Micro Dell Optiplex 7060 CPU Swap

[artkingjw]

Budget (including currency): ~AU$500

Country: Australia

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Plex, (Linux) VM's, NAS

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

 

Hi all, this one is a little complicated and not 1 build per say... in short: I want a little more power in my NAS, and add a second SFF machine to my setup (HTPC).

 

I currently have an unraid NAS running on: Pentium G5400, Gigabyte B365M HD3, 16Gb RAM, Quadro P600, Corsair RM550x, LSI HBA running a 7 drive array. There are two parity drives.

The NAS runs a fairly typical array of docker containers for downloads, file sync, and media server duties. Most of the time, this processor is enough for my needs. The processor seems to be a bottleneck during times such as disk preclearing, parity checks, and when transcoding more than 1 video - all threads get pinned to 100%, or near 100% usage for more than a few seconds, and file access slows down, even on the cache pool. Also, I can't run transcodes (even on GPU) and something like a parity check simultaneously. I'm also keen on playing around with some virtual machines on my unraid server, mostly just for fun/curiosity. I'm sure that my transcodes (Plex and Tdarr) are using the GPU, so any CPU use is just unavoidable overhead. My plan is to upgrade the CPU to something efficient, but has more cores/performance than the G5400.

 

At the same time, I've been thinking about adding a SFF HTPC to our living room. So I've been eyeing some refurbished Dell Optiplex 7060s that happen to contain an i5-8500T - these are priced around $500 or so, which is as much as I would be willing to spend on this project at this point. They also happen to be nice and small, which wins mega points with the rest of the house. 

 

So the idea is to get one of these Optiplex 7060's, and swap the i5-8500T with my Pentium G5400 in the NAS. The NAS will be upgraded to an i5-8500T, and the Optiplex will be downgraded to a Pentium G5400.

We won't be gaming on the HTPC, just Plex/Netflix etc. some web browsing, using the included Windows 10 Pro license for now. Is this a wise move?  Would this be possible on the Optiplex? These chips should be of the same generation, use the same socket, and are compatible with the same chipsets? 

 

Feedback is appreciated. Thanks! 

P.S. There are various models of 7060's so the i5-8500T may end up being an i5-8500 non-T version, depending on availability.

[Bombastinator]

Use caution doing any hardware swaps with an OEM prebuilt.  They tend to do non-standard things.  Checks that might not normally be needed may be needed.  OEM stuff is not actually ATX and OEM stuff has a rep for not supporting one iota more than is needed for the model.  Common things are very very non standard power delivery, strange board layouts, shortened cable leads, and components that while safe in that particular system might not be safe anywhere else.
 

Things I can think of off hand you might want to check:

-is the cpu even lga?  BGA stuff is not uncommon with prebuilts. You may find yourself looking at a soldered down cpu with no socket.

-does the bios even support the cpu you want to put in it? 
-is there enough VRM on the board to support the new cpu? 

-Does the PSU support the increased power draw from the new CPU?

Edited October 11, 2021 by Bombastinator

[artkingjw]

39 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Use caution doing any hardware swaps with an OEM prebuilt.  They tend to do non-standard things.  Checks that might not normally be needed may be needed.  OEM stuff is not actually ATX and OEM stuff has a rep for not supporting one iota more than is needed for the model.  Common things are very very non standard power delivery, strange board layouts, shortened cable leads, and components that while safe in that particular system might not be safe anywhere else.
 

Things I can think of off hand you might want to check:

-is the cpu even lga?  BGA stuff is not uncommon with prebuilts. You may find yourself looking at a soldered down cpu with no socket.

-does the bios even support the cpu you want to put in it? 
-is there enough VRM on the board to support the new cpu? 

-Does the PSU support the increased power draw from the new CPU?

Yea, my suspicions were raised when I couldn't find any guides on swapping the CPU for this particular model, merely SSD and RAM upgrades. Does not look promising... just wondering if anyone here has had experience working with these machines before. 

[Bombastinator]

9 minutes ago, artkingjw said:

Yea, my suspicions were raised when I couldn't find any guides on swapping the CPU for this particular model, merely SSD and RAM upgrades. Does not look promising... just wondering if anyone here has had experience working with these machines before. 

I’m particularly suspicious of that T designation.   I don’t know what it means but I suspect it means it’s either it’s either low power, BGA, or both.  A quick google to ark.intel might answer that one.

Edited October 11, 2021 by Bombastinator

[artkingjw]

9 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

I’m particularly suspicious of that T designation.   I don’t know what it means but I suspect it means it’s either it’s either low power, BGA, or both.  A quick google to ark.intel might answer that one.

The 'T' just means it's a lower power consumption chip, it's clocked lower, everything else seems to be the same as the 'normal' 8500. It doesn't seem to be a mobile lower chip though. 

[Bombastinator]

6 hours ago, artkingjw said:

The 'T' just means it's a lower power consumption chip, it's clocked lower, everything else seems to be the same as the 'normal' 8500. It doesn't seem to be a mobile lower chip though. 

So low power.  Affects VRM size likely.  Good chance there is a socket but that is a big company.  They might have gotten BGA versions made special to save themselves the cost of a socket.  Intel might not do that though.  I don’t know.  Still have to worry about them not having the code for your chip in the only bios available for that board though.

[artkingjw]

On 10/12/2021 at 8:36 AM, Bombastinator said:

So low power.  Affects VRM size likely.  Good chance there is a socket but that is a big company.  They might have gotten BGA versions made special to save themselves the cost of a socket.  Intel might not do that though.  I don’t know.  Still have to worry about them not having the code for your chip in the only bios available for that board though.

Here is a list of official CPU's supported, which I believe is used in the Serve The Home article on these things:

https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-au/optiplex-7060-desktop/opti_7060_sff_setup_specs_manual/processor?guid=guid-e178c653-4f96-4d67-8c6e-0d7e87454d21&lang=en-us

 

After some more digging, I found this: 

 

https://www.dell.com/community/Optiplex-Desktops/Optiplex-7060-SFF-Upgrade-from-i5-8500-to-i7-9700/m-p/7776901/highlight/true#M47761

 

It suggests my mod will most likely work, with some tinkering. Just need to make sure that the cooling config + power supply are adequate (the G5400 is a 58W TDP chip, so it is incompatible with the i5-8500T, but will be compatible with the 65W normal 8500). Dell seems to sell two variants of the same computer - the T class processors get a 90W PSU, while the normal processors get a 130W PSU. I'll also need to check if there's a RAID config that gonna mess with the processor swap. There's also an unofficial BIOS for 9th gen support. 

EDIT: 

If anyone is wondering, I did end up snagging a 7060 for a good price, and I did swap it's 8500 (non-T) for my G5400. Both machines still work. The T version uses less power, so I didn't trust a prebuilt with that CPU to deliver the same wattage, those also tend to come with a lower spec power brick. The non-T version has a comparable wattage to the G5400, so with the supplied power brick, everything works as expected. 

Edited April 12, 2022 by artkingjw
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