Upgrade the CPU of Dell Dimension 4700

[$Iain$]

I have been using the dell dimension 4700. Even after 4GB of RAM I am not happy with its speed and performance. So I am thinking about upgrading my cpu. Right now it is running Pentium 4 530 (LGA 775). I am looking forward to get the Intel Core i3-550 Processor with 3.4GHz speed. Can I get higher than this? Is there any problem with installing higher speed CPU on this computer? I am afraid about the temperature issue here.

[Miguel Reyes]

As far as I know that the Dimension 4700 configured with Intel 915G Express Chipset and this board supports most of the processors. If the CPU is not under the Compatible, then you can update the BIOS for the new CPU. So it would be better to check whether your motherboard supports the new A10 BIOS (support for newer processors was added). Before upgrading the CPU make sure to install the latest BIOS. Also install the latest Chipset drivers so that they wouldn’t hurt the processor.

[Battista]

The Intel motherboard configuration says that it does not support an Intel dual core processor of any kind. Dell Service Manual states that it supports 3.8GHz as maximum frequency rate. If you are going to upgrade the CPU, then you will also need to upgrade the motherboard and ram memory.

[Himalayan]

If you are going to upgrade the CP, then make sure that it does have a CPUID. If it does not have one, that is in A10 BIOS in that case you must replace one of the CPUIDs (8 byte index) as well as corresponding Intel CPU microcode which you can find in the BIOS. Like this way you can add the support for the new CPU. However you will need a good tool to CPU microcodes which you can locate inside microcode.dat.

[Ramona19]

The Dell Dimension 4700 is very old PC. I think it has been 3 years. You computer still has a very good processor and I don’t think that it will bottleneck with your systems speed and performance. However if you are thinking about upgrading the processor, then try faster Pentium 4 with the same CPU socket. As someone already told that your motherboard does not support multiple core CPUs, you don’t have any other option left now.

[Munishi3]

Other than looking at the CPU upgrade I urge you to start looking at power supplies, motherboards and video cards within your budget. This is the things which are upgradable in your case. Also try overclocking with good air supply and do not get expensive heatsink/fan since you are not able to get more performance out of your CPU. You can do modification and overclocking on Dell since the BIOS is blocked by them.

[GadhadharY]

The dimension 4700 comes with integrated graphics chipset. There is PCI-E express slot on the motherboard, where you can put 8600GT. Mine is running with 2GB of RAM and it should be fine. If you are looking for a quality ram at an affordable price, try Corsair. For the video card, I will go for Gigabyte.

[Cain]

Windows XP 32-bit will support 3 GB+ of RAM and Windows XP 64-bit supports up to 128 GB of RAM along with this it also supports 16 TB of virtual memory address space. In your case the Dimension 4700 only supports 4 GB of RAM. 64-bit Pentium 4 CPUs are compatible with Dimension 4700 and it supports 64-bit OSes. One thing you need to do is to flash the BIOS with latest one so that you can add the latest CPU.