DELL Precision 690 microcode update

[jamestsnell]

A small anecdote:

I found this thread because I wanted to essentially run VMware ESX 6.5 on my Dell 690, but the CPU isn't supported. An E5400 CPU would have worked, but I think the answer here is fairly conclusive, sadly.

I then decided to cowboy-it and I installed my OS on another machine, then moved the OS drive to my 690. As far as I can see, it works completely fine. I expect there's some feature that'll fail hard, but as I only need ESX for its free license, I'm thinking maybe the broken feature will be something I can't even use (like Live Migration). So far I've run the server for an hour and setup a test VM, no issues at all.

This doesn't exactly help most folks here, but someone else with my exact situation could find my sketchy work-around very helpful. Obviously, don't depend on this. (I blogged about it here)

[DeathBringer]

Please tell sSpec of your current CPU.

[jamestsnell]

Please tell sSpec of your current CPU.

It's a little more effort than I'm prepared to do right now. But mine has dual Xeon 5150's. I bought it from a recycler for $11. It has 10GB of RAM. I'm thinking of taking it to 64GB as that sounds cheap. I'd like to upgrade CPUs too, but I want to also keep it lowish power, like the 5150's are. I've had some VMs running on it non-stop since I posted above, so far, everything looks completely fine.

[DeathBringer]

OK, this is not necessary now.

[William P]

I saw a thread that suggested replacing the motherboard with one from a Precision T7400. I just bought one from Newegg Market for $35 free shipping.
https://pcpartpicker.com/forums/topic/77...for-gaming
It supports X54xx CPUs and 400FSB Xeons also.

[William P]

here's an interesting suggestion for the 690. Cost $35 from newegg market.
https://pcpartpicker.com/forums/topic/77...for-gaming