Upgrade i7 930

[Kdog]

Hello everyone, 

I want to upgrade my old Dell XPS Studio 9100 that has an i7 930 CPU in it. I found from this link all the processors I can use. I found that for me the i7 980x is around the price I'm willing to pay (about 150 on eBay) but I want to know two things. Firstly, has anyone upgraded from the 930 to the 980x and if so did you notice any difference? The second thing is that I don't want to pay $150 for the CPU not to work so does anyone have experience upgrading CPU's with prefab Dell machines? Thanks in advance!

[Ground]

Might as well throw a W3680 in there, should work just like the 980X at under half the price. You'll want to overclock it a bit with throttlestop and from there it should be a decent upgrade. You should check the dell website if they are providing a newer BIOS or ask their tech support.

[Kdog]

3 minutes ago, Ground said:

Might as well throw a W3680 in there, should work just like the 980X at under half the price. You'll want to overclock it a bit with throttlestop and from there it should be a decent upgrade. You should check the dell website if they are providing a newer BIOS or ask their tech support.

I hadn't even looked up the price of the W3680 so thank you for pointing it out. I also just noticed that in my post I called the computer an Inspiron but that isn't correct. I had the correct socket type originally, though, so I should be fine.

[asand1]

W3680 or x5680 will be much cheaper and in the case of the x5680 is 6c12t at 3ghz.

[Kdog]

7 minutes ago, asand1 said:

W3680 or x5680 will be much cheaper and in the case of the x5680 is 6c12t at 3ghz.

I think I'll go with the W3680 but I was able to find someone on a forum from 2012 say that the 980x works with the XPS Studio's motherboard. 

[Kdog]

Quick update: I decided to go with an i7 970 because I found someone who confirmed it would work as they upgraded theirs to it. I upgraded and everything great. Significantly better performance.