Confirmation on CPU compatibility

Radium_Angel · November 23, 2020

Ideally, I'd like this confirmed by someone who has first-hand experience here, or who can link to a solid source:

I have an option to purchase a Dell Precision T7600. This would be an upgrade (possibly?) to my T5610 which I am currently running.

The issue here is the T5610 has a pair of Xeon E5-2643 v2 (Ivy Bridge) chips. This is fine for my needs, but I've run out of PCIe slots.

The t7600 has an extra pair of slots (yay!) but are supposedly only supported by Sandy Bridge chips.

Since the two chips are pin-compatible, and assuming the BIOS is UTD, is there any reason (other than Dell being a prick about things, which is always a possibility) why I couldn't run Ivy Bridge v2 chips in the t7600?

Anyone have a t7600 with Ivy Bridge chips in them, or know of anyone who has such a thing up and functional?

Senzelian · November 23, 2020

First up, I got no personal experience with those chips. I hope I'm not wasting your time, but I wanted to share at least the information I found.

As far as I can tell the T7600 is running the C600 chipset, which isn't compatible with the E5-2643 v2, according to Dell.

Instead it's only compatible with the E5-2643 (non v2). Again, according to Dell.

Or I should say that they never shipped with those chips. They don't rule the option out entirely.

According to this source, they are compatible:

https://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/glenn/updates-on-intel-xeon-ivy-bridge-server-processor-launch-schedules/

And if you google around a few more sources mention the C600 chipset in combination with the 2643 v2.

But then again there is a lot of conflicting information on these.

Some people mention it working and some say they don't work.

Chiyawa · November 24, 2020

Well, 1 thing I do know, is that Dell don't really provide a BIOS that works with next-gen processor for the motherboard. I don't know about desktop environment, but for laptop, when I plug in Intel Core i5 3440M from Dell Latitude E6530 to a Dell Latitude E5520 motherboard and vice versa, they are not working, even though they are pin compatible and should be able to work. I'm not sure if I had make a mistake, but the BIOS is updated for both machine. Unless I can look into the BIOS code, I can't pin point out whether their BIOS disable the code or they didn't include the code for the other generation of the processor.

Radium_Angel · November 24, 2020

3 hours ago, Senzelian said:

First up, I got no personal experience with those chips. I hope I'm not wasting your time, but I wanted to share at least the information I found.

As far as I can tell the T7600 is running the C600 chipset, which isn't compatible with the E5-2643 v2, according to Dell.

Instead it's only compatible with the E5-2643 (non v2). Again, according to Dell.

Or I should say that they never shipped with those chips. They don't rule the option out entirely.

According to this source, they are compatible:

https://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/glenn/updates-on-intel-xeon-ivy-bridge-server-processor-launch-schedules/

And if you google around a few more sources mention the C600 chipset in combination with the 2643 v2.

But then again there is a lot of conflicting information on these.

Some people mention it working and some say they don't work.

Yeah I had read that thread as well.

If, and that's a big if, it would work, then it would be a worthwhile upgrade to my existing system (primarily, I get two more PCIe slots, which I desperately need)

I know the alternative is to pick up some of those really sketchy "dual x79" mobos from weird Chinese sellers, and scavenge as many parts from my existing system as possible to re-use, but I'd rather not worry about my system catching fire in the middle of the night because some crappy VRM goes south while I"m asleep.

51 minutes ago, Chiyawa said:

Well, 1 thing I do know, is that Dell don't really provide a BIOS that works with next-gen processor for the motherboard. I don't know about desktop environment, but for laptop, when I plug in Intel Core i5 3440M from Dell Latitude E6530 to a Dell Latitude E5520 motherboard and vice versa, they are not working, even though they are pin compatible and should be able to work. I'm not sure if I had make a mistake, but the BIOS is updated for both machine. Unless I can look into the BIOS code, I can't pin point out whether their BIOS disable the code or they didn't include the code for the other generation of the processor.

I have seen that as well, HP and Lenovo are far worse when it comes to whitelisting CPUs, but Dell will happily do it too....