Bought a Liquidated Dell Precision 3660: Some Questions on PSU, PCIe, SSD adapters, and RAM

[John T Davis]

Hello,

I just snaggged one of these off eBay for ~$460, with an i7-12700, 1000w PSU, 16 GB of RAM, and NVIDIA A2000 6 GB GPU. It looks like the model with the air cooler.
That GPU goes for about $300 on eBay, so I'm feeling pretty good about this.

I believe these are W680 chipset-based machines.

I'm planning to use it for a home server Proxmox node, and I had some questions I was hoping y'all could help me with. Hopefully, someone out there has one of these.

• PSU: The 1000w PSU seems overkill for this CPU and a board-powered 75w GPU. What are they thinking people will do with these? Or are they somehow just extremely power hungry in general?
• PCIe x16: The specs mention that this is only for GPUs. Is that actually locked down in the BIOS, or just not supported for other uses? Or perhaps they mean that only the x16 slot has full 75w PCIe power?
• There are 2x 2.5" and 3x 3.5" drive bays. I'm going to use the 2.5" bays for a boot mirror with a pair of Intel DC S3710 200 GB disks. I don't really have any need for 3.5" HDDs and I don't think 3.5" SATA SSDs really exist at this point. Does anyone know of a 3.5-to-2.5 adapter I could use? Maybe a third-party one?
• Maximum RAM with latest BIOS? The below chart is from the manual. Clearly, 24, 48, and 64 GB sticks weren't an option when this thing launched 3 years ago. Does anyone know whether the latest BIOS for these machines enables use of these RAM sticks, and what speeds they might hit? I wonder if I'd get higher RAM clocks if I used 2x 64 GB sticks instead of 4x 32 GB sticks. Or perhaps I could save some money starting with a smaller configuration based on 24 or 48 GB sticks. I've included the manual's supported memory layouts below.
• Cooling/Noise? Putting aside that I assume it will scream at me when I'm using the A2000, how quiet/cool should I expect this machine to be in normal operation? Base power is 65W, and boost is 180W. I don't expect to push it too the wall often.

 

[RolloZ170]

PSU: The 1000w PSU seems overkill for this CPU and a board-powered 75w GPU. What are they thinking people will do with these? Or are they somehow just extremely power hungry in general?

accel or 5090 ???

 

[Jelle458]

PSU: It looks like the system supports 2 GPUs, and that your configuration is not the only one Dell made. The 1000W is probably the lower spec because it is expected to run with a higher power GPU, or even 2. Your system might be a lower-spec model where the same PSU was used for upgrade possibility.

PCIe x16: The x16 ports are not locked in any way. It is typical Dell to write it like this, because they want to make sure you use GPUs in x16 slots for obvious reasons to you and i, but many people who use these do not know hardware, only software and need those guidelines.

Drive bays: You can get many different converters on Ebay, easy to find.

RAM: I suspect the system does not allow overclocking in any way, this is also very typical for Dell. To check the CPU specs you should go here: Intel® Core™ i7-12700 Processor (25M Cache, up to 4.90 GHz) - Product Specifications | Intel
The CPU supports 4800 without any overclocking. I suspect you can add 4x 32GB and still run the higher clock speeds, unless the BIOS is in some way locked to do so. The system board and CPU should be able to do it.

Noise: This is a tower server, which is usually more quiet than rack ones. I wouldn't put it in the living room, but in the gamer room you might not notice it as much.

 

[RolloZ170]

PSU: The 1000w PSU seems overkill for this CPU and a board-powered 75w GPU. What are they thinking people will do with these? Or are they somehow just extremely power hungry in general?

go to
dell.com/support
enter your Service Tag in the field (search dell...) press enter
you will see your system, click "quick links" then "product specifications" then "Export"
you get a csv file with all components the system originaly came with....
i bet it was a custom with a powerfull GPU, and of course Dell will change the CTO Power Supply to a matching one.

 

[RolloZ170]

Cooling/Noise? Putting aside that I assume it will scream at me when I'm using the A2000, how quiet/cool should I expect this machine to be in normal operation? Base power is 65W, and boost is 180W. I don't expect to push it too the wall often.

Dell usualy run silent but run hot. i have some Dell
3260 CFF, 7000MFF, 7010 MFF, 3460 SFF, 5000 SFF, 7020 SFF, 7090 SFF.
you can't change FAN behave, only set FAN to full speed in the BIOS,
there are some hidden option, but they have no effect because Dell uses a Embed.Controller to control FANs.

you should one use Dell certified RAM, if you have luck and your other RAM work,s the next new BIOS can stop the fun.

 

[gregsachs]

This adapter or similar for the 3.5"/2.5" bays:

Pardon Our Interruption...

There are a bunch like this, some toolless, but you want one designed like this with no actual parts, just a mechanical adapter.

 

[John T Davis]

accel or 5090 ???

I'm not sure I understand the question. When I looked it up on Dell's support website (the warranty just expired and apparently I can renew it--not sure whether that's worth it), it shipped with an NVIDIA A2000; that's what in there now.

PSU: It looks like the system supports 2 GPUs, and that your configuration is not the only one Dell made. The 1000W is probably the lower spec because it is expected to run with a higher power GPU, or even 2. Your system might be a lower-spec model where the same PSU was used for upgrade possibility.

I hadn't considered the upgrade angle. I assumed that a corporate buyer would buy to the exact specifications they needed, considering the price of upgrades. I suppose they get steep volume discounts on things like PSU upgrades.

PCIe x16: The x16 ports are not locked in any way. It is typical Dell to write it like this, because they want to make sure you use GPUs in x16 slots for obvious reasons to you and i, but many people who use these do not know hardware, only software and need those guidelines.

Oh, good. I plan to leave the A2000 in there, but I'm glad to know the board/BIOS themselves aren't artificially hobbled.

(I'm really excited about the A2000. It wasn't on the spec sheet for the machine on eBay, and didn't have an actual dedicated GPU before. I can actually play some modern games now. )

…
RAM: I suspect the system does not allow overclocking in any way, this is also very typical for Dell. To check the CPU specs you should go here: Intel® Core™ i7-12700 Processor (25M Cache, up to 4.90 GHz) - Product Specifications | Intel
The CPU supports 4800 without any overclocking. I suspect you can add 4x 32GB and still run the higher clock speeds, unless the BIOS is in some way locked to do so. The system board and CPU should be able to do it.

Very interesting. I wonder why the spec listing shows slower clocks with, e.g., the 4x 32GB config if the BIOS is able to do it?? That's all very odd. Of course, the BIOS has been updated several times since release; maybe the original version had some sort of restriction/bug. I'll be updating it to the latest BIOS before I start messing with the RAM configuration.

Noise: This is a tower server, which is usually more quiet than rack ones. I wouldn't put it in the living room, but in the gamer room you might not notice it as much.

It'll be in my bedroom office, which already has a NAS and a fairly noisy switch in it, so I'm hoping it'll be okay. Unless it's just obnoxious, it probably won't be that noticeable over the sound of my Sonos playbar and subwoofer. I suppose that I'll find out soon.

go to
dell.com/support
enter your Service Tag in the field (search dell...) press enter
you will see your system, click "quick links" then "product specifications" then "Export"
you get a csv file with all components the system originaly came with....
i bet it was a custom with a powerfull GPU, and of course Dell will change the CTO Power Supply to a matching one.

Awesome. I'd found the parts list before, but I didn't realize that I could export it as a CSV. Perfect.

Dell usualy run silent but run hot. i have some Dell
3260 CFF, 7000MFF, 7010 MFF, 3460 SFF, 5000 SFF, 7020 SFF, 7090 SFF.
you can't change FAN behave, only set FAN to full speed in the BIOS,
there are some hidden option, but they have no effect because Dell uses a Embed.Controller to control FANs.

you should one use Dell certified RAM, if you have luck and your other RAM work,s the next new BIOS can stop the fun.

Shame about the fan inflexibility, but there are ways around that if it's a problem (e.g., assuming they use standard PWM fans, lock the fans to full speed in the BIOS and then use a manual fan controller with a dial to tune it to the desired power level. I still need to get in there and see what he fan layout actually is. There's a giant fan grate on the back that doesn't actually have a fan attached to it, which seems odd. I might put a Noctua exhaust fan on on it at some point if I don't like the temps.

Does Dell certify RAM that isn't Dell-branded? Because I've already looked at their Dell-branded RAM options for this machine, and the pricing is insane.

Crucial lists options for this machine; that's probably what I'll go with.

This adapter or similar for the 3.5"/2.5" bays:

Pardon Our Interruption...

There are a bunch like this, some toolless, but you want one designed like this with no actual parts, just a mechanical adapter.

Thanks! I'm thinking I'll put 3x SATA SSDs in there (4 TB or better depending on what's available on eBay's used enterprise listings) and use them for Proxmox Backup Server.

 

[RolloZ170]

I'm not sure I understand the question. When I looked it up on Dell's support website (the warranty just expired and apparently I can renew it--not sure whether that's worth it), it shipped with an NVIDIA A2000; that's what in there now.

What are they thinking people will do with these? Or are they somehow just extremely power hungry in general?

maybe the buyer wants to install accel or 5090 later ?
1000W is not the standard PSU.
edit: if you need the PCIe Power cables, you have to take 750W or higher PSU.
and Dell uses not single Rail power supplies. there is a dedicated Rail for the GPU power.