Dell's precision T3500 (Custom), help to upgrade graphics card and recommendations.

rusty-gamer

Commendable
Dec 1, 2016
1
0
1,510
Hello guys! I just bough a refurbished T-3500 Workstation tower (someone feel the need and stole my previous one hahaha), haven't received the equipment but comes customized with:
Windows 7 Pro
Processor i7 Speed 3.06 Ghz
1 TB of Hard drive
Memory 12 GB
Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT
Don't now about the power supply.


Graphics Card
"My working needs" mostly AutoCad 2014, Revit 2012, Cinema 4D R14 + Vray (Render). Occasionally I do gaming Diablo 3, some RTS wish to play MKX, KI, some puzzles, platform genre's. I'm not that much in to framing per second so if I can pick 30 fps without lag I'll be great. Since the Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT may not be powerful to handle large 2D and 3D files, minimum would love to go back to Nvidia Quadro 4000 or to get a Nvidia quadro 5000 (may get used ones), but I have seen a Nvidia Quadro K5000 on T-3500 (published in internet) and would love to buy one gaming card (for -$200.00). How would this work, would I need to upgrade power supply?
*NOTE: one card for gaming the other for work.

***** Dells customer support advice was:
"PNY GeForce GTX 1080 - Graphics card - GF GTX 1080 - 8 GB GDDR5X - PCIe 3.0 x16 - DVI, HDMI, 3 x DisplayPort for $639.99 latest graphics card to" But since i'm not IT guy, I have some doubts, regularly (at least years back, haven't build a computer lately) Graphics cards for gaming, are that for gaming and won't perform like a workstation video card (same case otherwise).

Some other major doubts:

Windows 7 Pro haven't use that deep Windows 10 would you recommend?

Processor i7 Speed 3.06 Ghz
Use to have a Xeon can't remember the exact one, but it was a Quadro. Can you tell me what i7 could it be? Do you guy's think Xeon would be best?

Don't now about the power supply. hope it's the factory one or a better one. What would you recommend not from dell? since it's a refurbished used device, I'm a bit concern.

1 TB of Hard drive
Use to have 500HD with a partition of an SSD 128GB; I'm aware SSD would be great, but well not so important to upgrade right now.

Note: 1st time I get a refurbished so I asume it's the same chipset (x58) and power supply; since the processor isn't the factory one can't figure out if it's the same ram.
 
Solution
Currently running the MSI rx 480 in my Dell T3500 workstation. Here are the specs:

Xeon W3565 3.2Ghz
12-gb ECC RAM
Dell 525w PSU
Windows 7 (sp-1)

First thing to do is to identify the PSU. The factory Dell unit is pretty good.

What you have is Intel i7-950 3.06Ghz. Do not know if that is compatable with the Dell system, may be best to stay with a Xeon they were made with.

Susquehannock

Honorable
Currently running the MSI rx 480 in my Dell T3500 workstation. Here are the specs:

Xeon W3565 3.2Ghz
12-gb ECC RAM
Dell 525w PSU
Windows 7 (sp-1)

First thing to do is to identify the PSU. The factory Dell unit is pretty good.

What you have is Intel i7-950 3.06Ghz. Do not know if that is compatable with the Dell system, may be best to stay with a Xeon they were made with.
 
Solution

Hoodyracoon

Commendable
Sep 4, 2016
4
0
1,510
Works with a gtx 780,970,1070 and Rx 270x I can tell you, honestly since Dell t3500s seems to support ufie any GPU should work, also the t3500 seems to hackintosh fine I use it for iOS app builds myself and it runs the latest 12.2.2 fine(wifi a supported GPU, and some work getting the Ethernet working)