Inspiron 660, fastest CPU upgrade?

Thank you for your message.

This system supports an I3 & an I5 & these are the only processors that have been officially tested with this model.

And than you for your response

(i was curious about unofficially as well, but if that's something you can't answer then I'll keep this to the i5 question)

I saw another post that mentioned several processors that would work. They list them as the Inspiron 660 supports the following processors =

 1.80GHz G460 Sandy Bridge, 1C,35W,Q0
 2.70GHz G630 Sandy Bridge, 3MB, 65W, 2C, Q0
 3.30GHz i3-2120 Sandy Bridge, 3MB, 65W, Q0
 3.00GHz i5-2320 SandyBridge Quad Core, 6MB, 95W, D2
 3.10GHz i5-3450 Ivy Bridge Quad Core, 6MB, 77W, E1

but i wondered if the gen 3 I5-3570 might also work?

Thanks again for your time!

Unofficially, yes, the system support i7. This system has an Intel B75 chipset and the LGA 1155 socket and will take any Sandy Bridge based on the chipset. But again, Dell can only support what we actually tested.

Again, thanks for responding, maybe eventually someone will see this thread and state if they've successfully had a machine boot using an i7, so far the only info that I've managed to find online was that the bios didn't recognize it.

I guess I'll try the i5-3470 or possibly the i5-3570 as it seems to be the fastest i5 that works with the chipset and socket.

thanks again

Oh wow, ok thanks for the information, would you chance putting an i7-2600 in this then?

The 3000 series CPUs are Ivy Bridge - these will not work.  You must use Sandy Bridge CPUs (models in the 2000 series).

FCLGA1155  I7 2600 is a 95W cpu so it might have issues.

Optiplex 990 on the other hand works fine with I7 2600.

990 Tower might be a better path to an upgrade.

You get the CPU and everything for the cost of just the cpu.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Refurbished-Dell-Optiplex-990-Tower-Intel-I7-2600-Quad-Core-3-4Ghz-Processor-16GB-RAM-500GB-Hard-Drive-DVD-Rom-Windows-10-Home-64-Bit/121055919

Hey, thank you for your reply, I did purchase a new power supply and am running a 1060GT graphics card, so I'm hoping it would accommodate a greater power requirement, but that's something I could look into, my biggest concern is the BIOS not recognizing it, and not letting it boost, a new bios was released this year 2018, and I ran the upgrade. I was hoping that someone would tell me that YEP i put an i7 2600 in and it worked fine, so far all I've found was one account of it not working, and many others saying that it shouldn't be a problem.

I may have to upgrade at some point, but I can get an i7 2600 right now for $100, if I have to spend $300 I'm just going to build something myself and use the parts I have, but again thank you very much for responding!

With the A10 BIOS, I was able to upgrade from the Intel G2020 to the Intel i7-3770 in my 660s. Everything is running just fine now and on stock MOBO my DDR3 RAM is running at 1600 MHz, old CPU only allowed 1333 MHz. You should be able to get a used i7 3770 between $80-$120 or so right now. I have not looked into the boost performance at this point, but an aftermarket MOBO is probably required. Definitely worth upgrading to the i7-3770 even without the boost.

Does the Inspiron 660 support the AMD 4.0GHz AM4 Ryzen Processor 5 1600X?

that fails at all levels. to RYZEN  ( does 660 work with AMD CPU is the real question, and is NO)

wrong socket, (type and pin count)

AMD cpu does not run on INTEL CHIPSETS,

and lots more , but you'd never get far enough for all other things to fail like BIOS.

I have installed the i7-3770 on several Inspiron 660 boards. Runs just fine. Also runs fine with 16GB of DDR3 1600 memory even though Dell only supports up to 8GB.

@SomeHack​ I have an i5 3570K installed on my Inspiorn 660 and it works just fine. But not good enough for Windows 11. Wonder if I can go even higher.