Starting from scratch help

Hi Bill,  I suggest to clean out old thermal paste and apply fresh paste because you have a professional business machine.  It could had been used many hours a day for the past 5 - 6 years.  The old paste could have been dried out and not working as good as fresh new paste.  Remember that I also suggest to change the coin cell battery.  Those are little cost but you can perform all at once as part of machine maintenance.  You were planning to order some other item like rubber fan mounts and displayport cable, if you add up many little items, it will be enough to receive free shipping, hence the suggestion to your plan.  The task is simple but following the service manual will be better and safer for you.

If you are installing up to date OS and programs, a BIOS update will be benefit as it will update the management engine components as well.  I know by saying this, other members might jump in and criticize my suggestion but I would update straight to the current BIOS without stepping.  In contrary to others, I think it's safer to flash once than attempting 10 or 20 times.  But of course, your machine, your decision.  The BIOS update is very simple, I would just download the BIOS to download folder and double click on it to run.  Just make sure no interruption of power, no other task running (disconnect your PC from internet will be a big help), and no other extra device connect to the machine beside video, audio, mouse and keyboard.  

A CPU upgrade will provide benefit in performance, how much of improvement verse the cost needed to be measure for the worthy of benefit gain.  I think you leave it for another day.  Focusing on making your machine run with optimal performance first, then you can get a base line for comparing to set your upgrade goal. 

Chino,

I downloaded the driver update files that you listed and began installing them. Chipset and Management Engine went as expected. When I got to the Intel Iris Graphics Driver only one generic driver was listed by Device Manager. I think it was dated 6/21/2006. I tried updating with the newer driver and it said that the best driver was already installed. I've extracted the NVIDA driver but decided to check with you before proceeding with it. Do you see an issue? The sense I get is that the Intel drivers use the on-chip integrated graphics and the NVIDA driver will shift that to the K620. Is that right?

Your comment about workstation usage made me wonder about temperatures so I installed HWMonitor. The core temps are all reasonable. There also are two temps labeled TZ00 and TZ01 that are about 15 F higher, but not changing. Some searching suggests that they might be associated with the motherboard but I can't find anything definitive. Do you happen to know what, if anything, they are? I was under the impression that this computer was used regularly but not excessively. However the BIOS was initially set to turn it on automatically at 5 AM every day. That doesn't make much sense unless it was used for some sort of automatic data logging activity. I'm currently trying to find out more.

HWMonitor doesn't display any fan speeds. I've tried two others including SpeedFan with the same result. Do you happen to know of any that will display the fan speeds?

I've added a Dell AX510 soundboard. That was easy except for the Dell documentation. Attached below is a pic of the relevant section of the T3620 owner's manual as well as what the rear panel looks like. The audio icons are small enough that it was hard to notice details. But I now understand that the horizontal line in them is an arrow and is showing audio-in on the left and audio-out on the right. I initially thought that they might be denoting the left and right speakers! The owner's manual is very disappointing.

I'd previously mentioned changing to a faster processor. I don't know if I will ever do that but some snooping around suggest that the i5-9400F is nearly 70% faster in benchmarks than my i5-6500. Used ones sell for around $70. I also see used i5-9500F's but they're around $120. That's too much for the associated gains. We'll have to see how happy I am with the i5-6500 and if prices drop at all. The benchmarks tend to be dominated by gamers who are only interested in frame rates. That's not of particular interest to me.

Hello Bill, I will try to assist with all the questions you have in order as I am reading.

Yes, you can update the only display driver you see with nVidia driver, there won't be any issue.  It will depend on where you plug in the video cable and Windows will use it as main display.  

If you are concern about certain temperatures and wanting to know overall condition of you PC, download Speccy and install it (if you don't like, it can be uninstall without any problem).  After you launch it, use Windows Snipping tool to take a screenshot and post it here so I can see better of your setup (without having to go back and reading this entire thread).  Also, if you download this Crystal Disk Info and installing it.  After you launch it, look at the top right corner, it will tell you how many hours the SSD drive has been on (hover over the info also tell you in years and days).  The information may not necessarily mean good or bad because it does not reflect the (stressful) condition the machine was run.  Wanting to learn about your machine is okay but do not over concern about something already been done.  Start fresh with what you want, how you want and only repair/upgrade to meet your needs.

I see the picture you post.  The color codes and symbols indicate an input (mic) and output (speaker).  You used the right plug.

Your CPU upgrade plan will entirely depend on your needs.  Benchmark numbers are just numbers, you won't see any different if you don't have the needs (CPU intensive tasks).  One thing to note, the model suffix F meaning no integrated graphics.

Chino,
I updated the graphics driver to the NVIDA. It scared me when the screen suddenly went black. But it came back after several seconds with NVIDA Quadro K620 listed in Device Manager. I also tried updating the audio driver but it said that I already had the most recent driver (12/6/19 vs 6/21/17 in the Dell Update Package).
Here are screenshots from HNMonitor and CrystalDiskInfo plus a portion of the listing produced by Speccy ( I think I've come across a minor bug in Speccy and will be contacting them about it).
I don't think it's a Dell thing but no one displays the fan speeds. I've looked at some manufacturer's drawings for fans used by Intel. They aren't terribly informative but the four leads seem to be a ground, 12 V, PWM (pulse width modulation signal), and a speed signal. So the speed information seems to be there. Go figure.
Since I have the K620, the on-chip graphics seem unnecessary. Hence the 9400F.
With regard to benchmarks, I have my own, a program that solves complex logical problems and makes about 2.5 trillion 800 bit comparisons. It took eight days to complete when first run on a 100MHx Pentium (and possibly caused the motherboard to fail). That was cut down to around 6.5 hours on a 2.5GHz Athlon. Both were years ago. I'd like to convert it to use 64 bit words and run on a contemporary machine.

Speccy:
Operating System Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
CPU Intel Core i5 6500 @ 3.20GHz
Skylake 14nm Technology
Average Temperature 65 °F
Core 0 Temperature 67 °F
Core 1 Temperature 65 °F
Core 2 Temperature 65 °F
Core 3 Temperature 63 °F
Motherboard Manufacturer Dell Inc.
Model 09WH54 (Socket 0)
Version A00
Chipset Vendor Intel
Chipset Model Skylake
Chipset Revision 07
Southbridge Vendor Intel
Southbridge Model C236
Southbridge Revision 31
BIOS Brand Dell Inc.
Version 1.3.6
Date 5/26/2016
PCI Data Slot PCI-E Gen 3
Slot Type PCI-E Gen 3
Data lanes x16
Slot Designation SLOT1
Characteristics 3.3V, PME
Slot Number 0
RAM 8.00GB Single-Channel DDR4 @ 1064MHz (15-15-15-36)
Physical Memory
Memory Usage 24 %
Total Physical 7.93 GB
Available Physical 5.98 GB
Total Virtual 9.80 GB
Available Virtual 7.62 GB
SPD Slot #1 Type DDR4
Size 8192 MBytes
Manufacturer SK Hynix
Max Bandwidth DDR4-2134 (1067 MHz)
Part Number HMA41GU6AFR8N-TF
Serial Number 642263461
Week/year 10 / 16Hard drives
Graphics DELL P2411H (1920x1080@60Hz)
2047MB NVIDIA Quadro K620 (NVIDIA) 96 °F
Current Resolution 1920x1080 pixels
Bus Interface PCI Express x16
Storage 119GB SK hynix SC308 SATA 128GB (SSD)
SATA type SATA-III 6.0Gb/s
Power On Count 348 times
Power On Time 2187.0 days
Temperature 69 °F
Power On Count 348 times
Power On Time 2187.0 days
Erase/Program Cycles 20,231,002
Average Erase Count, Max Erase Count 166,390,393,120
Total LBAs Written 15,730,239,055
Total LBAs Read 6,656,736,963
Read Error Retry Rate 3,542,928