Optiplex 755 DT Hardware Upgrade

@William N. H. 

Please press the blue Accept as Solution button below if this answers your question.

Quads require TOWER and 305W power supply.

Ram is LOW DENSITY DDR2 .

Your budget of $100 is not going to cut it.

DDR2 for 755

You would be better off buying a newer model that is 600 percent faster and will run windows 10 or 11 just fine.  I am posting on the forum with that exact model running WINDOWS 11 RTM.

 OS has key in bios so all you need is OEM win10 DVD for reinstall/recovery.

OEM WIN10 DVD $14

Precision T1700 you can move HDD from the 755 to this and install 10 free.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/144264468714

@speedstepThanks for your answer.

I have bought a Q6600, 4x2 GB of Kingston 800Mhz DDR2, an HD 5450 w/ 512 MB VRAM, and a 120 GB SSD for around $84.

As for the PSU, I'm a bit confused why there should be a problem.

The PSU delivers a total of 280W, 192W of them to the 12V Rail (12Vx16A).

The Q6600 G0 Stepping uses a max of 95W, the HD 5450 max 19W. So roughly 114W.

So we have 78W left on the 12V rail. I'm not sure which hardware devices use which power rail to be exact, nor how much the motherboard uses itself. The SSD probably uses 5V, the DVD-RW 12V (25W max). So we have 53W left on the 12V rail, which should be enough for the motherboard and fans.

Yes, the power consumption does worry me. However, even if all components  can use more power than the PSU can offer at MAX load, it is very unlikely that the owner will be burning DVDs, and max both the CPU and GPU. PC is meant for office work, maybe some multimedia at most. So I"ll risk it.

Same goes for the stock aluminum cooler included in its stock E2160 config. The Q6600 could overheat, however that would require long periods of max load, which is rather unlikely.

Could someone tell me what BIOS revision I need for the Q6600, and if I have to upgrade multiple BIOS revisions, or if I can directly update to the latest BIOS revision?

Thanks!

@William N. H. 

Please press the blue Accept as Solution button below if this answers your question.

Q6600 should be fine per the 755 Technical Guide

however the aluminum heatsink may be insufficient.

Copper performance heatsink is used on quads in all models.  You cannot jump from A00 to A22 bios in a single step.  Bios should be updated with XP or 7 BEFORE changing anything.  Must be run as administrator.

O755-A22.exe

https://www.ebay.com/itm/113903575817

EXCEPT for USFF.  hd5450 is also fine for all except usff which has no slots.

You may need to turn PCI SERR MSG to OFF in F2 bios for the card to post.  You cannot use onboard video when a card is in the X16 slot.

@William N. H. 

Please press the blue Accept as Solution button below if this answers your question.

Q6600 should be fine per the 755 Technical Guide

however the aluminum heatsink may be insufficient.

Copper performance heatsink is used on quads in all models.  You cannot jump from A00 to A22 bios in a single step.  Bios should be updated with XP or 7 BEFORE changing anything.  Must be run as administrator.

O755-A22.exe

 o755-a01.exe
 o755-a03.exe
 o755-a04.exe
 o755-a08.exe
 o755-a09.exe
 o755-a10.exe
o755-a11.exe
 o755-a12.exe
 o755-a13.exe
 o755-a14.exe
 o755-a15.exe
 o755-a16.exe
 o755-a17.exe
 o755-a19.exe
 o755-a20.exe

https://www.ebay.com/itm/113903575817

EXCEPT for USFF.  hd5450 is also fine for all except usff which has no slots.

You may need to turn PCI SERR MSG to OFF in F2 bios for the card to post.  You cannot use onboard video when a card is in the X16 slot.

@speedstep 

So I have to do all of the listed BIOS updates (except for those which are older than the BIOS revision installed), right?

And could I just replace the metal heatsink and not the black plastic bracket?

My cooler is the 0RW134.

I'm considering replacing the metal heatsink with the of the 0H896D/H896D.

https://www.ebay.de/itm/202814810944?hash=item2f38b46b40:g:WoAAAOSw9EldwC1x

Thanks!

RW134 is the black plastic shroud not the heatsink.

So I have no idea.   Bios versions are what I could find.  No idea if its ALL or not or what versions work or not start with the latest and it will usually tell you that you need at least A08 for example.  YMMV.

This is the HS for Desktop.

https://www.ebay.de/itm/362633433010

I've removed the heatsink from the plastic shroud, turns out my heatsink is the 0R6852. Could that be sufficient for 95W TDP?

Re: the heatsink from the plastic shroud, turns out my heatsink is the 0R6852. Could that be sufficient for 95W TDP?

that heatsink has a high performance copper cold plate and is sufficient to cool core 2 duo or Pentium cpu (the latter a hotter chip). just apply fresh thermal paste (no more than a small rice grain size) and mount the heatsink using proper technique (one shot deal, no opening up again to take a look or moving around).

Yes that Heasink has copper heatpipes so its fine for quads.