MightyMagmortar,
As far as I can tell the most powerful processor for your Dell 4550 is going to be the Pentium 4 533FSB 3.06GHz single-core with hyperthreading. See>
http://ark.intel.com/products/27499/Intel-Pentium-4-Processor-supporting-HT-Technology-3_06-GHz-512K-Cache-533-MHz-FSB
These are surprisingly expensive >
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Pentium-4-3-06GHz-512KB-533MHz-SL6S5-Socket-478-Pin-Northwood-HT-CPU-/350828640579?pt=CPUs&hash=item51af043943
And uses 87W!
> this is the least expensive completed sale for $34. This must be because it's the fastest in it's series, but in my view is not worth it. If you had a Dimension 8400, you could buy
two P4 670 64-bit hyperthreading at
3.8GHz for that amount.
I'm all for keeping the old systems going, but for very little money, you can have a 3GHz, 2-core / 4 thread system that supports up to 8GB RAM and with a PCie X16 video card slot . This can run a 64-bit operating system, the RAM capacity means being able to use several programs at once, and of course the choice of video cards is in the many, many, many category >
http://www.ebay.com/itm/DELL-OPTIPLEX-760-MT-PC-2GB-RAM-80GB-HDD-CORE2DUO-DVD-VISTA-BUSINESS-/300921737424?pt=Desktop_PCs&hash=item46105550d0
This is a fairly random selection, but has the excellent 3.0GHz 64-bit E8400 core2 Duo hyperthreading, 2GB RAM, and 80GB HD > $80 Buy It Now. If you could sell your 4550 for $46 and add the $34 that would have been spent on the CPU upgrade, you'd have it. You could add RAM, your new drive, Linux, and spend perhaps $30-50 on a used graphics card to the Optiplex and it would be miles ahead of the fastest 4550.
I have a 2004 Dell Dimension 8400 with a P4 3GHz , 4GB RAM, Quadro FX 570 and 750GB HD that I've had since new and it is amazingly reliable and capable running XP Pro > AutoCad 2004, Sketchup, Corel Graphics 12, Adobe CS3, MS Office 2003. When I went to 3D CAD and rendering, I had to change, but those old Dells still work just fine on the programs from it's era.
Just a thought.
Cheers,
BambiBoom
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram