Fixing Up a Dell Prescision T3500 What parts

EllieYo,

A Dell Precision T3500 can have a very good performance. On Passmark Performance Test, the top rated T3500 with the 6-core Xeon X5650 @2.67 / 3.06GHz, GTX 760, Mushkin SSD, and 12GB RAM :

Rating= 3004 / CPU=7606 / 2D=520 / 3D=5188 / Memory= 1667 / Disk= 1929

>which is very good. A lot of the high score though is the GTX760 with extremely high 3D marks and the SSD boosting the disk rating. A T3500 with a 750Ti and mech'l HD rates about 2000.

The Xeon X5650 is an excellent CPU:

http://ark.intel.com/products/47922/Intel-Xeon-Processor-X5650-12M-Cache-2_66-GHz-6_40-GTs-Intel-QPI

> and on Passmark is rated No. 149.

Other GPU's that score well on Passmark in the T3500 are: GTX570, Radeon R9 270X, GTX 750 Ti, Quadro 5000, Radeon HD 6870, Radeon HD 7700. The GPU choice depends on the programs and tasks your friend uses and the budget, but it should handle almost anything. My suggestion would be to consider a good used GTX 750 Ti, which on Ebahh seem to start about $60-70 and up. Perhaps not the most brilliant gaming system ever- but probably not bad either.

For a really good performing, inexpensive HD, consider the Western Digital Blue 1TB at about $55. as a future upgrade, add a Crucial MX110 128GB SSD for the OS and programs at about $75.

Very useful- the PDF of the T3500 manual:

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/product-support/product/precision-t3500/manuals

The power supplies in Precisions are very good and the original PSU is 525W. The spec sheet shows that the GPU may use up to 150W

Because workstation often have power hungry GPU's- , and because the trend has been for new cards to have lower power requirements, a fairly modern GPU should be fine on the original PSU. Precisions are also very reliability-oriented so the PSU's are designed to run at full bore for a long time continuously,a bit like a server. In summary, if the original PSU is OK, keep it and spend that cost on a good GPU.

As you've probably already noted, the chipset is X58 and the RAM is DDR3, triple channel, 1333 and up to 24GB. having 12GB on the T3500 would be wonderful, but 8GB is probably sufficient unless you find an unrepeatable bargain on DDR3. I recently ran Firefox, 6 big 3D CAD and image programs on an HP z420 with medium-large size files and the RAM usage didn't go above 6GB.

I have a couple of Dell Precision one and two generation earlier and they'll run anything without ever really bogging down. Your friend will have a really high quality and reasonably fast system- excellent!

Cheers,

Bambiboom

HP z420 (2014) > Xeon E5-1620 quad core @ 3.6 / 3.8GHz > 24GB DDR3 ECC 1600 RAM > Quadro 4000 (2GB)> Samsung 840 SSD 250GB /Western Digital Black WD1003FZEX 1TB> M-Audio 192 sound card > AE3000 USB WiFi > HP 2711X, 27" 1920 X 1080 > Windows 7 Ultimate 64 >[Passmark system rating = 3923, CPU= 9223/ 2D= 839 / 3D=2048]

Dell Precision T5400 (2008) > 2X Xeon X5460 quad core @3.16GHz > 16GB DDR2 ECC 667> Quadro FX 4800 (1.5GB) > WD RE4 500GB / Seagate Barracuda 500GB > M-Audio 2496 Sound Card / Linksys 600N WiFi > Dell 24" and Dell 19" LCD > Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit > [Passmark system rating = 1859, CPU = 8528 / 2D= 512 / 3D=1097]

Dell Precision 390 (2005) Xeon x3230 quad core @ 2.67GHz > 6 GB DDR2 ECC 667 > Firepro V4900 (1GB)> 2X WD 320GB > 2X Dell 19" LCD > Windows 7 Professional 64-bit [Passmark system rating = 1431, CPU = 3642 / 2D= 433 / 3D=1346]

Dell Dimension E520 (2006) Core2 Duo E6700 dual core @2.66GHz > 4GB DDR2 667 > GeForce GT440 (1GB GDDR5) > 2X Dell 19" LCD > Windows 7 Professional 64-bit [Passmark system rating = 1219, CPU = 2024 / 2D= 457 / 3D=978]

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