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17710
September 27th, 2009 11:00
Optiplex GX260 processor upgrade overheat problem?
I have an Optiplex GX260 SFF (small form factor). It came with a 1.8 Ghz Pentium 4 processor running with a 400Mhz bus. The motherboard will support processors with 400 or 533Mhz bus speeds, as well as 1.75v and 1.5v processors. So, I picked up a 2.66Ghz processor (1.5v / 533Mhz bus) and the system will boot and recognize the processor and the faster bus speed (I have DDR266 ram to match.) The problem I run into is that after 15 to 45 minutes of use, the system will suddenly blue screen. The reasons vary from IRQL_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL to BUGCODE_USB_DRIVER, etc. Each time the reason is different. I suspect the processor is overheating, although the BIOS does not report a "Thermal Event" when the system crashes. Putting the 1.8Ghz processor back into the machine makes it stable again. I have tried replacing the thermal grease that came on the stock heatsink with an aftermarket grease, but that didn't seem to help.
Questions:
If the processor is overheating, I assume I need a bigger heatsink and/or a higher speed fan. Since the GX270 and GX280 shipped with faster processors, would a heatsink/fan combo from the small form factor versions of the GX270 or GX280 work in a GX260? From the manuals on both systems, it looks like the GX280 heatsink uses a different retention mechanism. Is there any way to retro-fit this to the GX260?
I thought it might also be a power supply problem, but the power supplies in the GX260 and the GX280 are both rated at 160W. The GX280 is rated for a higher heat dissipation though.
Has anyone else had any success getting faster processors to work in a GX260?
beamermt25
468 Posts
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September 27th, 2009 16:00
Hello! I have not played with the computer you have, but I do have some tips that may help. Normally when a computer manufacture places a higher component in a series of computers, they have sometimes have to adjust things like the BIOS, add a faster (not necessarily a bigger) fan, and maybe even a different heat sink. If i were in your shoes, what i would do is see if you can find parts (heatsink and fan) for the GX270 or 80 and see if they will fit (finding the demensions and so on). If the boxes for the 260-280 are the same, you shouldn't have any problems putting the heat sink in the lower end system. Dell normally sells parts for their computer line but you can also google.com the GX270/80 for parts as well, and make sure your BIOS is up to date as that is normally the first thing they would change to make your system compatable with newer or faster processors (and could be the reason why you have crashes?).