T7500 - Motherboard upgrade

Hi @AkihideTsugane,

Quick risky when talking about replacing a compatible non-Dell motherboard into a Dell workstation, specially when there should be no compatible motherboard for a brand workstation. If you do replace other brand's motherboard, it's not T7500 anymore.

Instead of motherboard replacement, there's still many ways to upgrade your T7500 to improve gaming experience. Check on benchmark results of some builds of T7500 here. Some of them even get an UFO ranking in gaming category without changing the motherboard. Here's some advise for your reference:

- CPU

Notice from the UserBenchmark results above that Xeon X5690 works perfectly with T7500, which runs at 3.46GHz. It would be a big improvement if you replace it with the existng X5670. A refurnished X5690 cost around US$85 at eBay. 

- Hard drive

Although T7500 motherboard limited to SATA2, you can still increase hard drive transfer rate by using add-in PCIe cards. Some of these cards with extra SATA ports and allow your hard drive at run at SATA3. Some of them provide ports for m.2 SATA. Low-end cards price at US$1X only. Worth to try!

CAUTION: Beware that T7500 do not support m.2 NVMe drive by default. But if you DO want to use m.2 NVMe as a Windows boot drive in T7500 no matter how complicated the process will be, check out my previous thread about it.

- Memory

Official technical guide shows that T7500 support both PC3-8500 (1066MHz ) and PC3-10600 (1333MHz) ECC DDR3 memory, and Crucial indicated even PC3-12800 (1600MHz) compatible too. Check those in your system and see if they are the slower one. If yes, there's another room for performance improvement.

- GPU

Yeah of course, upgrading GPU would definitely make a big difference on gaming. Benchmark results show that most high marks build installed with a 1080 ti. However, I personally do no recommend to use refurnished GPU. And now a brand new 1080ti or the latest 2070/2080 still cost a lot. As I don't know what GPU you''re using now, left this recommendation as the last concerns.

Hi !

Thanks for the recommendations, advice, and answers, in such a short period of time ! Wow, I'm astonished !

I'm thinking about replacing my x5670 for a x5690 for a long time now, I'm still quite reluctant at the moment, benchmarks indicate there is only a 3% improvement between them. I'm actively thinking about it though. (And I can even find it at 60€ on Aliexpress today, from the same vendor that shipped my x5670, I had a E5540 previously)
Also, I tried overclocking my x5670 with setfsb, with no results, except freezes when I tried upping my clock too high, looks like it's totally locked.

I have a SATA3 PCie card, unfortunately, I was not able to boot using it. I later read that you cant boot with Pcie Sata 3 card with the T7500(and I also read there is one Marvell controller that works for that, don't know which one), so I'm still using it in a Sata 2 port for now and I'll maybe get another SSD for games later on. I have a raid 5 3TB array with a physical Raid Manager (RocketRaid), but it's quite slow.
I did not knew it was possible to use M.2 Nvme with it, I'll make sure to check it out ! Thanks !

As for memory, I noticed maybe 1 week ago that I managed my memory poorly, I have 6x4Go quad rank ECC memory, and I read on the service manual with more than 2 4R, the memory slows down to 800Mhz. I was about to buy some 1333Mhz memory, but I'm curious about 1600Mhz now, I'll check it out ! DO you have any advice about memory configuration ? Should I buy 2 dual rank 16Gb, even if it's not officially supported in the service manual ? Or anything else ?

I have a GTX 960 2go for 3 years now, and I'm actively looking at those new RTX 2060 (especially the Palit, it seems you can overclock it pretty well !). I'm unsure about my x5670 bottlenecking it, especially at stock, and cannot find any source for that. Another concern is that many GPU nowadays use 8-pin connectors and my 1100W psu does only provide 6-pin connectors, I'm pretty much a beginner when it comes to psu so I'm not sure it is 100% safe to use a 6pin to 8pin connecter. Any advice ?

Thanks in advance !

In order to make my further suggestion more accurate, may I ask you few questions:

What kind of game you most interested in and to be played on your workstation? For example,

• Online real time battle games like LOL or Dota2
• 3D action games like FFXV or Battlefield V
• Fighting games like SFV or KOF XIV
• VR games (... the only VR game I can think of is... VR Kanojo... so, better don't make any example XD...)
• Mobile games to be played on Android emulator running in Windows
• Or... any games actually

Any other purpose of your workstation besides gaming? For example,

• Graphic design
• Video editing
• Audio mixing
• Home media server
• VM server
• Any other purpose not mentioned above

Sure, thanks again for helping, that is very kind of you ! 

I used to play Dota2 and Starcraft II but these two games already run perfectly currently. SC2 is very cpu-oriented and the x5670 does not suffer at all.

RPG is the main genre I play, FFXV is a good example, I also play a heavily modded Skyrim (300 mods, 100Go Skyrim folder ahah), it runs smooth at 30-35 fps. Also The Witcher 3 and every good RPG actually.

Interested in every good Diablo-like too (waiting for Lost Ark in Europe), and sometimes I emulate my old PSX, with games like Castlevania : SOTN... Good old time !

I'm not at all into shooters, FPS, TPS, Combat games, War games, VR games, but besides that I like most games. I think I would upgrade to a 144Hz monitor if I were to play those kind of games actually but I really dislike it, so that's not a problem at the moment.

I only use my T7500 for gaming actually. I just have a share with my TV, we watch anime with my wife (in quite bad quality, 480p, 720p most of the time). But that's it really, gaming and browsing, almost nothing else ! 

Thanks again for your help :) ! 

Hi @AkihideTsugane,

OK then, here's the analyzed result for your system as reference:

• CPU upgrade -  a little improvement
• Hard drive upgrade - a little improvement as performance limited to SATA2 interface
• Memory upgrade - a little improvement
• GPU upgrade - much improvement but performance still limited to PCI-e 2.0 interface

Let's focus on those MMORPG kind of games you mentioned. GTX960 should be good enough for hardware requirement of those you mentioned. This is my previous GPU as well. I once tested it on Black Desert, the most demanding MMORPG on hardware requirement I ever played, with an acceptable results. For sure that upgrade it to RTX 2060 may make a great difference, but not great enough to show the actual power of 2070 due to PCI-e 2.0 interface. Check on this test regarding RTX 2080 Ti performance on different PCI-e bus. PCI-e 2.0 bus only provide nearly half performance of PCI-e 3.0 bus. It will happen to your system when using RTX 2060. Kind of waste, right?

When you plan to spend a bit to upgrade CPU, a bit to HDD, and a bit on RAM, lump sum of all this "bits" may budget enough for you to buy a better workstation. The point is, no matter how you upgrade your existing one, PCIe 2.0 and SATA2 still tied you up. Therefore, here's my recommendation in conclude:

"Stick to your existing system now. Check if any good choice of replacement for your whole system later. Look for GPU replacement as the last step."

P.S. Your wife may appreciate me about helping her husband stop spending on his old big weird machine which means only a cartoon player for her... XD  

Hi @bmcowboy !

Thanks for your answer !

I played BDO too and it ran fine with my GTX 960, on medium settings, 30fps with some stutter. GTX 960 is by no way a bad card, it's still pretty good, I just notice I have to decrease my settings and expectations each new game because 2Gb VRAM becomes mediocre when very high quality textures are involved.

I'm glad you read this test too, I did it when it first came out, it's a very interesting topic. But I don't have Pcie2.0 x4 (that would be some terrible performance) but a Pcie2.0 x16, which is 2% better than a Pcie 3.0 x8 (and thus they wrote they put it under the same category on their test).The RTX 2080Ti was only bottlenecked by 3% by the Pcie 3.0x8 so I would expect the same from a Pcie2.0 x16. AND unfortunately, I won't buy a RTX 2080Ti but I'd rather buy an RTX 2060, with less bandwidth usage. So I expect it to run just fine (maybe 1-2% bottleneck at most?).

I think it's worth noting I can have all the ram needed, even 64Gb DDR3-12800, for free. I work as a network security engineer and we have plenty of used ecc ram from old servers and workstations we're throwing away(we can't sell it in our country).

I had the same reasoning as you tonight, I browsed userbenchmark T7500 benchs, and actually, I just need a new GPU (350€ for rtx 2060 Palit OC), CPU (60€ x5690), m.2 nvme drive + adapter (80€+20€?) and... that's it (+RAM but it costs 0€ for me as long as it's some old ddr3 ecc ram)!

The only thing I couldn't use for a new system in this list is the CPU, so if I can make use of this system like 2-3 more years for 60€, and THEN upgrade to 2021 standards, it would be pretty good in my opinion, because then, I agree that probably those new RTX 3XXX or 4XXX will use much more bandwidth than my PCIE2.0 x16 can provide.

But for now, it looks like it can still compete for a little more time.

What do you think about that ?

Thanks in advance :) !

PS : You're right, she doesn't play at all, but she agreed on those future improvements. I don't know why, but I won't say no XD

@AkihideTsugane,

I believe no more advise needed co'z you know your stuff very well actually. Good luck dude. May the Force be with you and your T7500.

P.S. How can I find such a thoughtful wife like yours? What a lucky man! I've been single for more than a decade just because all the girls  girlssssssssssss I met never allow me to do any tricks on computer upgrade. NEVER! Maybe I should open a new thread asking for help on this topic... T^T"

@bmcowboy

Thank you for your help !
May I PM you if I have any issue using your tricks for nvme m.2 boot drive ? I'm sure you know a whole lot more than me about this, I actually never tried, but I'm totally hyped ahah xD
Do you know if there's a special chipset for the nvme adapter working on these old workstation ? I read that some would not be recognized by the system - which would be sad :(.

Thanks again :) !

P.S. yeah lets open a thread, neat idea ＼(◎o◎)／ ! But I'm not sure you'll find the right answers on a Dell tech community... Some people would argue that it's all about socket compatibility, or the new psu you'll need to survive the relationship XD. Or maybe your soulmate is here, in this community, having troubles with an old Dell Inspiron Laptop. Help her, then marry her, she'll be so grateful she will let you upgrade your computer anytime ! (/◕ヮ◕)/  (or maybe i'm just mad and none of that is possible (ToT) )
May the Force be with you too dude ! :)

Hey @AkihideTsugane,

You really make my day by the words "socket compatibility". I laugh at my own seat and hopefully it didn't draw any attention in the office.

For sure that we can further talk on the NVMe boot topic, either private message or new thread here is fine for me. When you ask about chipset compatibility, let me tell you a bit about the story.

During research on this topic, almost all discussions end up with the same comment that "NVMe boot MUST work with a supported mainboard, not only with UEFI but also able to recognize a NVMe drive". Well yeah, I agree with that from the very beginning because all the official manuals and docs about T5600 say the same thing. Until one day, I find a thread here commented by a Rockstar member that "No NVMe boot for T5600, not ever and never will be." That lights up the fire in my deeply heart......

Lucky, I'm kind of person that always refer to official docs at the 1st place but never treat it as universal truth. Yes, T5600 would not be able to boot on NVMe in a traditional way. What I found  is a non-traditional mothod to boot the machine by a Macintosh-related boot loader. Sounds crazy but it works! To be fair, I'm just an user who benefit from this method. May all the glories back to those developers and volunteers.

And now, what exactly I can benefit from this NVMe boot method? It brings me to the 1st runner-up in userbenchmark comparison among all T5600 users. The top one using a Titan XP GPU, which still cost at around US$1,8XX, which cost a lot more than my whole T5600 system. It's fun!

Let's see if this miracle comes to your T7500 as well.

P.S.: No p.s. this time. I'm hurry to a doctor an engineer and check if my plug leads to the socket compatibility issue... 

Hey @bmcowboy !

I hope you survived the laugh, I wasn't sure about it being funny but looks like it worked xD

You're right, I'll ask on this thread or another one if I need help with the nvme boot, so that if there are people with the same troubles they can possibly find a solution too :)
I read your thread about using Clover (and I'm at the moment reading the big big thread on win-raid.com, it's incredible I haven't found it before you linked it with all the research I've done ahah), I have to buy the parts needed then I'll try it immediately. I wonder if the same workaround would work for sata 2"5 ssd, because i'm currently booting on a 256 GO Samsung 850 evo... On sata 2 port.

I don't know if I should keep it for my system and get an m.2 drive for games, or the contrary. Or even just another SSD and connect both to the same adapter, I would use only one adapter and not a second for nvme m.2. But at the same time the more I look at the write/read speed you have listed in your thread the more I want it too x). I'll make up my mind quickly, but advice are always welcome :D !

I found you on userbenchmark 2 days ago, there aren't many t5600 with rtx 2070 and nvme raid 0 ahah ;P !! (Im impressed by your RAM bench by the way, I'll try my best to compete ahah)
Congrats on your rank :D

Yo~ @AkihideTsugane

Yeah, try it! It's such a miracle journey. Two months ago I know nothing about m.2 drive, and even thought that all m.2 drive are NVMe... How dumb I was! And now, when every time my T5600 boot into Win10 within 5 seconds, all the efforts of researching on the web and trial-and-error tests worth.

Back to your case. Clover boot loader could be installed on any bootable media accepted by original BIOS or UEFI of your machine, i.e. USB stick or SATA hard drive or even CD/DVD disc. Once loaded, it will search and list out all detected OS-ready storage including NVMe drive on PCIe slot for you to choose. When Windows successfully loaded from the NVMe for the 1st time, Clover when identify it as the default OS drive, i.e. no more Clover screen and make the boot process even faster, until you make any chances on the Clover configuration file.

About storage drive to be chosen for Windows OS, better install it on NVMe. That's what the whole thing aim for to get the maximum performance of your system, right? Once your OS drive is fast enough, I believe it won't be a matter if you install games on other spare drives. Suggested process as below:

1. Precaution: 1x spare SATA interface hard drive, 1x NVMe m.2 drive on PCIe adapter, and 1x USB stick
2. Install the spare hard drive and PCIe adapter into your system. Boot into Windows from your existing Evo drive, setup the USB stick as a harddisk cloning tools (I use Macrium Reflect for free home use)
3. Shutdown and boot from the USB stick. Clone the Windows OS from Evo to NVMe.
4. When cloning done, reboot from your existing Evo drive again. Convert the NVMe drive from MBR to GPT. (If your Evo drive already in GPT table format, skip this step.)
5. Format the spare SATA drive by Boot Disk Utility to make it as a Clover boot media. Check those threads I posted before to see how to copy NVMe driver onto correct Clover directories and the plist file configuration.
6. Shutdown and detach the Evo drive (now you can keep it as an all-time backup disk, or clone and swap it with the spare SATA drive AFTER the whole process succeed). Boot into BIOS and set the spare SATA drive as primary boot drive, both BIOS and UEFI mode works.
7. Reboot again and this time you should be able to get into the Clover selection menu. Choose "Boot Windows from EFI"
8. Now, if you see the Windows loading icon, everything should be alright. It may auto-reboot again but should be fine on next boot.
9. Last step, enjoy your workstation with a totally new speed level. Noted that performance may still be limited by PCIe 2.0 interface, i.e. almost half of 3.0, but should be much better than SATA2.

For RAM bench, I don't know why CPU-Z shows 6XXMHz only while BIOS detected all memory in 1333MHz as well as Userbenchmark. Still working on it.

Hey @bmcowboy ! Thank for your thorough reply and steps !
Sorry about being long to answer, I've been away for the weekend.

I'll make sure to do exactly as you input, and I'll get back to you with screens and benchs ahah thanks again ! :D

As for CPU-Z showing 665Mhz, I can, for once, help you : that is totally right.
Notice 665Mhz is roughly 1333/2, and CPU-Z indicates it is showing DRAM while your DDR is at 1333Mhz.  But DDR stands for DOUBLE data rate, hence why it shows approx. CPU-Z value x2. There's no troubleshooting to do, your ram is at the right speed.

My RAM is at 400Mhz on CPU-Z because I have 6x4Gb QUAD-rank memory, but I recently came to know that the T7500 only support 1 quad-rank memory per triple channel, and it automatically slows down to 400Mhz (= 800Mhz DDR3) if you exceed that amount, my bad. I put it here because it may help others too.

Thanks again :D !

Thanks a lot @AkihideTsugane. Everything about RAM benchmark make sense now.

Hi there, I came across your post and immediately had to enquire as to how you went.

I attempted to upgrade my gfx but it seems my motherboard has died or stuck without post in the process so decided to reach out. Did you end up getting the RTX2060 and if so, which PCIe slot did you use?

I'm stuck with a solid "2" diagnostic light on my T7500 with my dual X5670 and 96GB of ram, really hoping I don't need to get rid of it and move on. Previously had Quadro 6000 and Tesla 2050 although the Quadro 6000 is no longer supported with latest drivers, meaning I can't accomplish much in my video editing anymore

Keen to hear back,

Cheers,
Fikish