Many Dell computers can be upgraded beyond what they were offered with and even overclocked in many cases. This may make repairing one of these more viable than it would seem. I've been playing with the BTX versions so much of what I say will be referring to those.
Of the BTX Optiplexes, most of them have a 95W CPU hard limit. Typically a Q9650 is the maximum, For single thread Apps, an E7500 2 core can be tape modded to 3.66GHz.
The exceptions are the Opti 745 which due to PentiumD suppport can support a QX6800 and can be overclocked using Throttlestop 6.0 software.
The Optiplex 380 can run an X5470 Xeon with a BIOS mod for 3.3Ghz. It can also run 2x4GB DDR3 1066 RAM.
Other Dells that can run the 65nm QX6800 and overclock are the-
Dimension E520,9200,9200C XPS410,210 These have 4 phase VRM and can get to 4GHz at times.
Some other XPS and workstations can run the unlocked 130W QX9650. 4.15GHz is common.
XPS420, XPS430, Precision T3400 (dual GPU )XPS630
The Precision T3500 can run some of the unlocked Xeons and overclock them. W3570,W3580 4 core Nehalem, and W3680,W3690 6 core can be Throttlestop overclocked, and 3 channel RAM makes performance worthwhile.
Due to larger memory modules becoming available over time almost all of these computers can run 2x the RAM they were originally offered with.
Userbenchmark.com is a good place to look at a system and see what CPUs and RAM capacity others have been able to use.
I don't have much to offer in the way of board level repairs. I hope this isn't too OT for this forum.
Of the BTX Optiplexes, most of them have a 95W CPU hard limit. Typically a Q9650 is the maximum, For single thread Apps, an E7500 2 core can be tape modded to 3.66GHz.
The exceptions are the Opti 745 which due to PentiumD suppport can support a QX6800 and can be overclocked using Throttlestop 6.0 software.
The Optiplex 380 can run an X5470 Xeon with a BIOS mod for 3.3Ghz. It can also run 2x4GB DDR3 1066 RAM.
Other Dells that can run the 65nm QX6800 and overclock are the-
Dimension E520,9200,9200C XPS410,210 These have 4 phase VRM and can get to 4GHz at times.
Some other XPS and workstations can run the unlocked 130W QX9650. 4.15GHz is common.
XPS420, XPS430, Precision T3400 (dual GPU )XPS630
The Precision T3500 can run some of the unlocked Xeons and overclock them. W3570,W3580 4 core Nehalem, and W3680,W3690 6 core can be Throttlestop overclocked, and 3 channel RAM makes performance worthwhile.
Due to larger memory modules becoming available over time almost all of these computers can run 2x the RAM they were originally offered with.
Userbenchmark.com is a good place to look at a system and see what CPUs and RAM capacity others have been able to use.
I don't have much to offer in the way of board level repairs. I hope this isn't too OT for this forum.
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