Thanks for that comprehensive response, it confirms what I feared. Still even with a Q9550 processor the existing temperatures remain cool enough for my demands so I will leave well alone, although an upgrade to the front fan to improve the air flow might help, as might an additional fan at the back as I have replaced the hard drive with an SSD.
780 uses BTX motherboard and Dell BTX cooler which is installed in a completely different manner compared to cooler for ATX motherboard (the latter uses 4 screws symmetrically tightened around a 72 x 72 mm square hole surrounding LGA775 socket). It is impossible to install ATX heatsink on a BTX motherboard.
Dell cooler housing has two grooves to hook on motherboard hinge on one side and uses two screws to fasten on the other side. The 4 mounting holes on 780 board are not symmetric or square because 2 holes on one side are for screws to fasten the hinge to motherboard, while the other 2 holes are for screws to fasten the heat sink housing.
You can verify that you have the copper cold plate which should be good enough for the cpu in 780. You might want to clean and reapply thermal paste given age of pc, although my 780 SFF w original paste still runs cool n quiet. Lastly you could inspect the heat sink copper plate and cpu heat spreader for scratches. If too many scratches consider replacing it.
PS BTX 4 mounting holes have distances of 4.4 × 2.275 in (55.79 × 111.76 mm) between one another. it is called "Support and Retention Module (SRM)" in the specification.
fatfairy
2 Posts
0
June 14th, 2022 05:00
Thanks for that comprehensive response, it confirms what I feared. Still even with a Q9550 processor the existing temperatures remain cool enough for my demands so I will leave well alone, although an upgrade to the front fan to improve the air flow might help, as might an additional fan at the back as I have replaced the hard drive with an SSD.
redxps630
9 Legend
•
15.4K Posts
0
June 11th, 2022 19:00
780 uses BTX motherboard and Dell BTX cooler which is installed in a completely different manner compared to cooler for ATX motherboard (the latter uses 4 screws symmetrically tightened around a 72 x 72 mm square hole surrounding LGA775 socket). It is impossible to install ATX heatsink on a BTX motherboard.
Dell cooler housing has two grooves to hook on motherboard hinge on one side and uses two screws to fasten on the other side. The 4 mounting holes on 780 board are not symmetric or square because 2 holes on one side are for screws to fasten the hinge to motherboard, while the other 2 holes are for screws to fasten the heat sink housing.
You can verify that you have the copper cold plate which should be good enough for the cpu in 780. You might want to clean and reapply thermal paste given age of pc, although my 780 SFF w original paste still runs cool n quiet. Lastly you could inspect the heat sink copper plate and cpu heat spreader for scratches. If too many scratches consider replacing it.
PS BTX 4 mounting holes have distances of 4.4 × 2.275 in (55.79 × 111.76 mm) between one another.
it is called "Support and Retention Module (SRM)" in the specification.