Hi Frigyes.devogelaer,

Please find below the list of compatible processors that has been successfully tested by Dell Product Group team on your system:

Please refer to the following link for more information on processor upgrade:

http://dell.to/SJNOl7 

Please revert for further clarification. 

The strongest processor you can place into Inspiron 570 is Phenom II x4 965 BE, at least 3 or 4 forum members have it installed, me included. FX series is new family of CPU and would not be recognized by Inspiron BIOS, I wish it could be done! If you are interested placing 965 BE let us know, as it will involve cooling upgrades, well look into my signature, you see...

I want to get the AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE, so I can replace the weak Athlon 250 that my 570 came with. What kind of cooling upgrades are you talking about? A stronger fan, or actually cutting holes in the computer? Also, what PSU should I get (I still have stock), and if I don't want to modify my computer too much, what would be alternative to the 965 BE?

Now I can see real interest here, you come back after 3-4 months. Ok, what is the purpose of your upgrades, which games (if games) you going to play, or what other power hungry purposes you are interested in. People who install Phenom II x4 965 BE planning to overclock it in the future, if you are not interesting in overclocking at all Phenom II x4 955 will do, this is huge step from your current setup anyway. Overclock will gave me increase in FPS on battlefield 3 from ~60 FPS to ~80 FPS. And I have mediocre video card. There are a lot of possibilities, what I need to know how much approximately you can spent on upgrading and how radically you are ready to upgrade you Dell (changing case would be recommended if you decide to overclock).

So let me know your plans.

@tyswhat: I think I did not answer your question, I was sleepy and thought that you are original poster.

Now, in order to install 965 you would have to change CPU cooler to model which will require for Dell's motherboard backplate to come out (not impossible task, about 2 hours job). Now another question, plenty people installed 965 because they wanted to overclock their processor, if Pentium II x4 running at 3.0 GHZ or 3.2 GHZ is enough for you (but you would not be able to overclock) - you can get 945 or 955 Phenom, those are running cooler and require mild cooler upgrade, only 10 minutes job. Forget to mention, if you decide to go with 965 and will consider to overclock it later, you would have to change the case due to the high temperatures, unless you live in Alaska. Power supply can stay original with 955 and 945, for 965 you would have to upgrade it most likely, especially if you thinking about getting any video card.

I am on iPhone now and could be mistaken in the next statement:

Phenom II x4 965 (125 watt TGP) run at 3.4 GHz and can be easy overclocked to at least 4.0 GHz with proper cooling, what it mean in real world, my Battlefield 3 FPS went up from about 60 to about 80 with overclock.

Phenom II x4 945 (95 watt TGP) run at 3.0 GHz and Phenom II x4 955 (95 watt TGP) run at 3.2 GHz, for both of them small cooling upgrade is required and both of them cannot be overclocked.

Phenom II x4 945 run at 3.0 GHz is minimum recommended requirement for Battlefield 3.

Now it is your turn to make decision.

Well, I can't find a new 945 anywhere, and I'm really queasy about buying a used one. I saw a 955 on TigerDirect, but it was 125W. Are there two different versions? Also, I'm planning to play StarCraft 2 at highish settings, and BattleField 3 at low settings with at least 60+ constant FPS. Is it okay to run a computer with the side cover off? Because if I can, then I can just point a fan at the cpu right?

Well, I can't find a new 945 anywhere

You are absolutely right, just checked myself, 965 is the only one widely available, at amazon and at NCIX as 2 examples from many. So 965 is the only choice. So if it so, just say if you want to overclock in the future, or not - from this depends next steps in designing cooling. As soon as you provide your choice, I publish next steps!

P.S. 955 125 watt version is not worth the cooling troubles.

Also, I'm planning to play StarCraft 2 at highish settings, and BattleField 3 at low settings with at least 60+ constant FPS.

In order to do this you will need stand alone graphic card, embedded is not enough.

Is it okay to run a computer with the side cover off? Because if I can, then I can just point a fan at the cpu right?

Maybe, but one day you forget about the fan and will fry your PC, so can not recommend.

Okay. I have a Geforce GT 430 that is currently in use in my computer, so I'm covered in the graphics section for now. Do I need to cut a hole in my computer? I asked this on Tom's Hardware forums, and the guy said I had to.

The only guy at tomshardware I would listen to is OCMusicJunkie, the rest are useless when it comes to Inspiron 570 or basically any old Inspirons. Which hole you are taking about, where?

So here are 2 choices you have with Phenom II x4 965 BE.

1. You would not overclock and you can leave the original case, you still will have to remove Dell motherboard's backplate, but you don't need new case;

2. You want maximum from your computer, so you want to overclock 965, in this case, in addition to backplate removal you would have to change Dell's case to accommodate larger coolers, you would have to upgrade your power supply and a few unpleasant software changes...

So choose 1 or 2.

I choose number 1.

Just back from work, will provide next instructions when wake up.

Ok, a few things you MUST get:

Ice Edge 400 XT $30.80

You can use rubbing alcohol (cheap, but not perfect way) to prepare the surface of processor and Ice Edge prior to applying thermal compound, but if you want quality you have to buy ArctiClean 60ml Kit $6.62, also you have to buy Arctic Silver 5 Polysynthetic Silver Thermal Compound Paste $8.35, or you can buy them together for cheaper price option 1 $12.99 and option 2 $12.22, both look the same to me. After this, you would have to change exhaust fan, I cannot provide suggestion here so quick, because I used one from another Dell, but I would say it will cost you about $10.

And lastly, since you already have graphic Geforce GT 430, you have to upgrade your power supply, since Phenom II X4 965 BE is power hungry and you might have problems (Geforce GT 430 not required power supply upgrade, but together with Phenom they might draw more power than current PSU provides, or might not). Power supply choice depends on your graphic card choice, this is general recommendations from MSI. I advise you to think for little future - if you decide to upgrade your graphic card in the future, I would install 600 watt PSU since new generation cards are not that power hungry.

First question and very important one. Do you have a second PC to communicate while your Phenom 965 project is moving, or you have only one PC?

Here is the part which need to be removed and instructions, I don't think there is something on youtube, since I made those instructions and pictures are mine including wasted Vons card...

Bad part: it has to be removed for best results, however there is a little possibility that Ice Edge might, I repeat might mount on this backplate - it looks almost the same, but I am not sure about this.

Inspiron 570 motherboard backplate removal instructions.

To remove backplate you will need credit card type plastic, any plastic card will do, no metal to touch motherboard! I do my recommendations in metric system, I don't like inches...

Here is backplate. I used as you can see 4 peaces of plastic folded in half, approximate size (width) of already folded plastic is about 1-1.5 centimeters wide and 4-5 centimeters long. First you have to use plastic card (library card, credit card or similar) to lift backplate up a bit to insert those plastic assistants. Backplate is glued to motherboard! As soon as you inserted those FOLDED plastics, you can stick regular, flat screwdriver into the plastic folds and now you can use more force to lift backplate off motherboard, there is no rush here, you might need about 1 hour of monkey job. Lift a bit on 1 side, advance plastic closer to center, move to another corner, and so on. MAKE SURE THAT NO METAL TOUCHES MOTHERBOARD!Upper left corner  on my picture is the most difficult to insert plastic and lift backplate, be extra careful here - there are a lot of protruding parts in this location.

The glue, sticky paper located on the outer sides of backplate square as you can see in next picture.

As soon as backplate is out, you have to carefully remove this sticky paper, here you can use only you fingers and nails - no metal here as you can easily scratch motherboard, improvise.

You would have to change a few fans, but this is in the next post. There is long explanation to follow...

Thanks. What's the exhaust fan? Also, I do have a second PC to communicate while in the process of upgrading.

If you did not remove backplate yet wait until IceEdge arrives - it might fit to the original backplate, I have mixed reviews on this subject.

Regarding fan issues in Inspiron 570 and the rest Inspirons (I found that the most of them have the same issues). Inspiron considered cheap model and as such doesn't have software fan control, meaning that BIOS and motherboard are controlling fan speeds, no matter what program I tried, I could not increase fan speeds, even when CPU was overheating. This is part where I am guessing: original CPUs are very low wattage and low heat producers, so BIOS and MOBO adjusted to for those parameters, when we place 965 in, it requires more power and produces more heat, however motherboard doesn't know this and cotinue to operate as if it is still low heat producing CPU (for an example Athlon II x2 250, was running max temperature around 30-35C). So, it is not guessing any more. In order to overcome those obstacles there are 3 ways to control speed of fans, all of them are hardware control, I will discuss all but strongly recommend only one.

First of all let me say about sizes of fans. 92 MM for CPU tower cooler like IceEdge and for exhaust fan. We are talking about 3 fans in total (2 CPU push/pull and 1 exhaust). There is the way to place extra two 70 mm or  80 mm fans, but this is in case if existing cooling system is not enough, because it is a headache, I am done it - I know, will discuss in the other post.

1. Fan panel controllers. The best choice, but requires a lot of work and it will occupy second DVD slot.

Here a 2 examples, if you want to proceed this way, you are on your own, since I went easier and cheaper way.

2. Another way is to use fans with fan controller attached to them, which is a good idea if you can place those controllers outside the case, usually they have very short cables. This is cheap way, but there are not so many choices, here is Antec Tri Cool 92 mm.

3. This is my way, simple, cheap, but can be noisy - you basically place fan to run at maximum speed at all times, you can do this by bypassing MOBO speed control (PWM) by using one of two choices: 3/4 pin fans where 3 pin goes to motherboard and 4 pin Molex to the power supply, so fan receives full power and runs at 100%, and the second choice is only for CPU fan which attaches to the motherboard using 4 pin (looks like 3 pin) connector, in this case you are using 3 pin fan - missing wire is speed control - you fan is running at 100%.

Here are a few recommendations, I tried to choose not so noisy ones (for me personally I used fans from my old parts, from old Dells).

First, two 3 pin fans which could be great substitute to IceEdge fan if it runs to slow and CPU gets hot (ICEEDGE fans seems to have 4 pin connector, which will be mobo controlled). ARCTIC F9 Case Fan and Rexus TopMotor DF129225BM. If I had to redo my work again and did not have old parts I would use one of them for my CPU push position. Next is the exhaust fan, in this case you MUST use 3/4 pin (2 pins) fan, because 3 pin attached to MOBO and MOBO thinks that it is controlled, but the 4 pin Molex get attached to power supply and thus fan runs at 100% bypassing MOBO speed control. I could not find anything better than this one (in my opinion). CityNet 92mm Case Fan can be found at Frys and Amazon, for the same price. There are more choices like this, but CityNet seems to have better CFM to noise ratio. It also can be used as CPU pull fan, I think I actually used one in my original case.

Now this is how it was looks like in original Inspiron 570 case.

This is Rocketfish 92mm cooler re-branded by BestBuy from COOLER MASTER Hyper TX3, both are almost identical, but I used Rocketfish, because it was available around the corner.

Next is my fault, MSI 550 TI OC card, which I choose due to its exceptional cooling abilities, I should have get 560 TI, but it is too late now

A few pictures to show overall situation. Non modular PSU, well another fault...

Cable management, I hate it.

View from the back angle.

And now the INTAKE fans, yes, you heard it right. I managed to insert 2 80mm fans from inside of the front panel around on/off switch, those fans came from the old parts bin, pictures below shown 2 70mm fans, which I removed due to excessive noise. 80mm fans were mounted using 3 screws for 1 and I think only 2 screws for another (look at red markings), but holding tight, no vibration, here we go:

Front view

View from inside, actual shown are 70mm fans, which already replaced with 80mm (not shown):

Inside intake fan lower below:

I think I covered them all, 80 MM fans, if you decide to install them you would have to connect them directly to PSU.

What PSU do you recommend I get?