HP Compaq dx2420 Microtower Computer Dual-Core to Core 2 Duo CPU Upgrade

This blog post is about a HP Compaq dx2420 microtower computer Dual-Core to Core 2 Duo CPU upgrade.

November 2019: If you are interested in reading about my Core 2 Quad installation in a dx2420 MS-7525 motherboard, please click here.

Introduction
Earlier this year (2018) I wanted to upgrade the CPUs in two dx2420 computers, which use a socket 775 motherboard. The motherboard that I’m using is the MS-7525. Both computers were using Intel Pentium E5300 2.60GHz CPUs.

I decided to buy the Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E8400 3.00GHz second-hand via eBay and paid £3.60 and £4.49 for the CPUs.

Note: Please don’t think I’m saying this motherboard can have two 775 CPUs installed at the same time. I own two dx2420 computers and was upgrading both at the same time. Hence why I purchased two CPUs.

The bios
The bios version of the motherboards was 5.18 02/20/2009 at the time of replacing the CPUs and I didn’t require a bios flash to use the E8400 CPU.

CPU-Z bench test
To help others thinking about a similar upgrade, I’ve included screenshots below of CPU-Z showing the E5300 before the upgrade and the E8400 afterwards.

The benchmark score I got for the E8400 was 1030 for a single thread and 1918 for multi thread.

Cinebench
Using Windows 10 Pro 64-bit, I ran Cinebench R15 and the CPU score was 160.

Would I perform the same upgrade again?
I am already considering another CPU upgrade and I’m looking at my options. So the answer to the above question is, possibly not.

Even without the CPU upgrade, I’m glad I cleaned the CPU heatsink and fan, as both dx2420 computers that I own, required some attention.

The dx2420 is now an old low performance computer. I’ve not installed a SSD in either computer. For the time being, along with 4GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD 5450 graphics card in each machine and Windows 10 Pro 64-bit, I will keep using the dx2420 computers.