Using a Dell Insprion i570 stock heatsink with Phenom II 4X 3.4Ghz

Which Phenom II did you purchase?

But... More than likely it will not work.


Reason:

The old CPU had a Thermal Design Power of 65Watts, which is what that HSF is designed to cool.

The Phenom II X4's range from 95-104Watts, and the X6's go up from there. More than likely if you did use the HSF from the X2 it would run fine for standard computing, but as soon as you put a heavy load on the CPU you would start having crashes, most commonly your computer just completely shutting down instantly in order to avoid overheating.

x4 965 3.4 GHz, not planning to overclock.

That's good because you can't anyway with that system.

My question is, is a 965 even supported? If it a normal 965BE, it's a 125W or 140W TDP CPU and I HIGHLY doubt that that motherboard will support it.

Ok, after some searching, even though I can't find anything saying that it's officially supported, it apparently will work.

That honestly is a shock to me. I would never have thought that.

How so? Could you post the links where you read this please?

Mainly, this one. http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3...

But there's a post buried in this one that says it will work, as well. http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3...

The problem, from other posts that I saw, is exactly what you're experiencing: Finding a HSF to work with the 965. I never saw any answers to that, unfortunately.

My best guess would be something like a Cooler Master Hyper TX3. It uses the AMD clip in style, but I still don't know if it would work.

Problem is that there is no AMD clip on the board, and the mounting points for the HSF don't seem to be in the proper orientation for one, so it renders the one i got with the Phenom useless

Ah, that's just stupid.

Well, the TX3 can be screwed in too (no back plate, either).

You might have to look into something like that, that can be screwed in.

I'm sure you can find replacement mounts on newegg.

Well, I decided to wait on the processor until I can get a better motherboard. On another note, the video card I purchased does not seem to be working. It's a Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 and for some reason any monitor we try won't recognize the computer. We've had it plugged into the motherboard and the video card using the VGA ports, DVI port on the card, a VGA to DVI adapter in the DVI port on the card as well as HDMI on both the motherboard and card. Even after disabling the onboard graphics, the monitors won't recognize the new card. We have also gone into the BIOS to disable the onboard, but there was no option, so we ended up doing so in the device manager in safe mode.