fastest cpu upgrade for Dell Optiplex 320?

oh sorry, i meant the 320

You cannot use Core2 Duo on an Optiplex 620.

The Optiplex 320 is a different Chipset and System altogether.

Which are we talking about?

Bios must be up to date.

Power supply must be 305w or higher.

At a minimum the Power supply and heatsink will probably need to be upgraded.

Not sure what the part numbers are for these because I don't have a 320.

The 320 has a SMALLER Wattage Power supply than the 620 so this further limits options.

Keep in mind you can get an Inspiron 620 new in the $300 to $400 range.

So at this point it may not be economical to upgrade this system.

Others have alluded to the following but I am NOT SURE if the list below works in a 320.

If anyone has any insight I would like to know. 

They do work in the 330 I believe but thats a different model.

Y933C Conroe E4700, 2.60Ghz, 2MB, 800FSB, G0

CY593 Conroe E4600, 2.40GHz, 2MB, 800FSB, M0

MP159 Conroe E4500, 2.20Ghz, 2MB, 800FSB, M0

RX522 Conroe E4400, 2.00Ghz, 2MB, 800FSB, M0

HU587 Conroe E4300, 1.80Ghz, 2MB, 800FSB, L2

T944D Conroe E2220, 2.40Ghz, 1MB, 800FSB, M0

RX391 Conroe E2180, 2.00Ghz, 1MB, 800FSB, M0

YU563 Conroe E2160, 1.80Ghz, 1MB, 800FSB, M0

YU562 Conroe E2140, 1.60Ghz, 1MB, 800FSB, M0

I too have a Dell Optiplex 320 which I've had in my office for 5 +/- years.  I upgraded the memory to 2 MB shortly after it was purchased with two matched 1GB sticks of Kingston PC2-4200 Value RAM with no problems.  I recently updated the bios to the latest version.  I just tried to upgrade the memory again using two 2GB sticks of PNY PC2-5300 RAM (MD4096KD2-667) and the system would not boot and the screen remained blank.  Does anyone think it's worth trying 4GB PC2-4200 or PC2-5300 of the Kingston or Samsung memory that supposedly works in this system?  I also thought I would try to upgrade the CPU from the current Intel Core 2 CPU 4300 running at 1.80 GHz.  I tried an Intel Pentium E5700 Dual Core processor running at 3.0 GHz and the system would not boot and the screen remained blank.  Short of the 933 Conroe E4700 running at 2.6 GHz from the list in the previous posting, I don't think any of the processors listed are worth the effort to upgrade to.  Any thoughts on the CPU upgrade possibilities would be appreciated also.

High Density Ram does not work.

Memory Type: DDR2 PC2-5300, DDR2 (non-ECC)
Maximum Memory: 4GB
Slots: 2
Each memory slot can hold DDR2 PC2-5300 with a maximum of 2GB per slot.*
*Not to exceed manufacturer supported memory.

Please ensure you have installed the latest BIOS update for your system before upgrading the memory.

How much memory your Windows OS will recognize depends on which version of Windows you are running. 32-bit versions of Windows will see (and utilize) only 3GB or 3.5GB. To utilize more memory, install a 64-bit version of your OS. More information about OS memory maximums can be found here.

Recommended Upgrade

Well better late than never...

I just got a used Optiplex and I have sucessfully upgraded it with the following

1. Conroe E4600 2.4 Ghz CPU

2. Nvidia GeForce G210 Video Card (already had this as I replaced video card i my I7 system).

Running 2GB memory. (2 1GB sticks)

Updated BIOS to rev.12

I stayed with 2GB memory as I already had the video card. I've read from other posts that it's a one

or the other upgrade for this system. Either you upgrade the memory to 4GB and stay with the internal ATI video

OR you upgrade the video card and then are limited to 2GB memory. Since I'm running WinXPPro 32bit even with the

4GB upgrade you would have been limited to about 3.2GB in WinXP so I went with the video card upgrade which was free

as I already owned it. BTW the GeForce G210 video card is extremely low power so the stock Optiplex 320 MT power supply at 305W

runs it just fine. The video cad is a nice upgrade for this computer as was the CPU upgrade. One was free and the other one cheap.

Better late than never.........  You might be late for your funeral.  LOL  Anyway, I have upgraded my "old" Optiplex 320 also.  2 MB Memory.  4 MB didn't work probably because I also installed a ATI 6550 video card, as well as a new 430 watt power supply.  The video card info suggested having at least a 400 watt power supply.  I did update the bios also & installed a DVD burner.  So you're probably wondering why didn't I just buy a new computer.  Well this is my work computer which is on a network with other Windows XP systems and I didn't want to go through the process of setting up a new computer on the network.  I did try to upgrade the CPU but was unsucessful.  Perhaps I'll try again with the same CPU that you upgraded to.  Good luck with your old new toy.

Since posting this I've installed CLOCKGEN to try some overclocking on my Optiplex 320 setup...

I've found 2.7Ghz to be stable (Have run it for hours at this speed using PowerDVD, various other apps. and stress testing it with ORTHOS and using HWMonitor to monitor temps. All OK...I also used CLOCKGEN to bump up the PCIE and PCI bus 10 percent. All runs good and I set CLOCKGEN to run this setup on boot.

I purchased the Optiplex 320 on Ebay for cheap and immediately upgraded it's bad 80GB Velociraptor HD to a Western Digital Black 1TB I had as a spare. I purchased the Optiplex to replace a 3.06 P4 Clone I had built back in 2003 that had developed a motherboard problem and was abending sporadically. I love my old XP installation with it's years of use and tons of old XP applications. I was able to migrate all the  applications from the old Clone to the Optiplex using PCMover which I've used to migrate on three other computers (XP to Win7 in the Past)...Once you know how to use PCMover and what not to transfer it is amazingly powerful and I migrated all of my programs including Office 2007.

The only programs that needed reinstalled were Nero 10 and Power DVD 10. I hope to continue to use my XP machine until it is no longer possible to keep XP as a viable OS but I've heard that support for XP will continue to 2014 so that is another 2 to 3 years use. I've got a Win 7 I7 Desktop PC, a Core2Duo Win7 Laptop, a Win7 Netbook and another older XP Pro laptop I use for my weather station software but the computer I use MOST is my Windows XP Desktop PC and I'm very happy to have it ALL up and running again and with a big performance increase as well...My system came with a DVDRW burner already and it works fine with my Nero 10 software. One other nice thing with my system is I reinstalled an old USB TV Tuner called AVERTV USB that I've owned since the Win98SE days...The wonderful thing is the AVERTV USB now performs better than it ever did with any previous system it had been installed on (XP driver does not work in Win7).

So this was an added benefit of upgrading the XP Machine from the Clone to the Optiplex. Other additions to the Optiplex were the swapping of my PCI Wireless card and PCI Firwire card from the clone to the Optiplex. All working perfectly in the Optiplex 320.

Tried the E5400. unfortunately, the computer didn't boot. So, still stick with my original E4300. what a poor computer.  I also tried4 GB memory, didn't work either. but up to 2 GB would still be good. 

hope it would be helpful. 

Oops make that 2GB of memory....2MB of memory is what I went on the Internet with on my 486 and Windows 3.1 back in 1995..

Umm..That processor isn't on the list of processors that work...Try and E4600 or E4700...

Don't know about yours but mine is excellent running the E4600 overclocked at 2.7Ghz with 2MB memory and a Nvidia G310 video card...

Of course if you're a "gamer" then you need to go buy yourself the latest I7 with 64bit operating system and 16GB of memory and a SLI video card then you'll be happy (until the next wave of games come out)...

For me my upgraded Optiplex 320 is super fast  for Internet, video and some video/audio encoding...As far as boot times and  loading apps it's faster than my I7 32bit Windows 7 system...And I keep all my good Windows Xp applications, mods, hacks.

Sorry for late response, got the 320 working with a 2.4ghz Core Duo Allendale E4600.  Had no problems at all, and i did not upgrade anything else except used the Duo heatsink.  Real nice boost in performance with this cpu. 

sorry again, now i am not sure if it was an Allendale or Conroe,ummm.....sorry, i do know it was 800mhz fsb

Just got an E4700 Processor and some high end memory...I now have my Optiplex running at an overclocked 3.0Ghz with a DualCore2 processory and 2GB of memory...That's about as fast as I think this thing is gonna go...Completely stable at the overclocked 3.0Ghz (Stress tested) because of the memory. I could probably go higher but don't want to push my luck. System is plenty fast now for what I do...Good deal...My E4600 and two 1GB sticks of memory will be for sale in the normal place(Package deal). They were both successful running at 2.7Ghz if anybody is interested...