Dell Inspiron 530 / 530s v1.0.2 Experimental Unlocking & Upgrading Project

[Blaggah]

Dell 530 Mini Tower - but ONLY the batch factory equipped with 350W PS (and probably with G33M03) support officially:

Yorkfield Quad Core, Q8200, 2.33GHz, 4MB, 1333FSB, M1
Yorkfield Quad Core, Q8300, 2.50GHz, 4MB, 95W,R0
Yorkfield Quad Core, QX9300, 2.50GHz, 6MB, 1333FSB, M1
Yorkfield Quad Core, Q9400, 2.66GHz, 6MB, 1333FSB, R0
Yorkfield Quad Core, Q9450, 2.66GHz, 12MB, 1333FSB, C1
Yorkfield Quad Core, Q9550, 2.83GHz, 12MB, 1333FSB, C1
Yorkfield Quad Core, Q9550, 2.83GHz, 12MB, 1333FSB, E0
Yorkfield Quad Core, Q9650, 3.00GHz, 12MB, 1333FSB, E0
Kentsfield Quad Core, Q6600, 2.4GHz, 8MB, 1066FSB, G0

530s (SlimLine) does NOT support any QUAD-CORE officially.

From Software point of view - it is pretty safe to flash this BIOS-MOD - you will not brick anything, just by flashing ON THE CORRECT Motherboard.
From Hardware point of view - to do the mod of the LGA socket or installing more than 90 Watts CPU - there are some risk involved always.

SINGLE-CPU XEONs Quad-Core:
the Yorkfield LGA 775 XEONs will NOT require any hardware mods, but they are with 95 W TDP - so using them them with heavy load on G33M02 mobo might not be very good idea, but to gain high performance on old system like this - it's worth the risk if you ask me, just because 45nm Quad cores almost never do consume the maximum TDP
Xeon Yorkfield (45 nm) series: X3320, X3330, X3350, X3360, X3370, X3380

ONLY Xeon L3360 SLGPF (E0) is with 65 W TDP

on other hand:
the Yorkfield-CL LGA 771 XEONs will REQUIRE the hardware mods of the socket, and they are with 80 W TDP - so using them them with heavy load on G33M02 mobo should be just fine and the price to get them is much lower.
Xeon Yorkfield-CL (45 nm) series: X3323, X3353, X3363

MULTI-CPU XEONs:
like "Harpertown" (45 nm) - I have not tested my G33M02 with them yet.

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Greetings everyone,

One more reason to keep this Thread alive:
You can run Quad Core Xeon LGA 771 CPUs on 530

Hi Eugene, I have a standard (non-modded) 1.0.18 BIOS. I modded my motherboard to add the Xeon E5450. My BIOS recognises the Xeon CPU and everything works fine.

What have you done the 1.0.18 BIOS when you say you added Xeon when it already existed ?

I am confused.

Greetings macnb,

"... and everything works fine" is a little bit overestimation, more truthful will be "... and works fine", because:

With the original 1.0.18 BIOS and XEON CPU
these functions will NOT work:

1) AHCI for SSD
2) Hot-Swap for HDD
3) 3TB+ large disk support
4) Intel Speed-Step
5) Intel Thermal-Monitoring
6) SSE4.1
7) SSSE3
8) most likely VT-d and VT-x will not work (OS dependent as well)

With the MOD all above is tested and confirmed to work without any problems.

Also you can use the PC even WITHOUT all of the 8 functionalities above , but why?

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EDIT (07.Nov.2014): I have been mistaken - the motherboard that supports QUAD-CORE is NOT G33M02. Some time ago I have upgraded Dell 530 Mini Tower for a friend of mine to: Yorkfield -CL x3363 and everything went perfect. Today I tried the same process with several QAUD-COREs on G33M02 that I have and non of Kentsfield or Yorkfield or Yorkfield-CL or Harpertown or Harpertown-L QUAD-COREs received power from the G33M02 mobo - the CPUs where totally cold and no indication on external debug card.
Returning to E8x00 DUAL-CORE and the G33M02 mobo works fine again (with the MOD-BIOS, w/o re-flashing back to original BIOS). Also all QUAD-COREs works fine on G33 from GigaByte, so nothing is damaged at all, just incompatible.
Most likely the motherboard that works with QUAD-COREs is G33M03, but my friend have sold his old DELL and I can not confirm even that.

To macnb: COULD YOU PLEASE CHECK inside your DELL and tell what is written on your mobo that power-up your Harpertown XEON ?

I am not a DELL employee from a long time ago, but I still hold the DCSE certificate on my name, so if anyone from DELL-Europe management reads this - you can cancel my certification - effective immediately I will stick with Asus, AsRock, GigaByte and EVGA

So I flashed the moded 1.0.18 BIOS and i can't seem to run my intel core 2 Quad Q6600 chip in it. I'm not sure if it's because i did the BSEL mod to the cpu but it won't post. I will try later by undoing the BSEL mod from the cpu. I even tried to x5450 coversion 771-775 and same thing. Is it definite that this G33M02 board can't run xeon quad core cpu?