Upgrading an old Dell d630. New cpu not working.

So, I have an old Dell D630 with a T7250 2.0ghz processor.
It's getting ancient, but it still gets used. And I had the bright idea to pick up a slightly better CPU on ebay. So now I'm the proud owner of a P8600 for $3.95. Still an old processor, but it looked like a worthy upgrade for just a few dollars.
It's supposed to be compatible as far as I can tell. The computer was available right from Dell with that processor.

I updated the Bios, dropped in the new CPU, and replaced the thermal paste, but it just doesn't work.
The power light flashes on for a few seconds, and then it dies.
If I swap the old T7250 in, it works perfectly.

What am I missing?

 

Welcome to the forum!

Well, a P8600 is a 1066MHz Penryn CPU where the original T7250 is 800MHz Merom. Chances are that the board might not support it.

Try pulling out the CMOS battery prior to installing the P8600 to see whether that changes anything.

If not, you might have to stick with a 800MHz CPU such as T7500/7700 (Merom) or T8100/8300/9300/9500 (Penryn).

Good luck.

 

Thanks!

I was lurking here about a month ago when I picked up a Thinkpad T500. (I'm something of a fan of old business laptops)

Well that's a letdown... I didn't realize they would have had more than one type of motherboard in the D630.
I had the CMOS battery out when I took the palm rest off to get to the CPU though, and it still didn't work.

 

What you really should've done was look at the CPU socket type and go to something like Wikipedia and type the socket type in and they would have a more correct listing what processor would fit that socket type. Doing what you did without really researching and you ended up where you are now a processor that didn't work.

 

The D630 can use either 667 GhZ or 800 - but not 1066. The best CPU you can upgrade to is the T9500 2.6 GhZ.