CPU upgrade for XPS 630i

Hello KLJTech,

On my XPS 630i, I took the E84000 out last year and replaced it with the Q9650 and it works great.  The Dell stock heat sink was reused, as it is a heat pipe type and is held to the MOBO by metal screws that fit into a metal retaining frame behind the MOBO, so it is firmly attached when in place.

I did add a Noctua  NF-R8 that blows into the side of the Dell heat sink to add additional air flow while keeping the Dell heat sink fan as well.  It stays fairly  close to ambient temp for me.  If you want to see the fan modifications to my XPS 630i, go to Flickr, and do a people search for "fiachra25701" and on page 2 you can see the fan modification to my XPS 630i.

The Q9650 is a great CPU, you will love it.  The replacement works very easy, the heat sink is just held by four screws.  The Dell heat sink on the XPS is better than most aftermarket units.

If you have questions I will be happy to try to answer them.

Best,

Darrell WV

Well, that’s great news; thanks so much for letting me know that you’ve already done it so it’ll be no problem. I’ve wanted to change out the CPU but that Q9650 (the one I’ve been wanting) is now down to $300 so it’s too hard to pass up. So the 8 post that are standing up above the rest of the heat sink are the screws holding it in place? Are they finger tightened or do they have slots for a screw driver on top?

Do you think that since the tower is up on a desk with space all around it and in a cool room that it’ll need another fan? I saw your pictures and you did a nice job, that‘s a good sized fan that you’re using.

When I first bought the 630i I noticed that I couldn’t get the fans to accept changes I made in their speed and then saw that many were having the same problem on these forums. Since then “life” has been so busy that I dropped it and didn’t keep coming back to find out the fix for the problem, do you have any idea about if it was ever resolved?

This is the first PC I have bought instead of building one in about 8 years (to my surprise I’ve been happy with it) but I have little boy now and free time is hard to come by.  

Thanks again Darrell for the help, I really do appreciate it.  

Take care,

Kevin

Hey Kevin,

There are 4 (four) set screws on the heatsink, they are inside of a black round sleeve at the four corners of the heatsink, so you will need a long screwdirver.  The fan on the heat sink has an electric supply attached to the MOBO down next to the case floor, you will need to disconect that.  The four screws are into the back of the MOBO where an unseen metal frame/support housing is attached to keep the heatsink from bending the MOBO, which is a great feature of Dell engineering.  The copper tubes that stick up are the cooling pipes which improve cooling the aluminum fins.

When you take the heatsink off you will notice thermal paste (grey/brown and gooey) which will have to be removed from the bottom of the heatsink, I used rubbing alcohol, then the E8400 will just lift out of the CPU bracket (after you raise the bracket arm).  Be very careful with the connector pins on the MOBO and the CPU unit.

Place the Q9650 into the MOBO aligning the edge with the small cut out into the notch.  DO NOT FORCE the CPU into the MOBO, it should just drop in and sort of lay there.  Force can bend the pins making it a Dead, Can Not Work, Useless CPU.  AFTER the bracket is down, then put the new Artic Silver Thermal paste onto the shinny side of the CPU (the side that faces outward and has no pins).  Place the heatsink back in place by tightening the four corners equally, sort of like the lugs on a tire, corner 1, then 3, then 2 then 4 then back to 1 and continue till firmly down,  The thermal paste takes 1 week to cure for maximum cooling effect.  So order the thermal paste at the same time as you order the CPU.

Hope that this makes sense, if not ask and I will try to clarify.

Best,

Darrell WV

Thanks so much for all the information, I’ve replaced several CPU’s before but the last one was a P4 (a few years ago) and I’ve never seen a heat sink like the one the 630i uses. With all that you told me I’ll have no problem replacing the CPU, the ones I’ve purchased in the past have come with packet thermal paste. It’s not a problem for me to buy the Art Silver if that’s going to do a better job.

Did you ever have problems with the control panel not staying where you’d set it for the fans that came with the 630i? I thought it may be a good idea to bump at least one of them up when running the new CPU. Right now they stay at 1% and 18%.

So tell me, since you went from 2 cores to 4, did you see a huge difference in performance? I understand that web surfing isn’t going to require the power of 4 cores.

Thanks again for all your help! I have no doubt now that the upgrade will go smoothly.

Take care,

Kevin

Hey Kevin,

After I set the fans they seem stable, but I added the Noctua fan to increase the flow inside the XPS 630i case as well as the Corsair fans when I upgraded the RAM, and I monitor the temps all the time, they run around 3-5C higher than the room temp so I am satisfied.

I noticed the most improvement in my graphics intense games, the resolution improved, the video is much smoother and more seamless in play, there does not seem to be the drag or lag time from my imput until the screen shot shows what I have imput into the game.  Also, I do tend to multitask and have several screens open on my desktop at once, so the quad core does allow for that.  So over all it was a huge improvement in performance. 

I agree with you on the drop in CPU prices now is a great time to upgrade and the XPS 630i is a great machine.

Darrell

Darrell,

Thanks so much for all the useful information, you've been a huge help and I look forward to getting the Q9650 and seeing what it can do. I use my PC mainly for listening to music (I have it running to my preamp), watching movies, ripping DVD's and burning DVD's and almost always with half a dozen web pages open and programs running as well.

This 630i was a great step up from my P4  that had problems just running WinDVD while upscaling enabled.:emotion-7:

I'm not sure why I'm having problems getting the fans to speed up and stay that way. I change the setting in the Device setting of the Nvidia Control Panel under Chassis but once I click apply it goes back to the way it's been since the first day it booted up at 1% and 18%. I have the latest bios and keep all the drivers updated. Oh well, if that's my only problem then I pretty lucky.

Hey man, thanks so much for your help!

Take care,

Kevin

Darrell,

I also have a 630i, and am setting up my rig almost identical to yours, and have a couple questions.

First, the Noctua fan. I see where and how you have it mounted, but what did you have to do to actually hook it up electrically? I see in your pictures that you used a molex connection. Did you have to splice into anything to do this? Also, are you controlling the speed of that fan, or is it running at 100% all the time? If you are controlling it, how is this achieved?

Second, your memory. I don't have Dominator memory, but I have XMS2 instead, which has specified latency values of 4-4-4-12. Is it better to leave the memory settings in "auto" or actually go into the cmos and change the timings to match the memory? I actually tried this once, and my system crashed forcing me to do a cmos reset. I'm just wondering what you did with your Dominator setup.

Hello Kevin,

the Dell XPS heat sink is far better than anything that comes standard with a retail CPU.  I have tested the retail heat sinks on my XPS 630i and it does not cool nearly as good as the Dell.

Behind the motherboard, where you can not see, there is a metal bracket with threaded posts into which the Dell heat sink srews fit, this prevents stress on the MOBO and supports the weight of the heatsink itself.  I placed my Noctua fan facing into the heatsink aimed at the rear of the case.  You will see a directional arrow on the heatsink, which should point towards the rear open grill which allows hot air out of the case.  I put high heat velcro (found it at Radio Shack) onto the bottom of the Noctua fan and another peice on the floor of the XPS between the heat sink and RAM.  This forces air through the heat sink towards the rear of the case and out.

You should see a four prong fan power supply on the back grill, near the internet port, this is the power supply I used.  Get some plastic cable management straps/ties to keep the fan power cable tied down.

Hope that this is clear and helps,

Darrell

Darrell,

Thanks for all of your input, once I got started it was obvious what needed to be done but it was very nice of you to give me a heads up on a couple things like the stock heat sink (very nice) before I had time to open the case up and look around. Except for my very first computer, a Pentium 90 this is only other PC I've ever had that  didn't build myself. I worked at Best Buy for several years as a computer tech, I left just before they became the Geek Squad.

I was looking at the pictures on Flickr that you posted and I see that you put a fan at the back of the case where the wire mesh is located. I too think that there needs to be a fan there to push out the hot air coming off the CPU or to just help in getting the hot air out of the case. Do you remember what size fan will fit and is there a header in which to get power to the fan or did you just use a power cable that was already in the case to power that fan? I was hoping to get over to Best Buy tomorrow to grab a fan for the back of the case.The PC is running great now, not that it wasn't before but having a bitter CPU AND having the software finally work is nice.

Remember that I was asking why the fans would never stay at the speed that I'd set them to and then click Save? Well, I found out from another site devoted just to XPS 630i owners that there is a ESA firmware at that site #22 and I had been using #20 and this was the first I'd seen of an update to the ESA firmware. I downloaded the newer firmware and from the Nvidia Control Panel, under System Updates I clicked on update ESA firmware, it updated and all has work great ever since.

Thanks again for all your help.

Kevin

Good Morning Kevin,

You are welcome and I am glad that my small advice was helpful.  I have ran over to my630i.com lots of time myself to keep up with what was going on with other XPS 630 owners as well.

I am using the 80mm Noctua fan in my XPS 730 and the 120 fan in my XPS 630.  there are no predrilled placement brackets in the rear wire mesh, so I used the self tapping screws which are stable and do not increase the noise.  While the Dell case is very sturdy and well made, the from the factory air flow out of the case is not the best, so I agree with you and most of the people over at 630.com that additional exhaust fans are truly required to keep the rig as cool as possible.

Best,

Darrell

Darrell

I didn't want to mention the site by name since one of the last posts back to you was removed and I was emailed a warning from the Dell Forum informing me that I was breaking the rules. I have no idea what I did, surely it wasn't from discussing upgrades which people talk about all the time here. My best guess is that it was the verbiage used when talking about installing the heat sink back on top of the new CPU. I said that I tightened the 4 fasteners down using a tool for said fasteners and the correct name for that tool possibly was thought to be profanity by whatever software is used to keep track of whats being written here.

I guess that must have been the reason for the warning because they emailed me back my post but some words were replaced with ****. For  instance I used a ***** driver to ******* down the ****** nice and tight and like you suggested I did it just like the bolts on a tire, tighten one a bit and then the one across from it.

The Q9650 has been up and running for a week now with no problems whatsoever. I was so glad to find that firmware update (at my630i.com) which now allows me to adjust the fans in the front of the case and atop the CPU and they NOW stay wherever I put them. I don't understand why Dell hasn't made this available on their site along with the driver downloads. There are a ton of people out there having problems with fans on these 630i's and like me they couldn't find any help at Dell. It's possible that I missed something on their site but I even emailed customer support, called them and no one had any answers for me. I would hear save the profile once you've made a change (which I would) but it never work, it always went back to the factory settings. 

I do like the Dell case for the 630i a lot but I did just buy an 80mm fan to place on the rear to help blow out the warmer air. The Nvidia monitor says that the front case temp is 24C and the rear is 33C. My tower sits up on a desk out in the open so luckily it gets good air flow all around it. I'm too busy with my day to day work to mess with it today but I plan on putting in the fan later this week along with a 1TB second hard drive and a Asus Xonar Essence STX sound card to replace the Prelude 7.1 I have been using.

Did you have any problems finding a spot in the rear to run those self tapping screws for the 80mm fan? I'm sure that it'll be easy to see exactly where to mount it once I get the case opened up again. I have it up on a nice big desk but the side that opens has my USB back drive right next to it along with a headphone amp and the HP amp's power supply so it's always a hassle to crack it back open.

Thanks again for your help and have a nice weekend.

Kevin