster than a 2060S for $200 this will be the card for me. Entry into RT and low power usage. Yes it'll be hard to find till the late spring/summer, but worthy of a good upgrade.
 
Joined
Mar 4, 2016
Messages
702 (0.22/day)
Location
Zagreb, Croatia
System Name D30 w.2x E5-2680; T5500 w.2x X5675;2x P35 w.X3360; 2x Q33 w.Q9550S/Q9400S & laptops.
Does anyone have experiences running Xonar DG on PCI on T5500 system or similar?

Mine does recognize the card, install the drivers & works with sound up to 2~3 sec...& then mute.

Anybody?
 
Joined
Jul 5, 2013
Messages
27,513 (6.63/day)
Win10, v2004
I think that is likely your problem. In recent updates Microsoft changed the driver platform API somewhat which has had the effect of rendering older soundcards problematic or useless because the drivers don't work right. It sucks. Might be a good idea to either roll back the recent update(which might not work because of how much of a mess updates make of things), upgrade to a new sound card with current drivers or reinstall Windows 10 1909.
 
Joined
Mar 4, 2016
Messages
702 (0.22/day)
Location
Zagreb, Croatia
System Name D30 w.2x E5-2680; T5500 w.2x X5675;2x P35 w.X3360; 2x Q33 w.Q9550S/Q9400S & laptops.
I think that is likely your problem. In recent updates Microsoft changed the driver platform API somewhat which has had the effect of rendering older soundcards problematic or useless because the drivers don't work right. It sucks. Might be a good idea to either roll back the recent update(which might not work because of how much of a mess updates make of things), upgrade to a new sound card with current drivers or reinstall Windows 10 1909.
Thing is, on older intel DP35DP with same Win10, v2004 - everything works. :kookoo:
 
Joined
Jul 18, 2020
Messages
77 (0.05/day)
Seems my T5500 is ready for retirement. It was just sitting in Windows then the fans starting running flat out, spent a good 24 hours trying to fix it but no luck. I can manually set them once in windows but one of the the temp sensors on the motherboard must have failed. Might be time to attempt a motherboard swap into the 5500 case
 
Joined
Jul 5, 2013
Messages
27,513 (6.63/day)
Seems my T5500 is ready for retirement. It was just sitting in Windows then the fans starting running flat out, spent a good 24 hours trying to fix it but no luck. I can manually set them once in windows but one of the the temp sensors on the motherboard must have failed. Might be time to attempt a motherboard swap into the 5500 case
Do you use the features that set the T5500 mobo apart from the T3500? IE dual CPU, more that 24GB of ram? If not, a T3500 board should fit right in. IIRC all the power plugs are in the same or similar places.
 
Joined
Jul 18, 2020
Messages
77 (0.05/day)
Do you use the features that set the T5500 mobo apart from the T3500? IE dual CPU, more that 24GB of ram? If not, a T3500 board should fit right in. IIRC all the power plugs are in the same or similar places.
Yeah its running 48 gig and dual cpus. I use the T5810 as my regular machine now. The 5500 just has a lot of stuff on it for storage and has my blue ray burner in it etc.
 
Joined
Mar 8, 2018
Messages
350 (0.14/day)
Location
U.S.A.
System Name Dell T3500
Processor Xeon X5687
Motherboard Dell - 9KPNV
Cooling Dell U016F
Memory 12gb ECC 1333
Video Card(s) MSI rx480 gaming X
Storage 1tb WD blue
Case Dell T3500
Seems my T5500 is ready for retirement. It was just sitting in Windows then the fans starting running flat out, spent a good 24 hours trying to fix it but no luck. I can manually set them once in windows but one of the the temp sensors on the motherboard must have failed. Might be time to attempt a motherboard swap into the 5500 case
Sounds to me the front I/O control panel is on it's way out. Common issue with these and pretty easy fix. Dell part # M884G.
 
Joined
Jul 18, 2020
Messages
77 (0.05/day)
Sounds to me the front I/O control panel is on it's way out. Common issue with these and pretty easy fix. Dell part # M884G.

I read that's a possibility with some of the Dell Workstations but haven't been able to find out if the sensor is on the IO panel on the 5500 or only the 390/490s. The machine does hold it's fans correctly for about 20 seconds but after that just sends every fan in the system flat out. I guess given that I can set the voltage in software inside windows that the main fan control IC is ok. Anyway I just ordered a IO board since they don't cost much to see if that will fix it.
 
Last edited:

rdizzle321

New Member
Joined
Dec 16, 2020
Messages
12 (0.01/day)
Hi everyone, brand new owner/user of a T5500 that my friend gave me. Have set it up with UnRAID and spent the weekend getting a windows 10 VM to work with an NVIDIA 1060 passthrough. Getting there!

I am struggling on the RAM upgrade front. I have 12GB in there right now, 3x 2GB 10600R in the mobo slots and the 3x 2GB 10600R in the riser. I am wondering about getting more RAM but I failed in my first attempts to purchase. Seems like I got non-ECC (didn't even know there was a diff between that, R, U, E, RAM etc.)... spent hours and then realized I was trying to mix R-ECC and non-ECC RAM and it would get stuck at the 1-3-2 beep code and 1-3 lights.

So my question is, what's the largest size RAM chip this mobo will support? 8GB? Will it really only support the memory configs in the setup manual or as long as i use groups of 3 I'm ok? It's really going to be setup for some like Plex Media Server, and for a gaming VM.

I believe i have the Xeon 2.4Ghz chips. Can I overclock?

thanks for the time and for patience on this. I used to tinker back in the late 90s/early 2000s with a desktop, but my first server and I feel very n00b like.
 
Joined
Jul 18, 2020
Messages
77 (0.05/day)
So my question is, what's the largest size RAM chip this mobo will support? 8GB? Will it really only support the memory configs in the setup manual or as long as i use groups of 3 I'm ok? It's really going to be setup for some like Plex Media Server, and for a gaming VM.

I believe i have the Xeon 2.4Ghz chips. Can I overclock?

thanks for the time and for patience on this. I used to tinker back in the late 90s/early 2000s with a desktop, but my first server and I feel very n00b like.

Yeah they do take 8 meg sticks no problem at all, I think 16 gig sticks also but I don't have anything bigger than 8 in my machines. They do support memory configs other than those mentioned in the service manual but not all configs work without throwing an error. You might have read something about different sized ram sticks on the mainboard and the riser card, I've done that on my T7500 and it works. I have the mainboard filled with 2 gig sticks and the riser filled with 4 gig sticks, that should work on the 5500 also just using less total sticks as you have less slots. If you want to put your 6 x 2 gig sticks on the mainboard and buy 3 x 4 gig sticks for your riser you should have no problem and be up to 24gig. You might also be able to do the 6 x2 on the mainboard and 3x8 on the riser.

Groups of 3 might work also but I haven't tried that myself. None of the dual cpu Xeons are overclockable on the T5500. But if you are upgrading the CPU don't look at any that have less then 6.4gig QPI speed and only the ones that support 1333 ram speed. The X5670/X5675 are good value in the 6 cores and the X5687 is the best deal in a 4 core.

I think the X5675 has very good price to performance for a machine like yours.
 
Top