Dell Precision 5810 CPU Upgrade

Lets start here:  https://www.dell.com/community/Precision-Fixed-Workstations/Need-Help-Upgrading-Xeon-E5-1603-to-Dell-T5810/td-p/7189284  It'll take some scrolling to get to the solution.

bradthetechnut Thanks for your reply. Yes, I had read that thread when I began the search. It reviewing it seems the board can take with E5-16XX or ES-26XX. I run DDR4 memory so it seems I would be good with either series. I am not clear on the bus throughput as being a limiting factor so maybe you have some clarity there.
The main question remains, would I experience and significant improvements in overall performance/speed on my system. Again my primary need is in video editing which is CPU heavy and where Premiere does make use of multithreading whereas AfterEffect does not.
Any thoughts are welcome.

With the E5-2697 v3:

I have a weakness.  I'm unable to answer questions on bus throuput.

I don't have and couldn't find an exact list of compatible CPU's.  Older Precision's have Tech Guides, lime from the T3500/5500/7500 generation.  Newer ones don't.

Working on this late last night, I missed that you mentioned a specific CPU you wanted to upgrade to.  The E5-2690 v3 will give you 33% better performance over your current CPU according to game-debate.  That's not all.  Screengrabs will show below when approved by moderation.  I couldn't get the v4 to come up in game-debate.

When tapping on 5.9, I got:

When tapping on 9.5, I got:

They also make an E5-2698 v3 and a super, super pricey E5-2699 v4.

E5-2698 v3:

E5-2690 v4 

I've ordered and expect a E5-2680 V4 in only a couple days. While the 2690 is the more powerful option, the 2680 is the "bang for the buck" for less than $200 on eBay now while the 2690s are $300 and up. Either way, great options! As I haven't yet received and installed the 2680, I can't be sure it will work, but I have a 90% confidence level based on research into it.

As I currently have the anemic, most base possible, stock E5-1603 v3 with only 4 cores and no hyperthreading. Going to the E5-2680 V4 will give me roughly 7x the computing power for a great price! I'll go from 4 cores/4 threads to 14 cores/28 threads along with the increased processor base speeds (and "max turbo", along with a drop from 140W to 120W heat output. The 7x improvement is based on increased proc speed, additional cores, and hyperthreading, so before anyone says anything, I'm aware threading doesn't "automatically" give an actual 7x improvement except under the most specific conditions. But it's still a great upgrade for less than $200! I can finally confidently start running my VMs on this machine (migrating from a Dell r720, so unfortunately there's no parts to loan.)

My only question left is, "Will a bare t7810 motherboard slot directly into the t5810 case?" I haven't seen anyone ask that question before, but as I'm going from an E5-1xxx to an E5-2xxx and already have a little more DDR4 than I need, I've found the t7810 motherboards on eBay going for $100 to $200. That, and a second matching processor later, and I expect these boards will be very useful. OTOH, moving to a t7920 will cost about the same but I'll have to start over again with the CPUs (but not the RAM), so that may be a better upgrade path. I like to max what I have before moving up, but the cost analysis tells me to leave the t5810 with my proc and RAM upgrades and move up to even the cheapest of the newest procs in the t7920 with much greater future-proofing. Just "thinking out loud" here!   

[edit for previous post] I have a Dell r710, not an r720. Oops, big difference there!

Additional edit - the 1103 socket supports both v3 and v4 versions of the chips, but only as long as they're the Haswell CPUs. The next gen CPU (can't remember the name offhand) also fits the socket but apparently isn't compatible with the t5810, so the E5-2690 V4, only slightly faster than my suggested E5-2680 V4, is the best processor you can get for this system (I think the E5-2699 mentioned above is only a V3 and not available as a V4, but I'd need to look that up again to be sure). 

I forgot to add another subject brought up by one of the other responders. As I've recently been researching what CPU is best for upgrading a t5810, I was very confused by the number of PCIe lanes handled. It seems the CPUs and the southbridge chips don't support the same number of lanes and, in fact, don't match in several ways. I finally found a partial answer to this. Some of the PCIe lanes used are run directly to the CPU, without using the southbridge, such as the primary video and the RAM, taking up much of its available PCIe availability, leaving the southbridge chipset to handle *some* of the other PCIe slots and peripherals. Unfortunately I can't remember which lanes, aside from the GPU slot and RAM, are routed to the CPU and routed through the southbridge. I have yet to find a good manual on the t5810 motherboard. Sigh... To do it right, you'll literally need to "balance" where you allocate the usage of your PCIe devices. Generally, with so many PCIe lanes available, this won't be a problem, even on the t5810, so it's just something to consider. As a side note, many new computers are coming out with what is known as "PCIe bifurcation". PCIe lanes are assigned in sets of a minimum of 4 to any device in your system, and often there are PCIe lanes (for instance a lane feeding a x16 PCIe slot), that has a dedicated 16 lanes. As you can imagine, this really puts a damper on how you balance your PCIe lane usage. However with the advent of PCIe bifurcation, some new computers can now split those lanes *after* they've been allocated! This allows, for instance, a single x16 PCIe slot to accept a breakout adapter into two x8 PCIe slots (a little concern for cable shielding, but it seems to work), allowing someone to double the usage of some slots for peripherals which weren't using the full x16 lanes anyway. I'm really looking forward to being able to have those options in the future on a later "old pc upgrade"!

[yet another edit because apparently I'm dyslexic today]

I said the 1103 socket and meant the 2011-3 socket.

Hi,

I'm considering a similar upgrade to my 5810. When you installed the INTEL XEON E5-2680 V4 did you use any additional cooling for the CPU as I'm concious about the limited space in the case?

Thanks.

Does anyone know if Dell Precision T5810 is compatible with E5-26xxL v3 and E5-26xxL v4 processors?

Hi,

My Dell Precision T5810 is successfully using an Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2650L v3 @ 1.80GHz.

Thanks,
Dragos

Easy way to check.  Google "Dell Precision 5810 [pick your CPU here] userbenchmark."

Or skip the CPU part and go "Dell Precision 5810 userbenchmark."

Precision 5810 Owner's Manual , pg. 49 has CPU tech specs.

Today I installed a Xeon E5-2690 v4 in my T5810. This replaced a Xeon E5-1630 v4. The upgrade was very easy and straightforward. I purchased the E5-2690 on eBay for $195. I plan to sell off the E5-1630 for about $90. So for a little over $100 (net) I got a 3x boost in speed and went from 4 cores to 14 cores. So far no problems at all.