Upgrading Dell with new CPU?

[Funky]

Hi everyone,

 

A friend has come to me with a question which I want to help them out with. They currently have an Dell Inspiron 660 with a Pentium G2030 on the stock motherboard. Thing is that the pentium is bottlenecking their new graphics card so hard and they want to upgrade to an i5 that'll fit the same socket so that they only have to replace the cpu and not the motherboard. The motherboard is a Vostro 270 84J0R so surely it has a standard LGA1155 socket. Therefore she could buy an i5 3340 and it should work right??

 

The only reason for my concern is I heard that Dell might lock the BIOS to prevent upgrading CPU's??? Is this true?

 

Thanks for any help

[techguru]

its an 1155 chip

so yea you can upgrade it

the real question is if dells bios will allow it

 

you might need to do some bios modding

[Funky]

its an 1155 chip

so yea you can upgrade it

the real question is if dells bios will allow it

 

you might need to do some bios modding

 

Any chance you could point me to a way of doing this. Haven't had to deal with premade systems like Dell before

[Laputacake]

It should work eels

[Samsterstorm]

I believe they do lock to BIOS sometimes, also the i5 will consume more power that it may not be compatible as they are not designed to be upgraded!

[techguru]

only way to know for sure is to buy the chip and try it

 

the dell heatsink for the cpu might not be good enough to keep the i5/i7 cpu cool enough tho..so you might need to change that as well

[Funky]

Yea luckily I have I heatsink spare and she already has the power supply and graphics card upgraded. Obviously she can't afford to just buy a CPU if it doesn't work so that's why I'm trying to find out if its possible beforehand If it is, can it easily be unlocked?

[techguru]

well its a bit of work..but you could open the newest bios file for that pc and look in the intel cpuid codes of the bios and see what cpu's it supports

[techguru]

I did some quick searching..and the vostro 270 supports the i5..and it should be the same motherboard..so it should work

just update the bios before you do the cpu change

[Blebekblebek]

G2030 is based on IB

so, technically it should be fine to use IB processor

 

finding update bios for dell OEM motherboard is hard.

maybe they lock it down so people buy new system instead upgrading.

[Funky]

I did some quick searching..and the vostro 270 supports the i5..and it should be the same motherboard..so it should work

just update the bios before you do the cpu change

 

Thanks, that's really appreciated. I'll be sure to do that.

 

G2030 is based on IB

so, technically it should be fine to use IB processor

 

finding update bios for dell OEM motherboard is hard.

maybe they lock it down so people buy new system instead upgrading.

That's probably right... They really do make it tricky. Most people would just give up I guess

[harrynowl]

finding update bios for dell OEM motherboard is hard.

maybe they lock it down so people buy new system instead upgrading.

It's actually super easy.

 

- Go to Dell support

- Type in model

- Select Drivers & Downloads

 

Bam, right there.

 

@Funky

Latest BIOS: http://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER01810517M/1/Inspiron%20660%20Vostro%20270%20BIOS%20A11.exe

 

I've never seen an OEM Desktop that locks out certain CPU upgrades. Only if the chipset doesn't support it (less of a thing these days) or its outside of power limits for the board and/or case (more of a Laptop thing).

[Funky]

It's actually super easy.

 

- Go to Dell support

- Type in model

- Select Drivers & Downloads

 

Bam, right there.

 

@Funky

Latest BIOS: http://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER01810517M/1/Inspiron%20660%20Vostro%20270%20BIOS%20A11.exe

 

I've never seen an OEM Desktop that locks out certain CPU upgrades. Only if the chipset doesn't support it (less of a thing these days) or its outside of power limits for the board and/or case (more of a Laptop thing).

 

Brilliant! That's great news!! Thanks