Would Like to Upgrade the Motherboard and CPU for HP Compaq dc5800 Small Form Factor (if possible)

Good day,

I would like to inform the latest update of my HP dc5800 Small Form Factor.

Few days ago I told about my HP dc5800 Small Form Factor's problem in my country's gaming PC community Facebook page. One of the members in the community suggested me that I can still buy used ATX or micro-ATX motherboards that supports Intel Core 2 processors and DDR3 at a reasonable price, then transfer my Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 (and Intel Core 2 Duo E8600) from my HP dc5800 to the new motherboards (together with new casing, power supply units, DDR3 etc.). The list of the Core 2 chipsets are available in the link below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_chipsets#Core_2_chipsets

Beside that, the same member in the gaming PC community also suggested me to replace the thermal paste at the North Bridge heat sink of my HP dc5800 Small Form Factor because it is suspected that the thermal paste at that area has dried up. I think this suggestion makes sense because while the HP dc5800 Small Form Factor is on, I touch both the heat sink for CPU cooler and North Bridge - the heat sink for CPU cooler is normal while the heat sink for North Bridge is hot. Now I suspect that the North Bridge is the culprit all this time.

When I removed the heat sink at the North Bridge, I notice that there were no thermal paste at all on the die at the north bridge - the only thing that I saw was some kind of pink glue surrounding the die at the North Bridge. I suspect that this pink glue thing was not a dry thermal paste because it did not dissolve when I wipe it with alcohol swab and I have to scrape it from the North Bridge heat sink using a screw driver.

After appying the thermal paste on the North Bridge and switch the PC on, the HP dc5800 Small Form Factor's CPU fan finally no longer goes rampage noisily at an uncomfortable level. Sometimes the fan does throttle up, but not as terrible as before. Hence, it is confirmed that the main problem all this time has something got to do with the North Bridge.

Even now, the North Bridge heat sink is still hotter that the CPU heat sink, plus the temperature of my room increases whenever I use this PC for hours. I think I would like to send my desktop to computer shop tho ask the shopkeeper to diagnose more in detail about thy the North Bridge heat sink is always hotter than the CPU heat sink.

Thank you and have a nice day.

 

Good day,

I would like to inform that I have upgraded the HP dc5800 small form factor desktop with a used GALAX GeForce® GT 1030 EXOC White - Graphics Card ( http://www.galax.com/en/graphics-card/galax-geforcer-gt-1030-exoc-w.html). So far the CPU fan seldom goes rampage after the graphic card is upgraded (it does goes rampage, but so far only around 2-3 times after being upgraded).

If everything goes on well, I would like to upgrade the desktop with 16GB of DDR2 800MHz memory (and also NVidia GeForce GTX1050/1050Ti).

Thank you.

 

I hope you are not spending actual money on those upgrades?

I used to have couple SFF desktops just like that. Then I upgraded one for 8000 series (core2duo) and another one to 8200 series (sandy bridge i5).
Now I have Prodesk 600 G1 (something like this one: https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/HP-ProD...RAM-500GB-HDD-DVD-RW-Windows-10-/152805473144 ).

Other than filling the ram and hard drives and a dedicated Radeon HD3650 I had in the HTPC, there is little point upgrading the hardware on these. It's almost always cheaper to buy used/refurbed newer generation device than pour cash into old platform. Unless of course, the upgrade parts come for free from somewhere also

 

Thank you for the advice. The last thing that I will upgrade is the memory (maximum 4 x 16GB DDR2 800Mhz).

For the graphic card, I will only upgrade it once the price of the better (but used) graphic card have become cheaper in the future (or if I have spare/unused graphic card in the future).