Dell Vostro 3450 I7 Quad Update

Hi all,

As the title suggests, I am thinking of buying an i5 or i3 Dell Vostro 3450 and replacing the CPU myself with a 2820qm off ebay. Have tried searching on the forums but people have only managed to get this to work with HP's equivalent business class probooks.

Would be really thankful if anyone could help me out on this. I really need eSATA which is the reason why I would prefer this over the HP's.

If anyone has also got it to work rather than just theoretically being possible, that would be awesome.

Thanks.

 

Worked on Vostro 3750 but imo 14" laptop cooling systems are not meant for 45W cpu. Got 78°C under Prime95 with my 17"

 

Thanks for the heads up kallogan. Over in the HP forums, one guy put in a 2820 QM in a 12.5 inch Hp Elitebook 2560P and another the same proc in a 13 inch 4330. I needed esata so I looked at dell.

Now however, I am also thinking that maybe a 17 incher would be good for vid editing in screen, and would be very interested if you you could give me some more helpful technical info. I would very much like to get a cheapo i3 3750 with i3 and upgrade to a 2820.

Any other issues on your experience, please do let me know. Much thanks in advance!

EDIT: Am looking at the version with the Nvidia 525 gpu and 900p screen in it. Would this be also cool under the stress of the quad core?

 

Dell is going to "make sure" that the cooling on the vostro's are not sufficient for quad chips. They want you to buy the latitude, if you need the performance for editing. It is just bad marketing and I will be surprised if you got a good temp under full load with 2820qm.

Not to discourage you, but I used 3550 for a bit, which has same if not better cooling, and the fan/heatsink is just not good enough to handle the quads. But in most situation your cpu wont run in FULL load and your temps might be decent for no throttling.

Did you make sure that the vostro 3450 bios supports quad cores?

If the 17inch version can be configured with a quad, I do not see major problem with the cooling with the quad. Just remember that generally cooling is bad for vostro line under a good amount of stress. I owned previous generations before and it has been this way. But in reality, editing wont be much of a problem. As long as you are not 3D gaming I think the 17inch cooling will be sufficient for what you might do.

 

Dellienware, really appreciate your recounting of your experiences with Dell's 'wisdom'. I was torn between getting a 12.5 inch hp and putting a quad in it and doing everything on an external screen powered by a powerful egpu.

but I realized that kinda defies the whole point of being portable. Hence, this dell is 17 inch and has an expresscard slot for future egpu adventures. I really don't like the ddr3 memory but beggers can't be choosers.

please do let me know how the cooling of the 3750 nvidia gt 525 version is if you think I might run into trouble, as I will also be running a 2nd hdd in the opticsl drive slot.

 

I didnt specifically use the 17inch version of the new vostro line, but I will have to assume that its difference to the 15inch version is similar than that of the previous line.

But I also have to say that the new vostro line has much better cooling overall. I just recounted how bad the 3500 was with cooling with nvidia 310m and i5. I created a thread about it back in the day.

My suggestion is that if the 17inch vostro can be connfigured with a quad, I dont think you will experience any heat issue unless you are having 3d gaming for a prolonged time.

But this is what I cant be so sure: which one is better?
1) 15inch, quad core, no dedicated graphics
2) 17inch, quad core, dedicated graphics

I know that 17inch will have beefier graphics but not sure what extent.

Either way, you definitely want a dedicated card if your uses extend beyond office use. So overall I will recommend 17in with nvidia card. and if you really want a quad, upgrade if the 17inch line supports quad core in its configuration. this is important because the heatsink will definitely be shared by gpu and cpu. and if your cpu runs too hot, it might throttle down gpu. in any case, your gpu will be a bottleneck for performance, so you really really do not want this happening.

If throttling becomes an issue, which was the case for vostro 3500, and i would imagine could happen with 3700 with a quad, u might actually get a better performance for very intensive tasks for prolonged uses with i5 rather than i7, due to gpu throttle.

lastly, the screen for the 3550 is horrible if you need it for EDITING photos.

 

Thank you for the detailed reply. I have been stuck for weeks over this and my own requirements. I have 2 options to work this out.

My basic needs are (in order of hardware dependency)

a. Video editing and post prod
b. Gaming.

Due to Adobe being nvidia's biatch on this, certain crucial features are heavily accelerated by their cards. Min. Reqs for that are 1gb ram, 96 cuda cores, and ddr5 much preferred over ddr3.

I have 2 options I could implement this.

1. An ultra portable with an egpu setup with a decent monitor. This way I only need a processor to worry about for the laptop, and gives me freedom to choose diff latops, only condition being quad core and having expresscard slot.

2. A gpu in the machine itself, which is capable of some basic power so atleast I am not dependent entirely on the setup which I can't move around.

This combo of features is only available in lenovo w520, dell m4600 and m6600, hp elitebook w class, and now this scrappy little lappy out of its league. This is ofcourse much cheaper, ideally I would love the m6600, but it is way too expensive.

I would really like to buy a cheap i5 m6600 and upgrade it to i7 myself. There is one going for 1000 bucks on ebay with no hdd and the crappy radeon firepro. I could buy it and chuck in the mxm based card of nvidia.

what say you?

and again, thank you for being so helpful.

 

Gotcha.

I think the answer depends on how much you actually work outside of your desk. Do you travel a lot or is your work pretty much limited at 9-5 at your workplace?

Though the egpu (vidock3) + gpu will cost much more for you, it will definitely have much better performance than the laptop's dedicated gpu with vostro line. If you happen to end up using the lightroom or any other software that is not just video, a good external monitor will definitely help. ANd I dont think you need an IPS monitor unless you really need professional grade picture editing.

With egpu, you will get much better gaming experience as well.

Overall, assuming that you pretty much have to work at a desk anyways since you probably use external speakers for video editing and all (vostro line speakers and headphone sounds - sound card in general is very bad compared to other professional grade laptops), I would recommend egpu + external monitor. But you need to be comfortable with the price and pick the most bang for the buck gpu. Something along the lines of equivalent of ATI 5670. (Keep in mind that for some reason my friend's vidock didnt work right out from the box with his Alienware M17x R2. could be just a lemon) Also, if you are doing linear video editing, 1080p external monitor REALLY REALLY helps not just watch the video after rendering, but you just get much more space for editing. I really enjoy using the 1600p screen U3011 for video editing.

My suggestion is to pick up a cheap 17inch Vostro from the outlet and hook it up with egpu and external monitor and speakers. Hopefully vidock will work for you without problems. And use the laptop with its duo core for awhile and if you ABSOLUTELY need more power out it, which will probably the case for low end 2.3gb i5, swap in quad i7. I think the cooling will be ok with quad i7 on 17ch because its heatsink is designed to power both nvidia gpu and highend duo core, which both produce more heat than single quad i7.

 

+rep Dellienware.

Thought I'd share this with you,

Before you click on the link and after you take a look at the link I pm'd you, the summary is that a 70$ dongle basically gives you your very own DIY egpu. Then there is only the price of the gpu and an old xbox psu to run the card off.

They only recently managed to get PCIe 2.0 speeds on it (which the Vidock commercial solution claims but cannot give) and people are getting scores with 5 to 10% difference of the true desktop solutions. Its insane. Benchmarks are provided if you scroll down there past the technical mumbo jumbo.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/418851-diy-egpu-experiences.html


Now as for mobility, I will per se not be carrying the laptop around me that much. The problem is that I am not in the US (although a friend will buy the laptop and bring it for me by march 10) but there are frequent and regular power outages in my city (third world problems). There can be not electricity for upto 2 hour segments throughout the day, and more if its a particularly agonizing day.

So basically, I figured that buying a hefty UPS with a desktop is out of the question because without air conditioning the system will overheat easily.

Therefore, I could either simply go to a place (cafe, office etc) where there are generators and work from there.

Wanted to ask you what you thought of the link I PM'd you. Is it possible to buy that M6600, sell out the M8900 ati and replace it with an MXM 3 version compatible Nvidia GPU?

It sounds like a really good deal but I want to know what you think of that deal. I could even eGPU with the M6600 cause it also has expresscard slot.

Thanks a lot for being so patient and helpful.

 

Hey Prosetheus,

Couldn't figure out how to PM you. Anyways I've seen a bunch of your posts on various threads and I think I'm in the same boat as you. I want a portable laptop for video editing with an ExpressCard slot for expanding my port options (dual Firewire 800, eSata, or USB 3.0).

I also saw you mention eGPU and haven't heard of this before but doing research on it now and am very intrigued. I too hate how Adobe is in bed with Nvidia (currently have a powerful gaming laptop with an ATI 5870 and can't get Mercury Playback engine to hardware accelerate), and also Blackmagic Design (for DaVinci Resolve). If I could hook up an external desktop Nvidia card to a laptop that would solve all my problems!

I am really looking at the HP Elitebook 8460p, but haven't looked at a Dell Vostro (only a latitude).

Anyways so I was wondering if I could pick your brain on some advice on what you've found over the past few weeks since your posts - have you picked a laptop yet? still thinking of upgrading a latop's CPU to an i7 yourself? have you found a good way to DIY eGPU?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!