Dell Dimension 4550 Tips & Tricks

[brian_riendeau]

With so many of us now owning Dell 4550s, it would only make sense that we have a good place to talk about them. Here are a few things I have learned since receiving my system and thanks to anyone who gave me the info):

- By default, DMA was turned OFF on my CDRom and prevented my drive from reading any higher than 20X. To enable this, go into Device Manager, IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers, Secondary IDE Channel, Right Click, Properties, Advanced Settings, then enable DMA in there. It made a world of difference in CDRom speed for me.

- Drives that support Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM) are set to limit noise production at the expense of speed. There should be a BIOS setting to change this or bypass it entirely. My BIOS was set to Bypass but the drive itself was set to the slowest mode possible. You can download the IBM Feature Tool from http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm (worked on my non-IBM Seagate drive) or get a tool from your drive manufacturer.

- To reset the BIOS, enter the BIOS by hitting F2 when you system turns on. When in the BIOS his the NUM LOCK, SCROLL LOCK, and CAPS LOCK keys as needed to light all three lights on the keyboard. When everything is lit, press ALT+F and you should hear a tone. Press ESC to exit, then yes to confirm and your BIOS will be at the defaul settings.

- When opening the chassis, make sure you do it on a clean surface, the plastic chassis can scratch easiler than a metal case if it gets moved around while on its side.

- A stick of standard 256MB Kingston PC2700 worked perfect with my system from the first boot. Other standard 2700 RAM should work fine, if anyone knows of any specific brands that cause trouble, please post here so other people can buy the right sticks. Also PC2100 is supported by machines with the 533 bus (you RAM will just run at the slower speed).

- Update the video card drivers with ATI or NVIDIA's latest reference drivers if you are having issues with any games or applications. This seems like a no brainer but it needs to be pointed out since many people wait for Dell to release driver updates that are few and far between.

- If you keep changing the settings on your E151FP and can not get the colors quite right, just reset all the settings (listed as Recall under Miscellaneous) and then drop the Brightness down to 45 and work from there.

All Dimension 4550 owners should feel free to add more info to this thread or ask questions!

 

[Hulk]

What memory timing settings are available in the bios? I'm still waiting for my system to arrive.

 

[brian_riendeau]

There are no memory timing options availible in the BIOS.

 

[bbrontosaurus]

Brian,

Can you comment on the speed, value, overclocking abilities (or lack thereof)? Also, can someone comment on the Monsoon Planar Media? 7 Speakers w/ Subwoofer? Are there any settings that can be changed in the BIOS for o'cing purposes?

What brand of RAM do the Dell 4550's come with? What brand is the motherboar?

What is the response time of the 15in flat screen? Any good for gaming, or is there a lot of "ghosting"?

TIA!

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: Hulk
What memory timing settings are available in the bios? I'm still waiting for my system to arrive.

use pcredit, should allow you to manipulate that

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: bbrontosaurus
Brian,

Can you comment on the speed, value, overclocking abilities (or lack thereof)? Also, can someone comment on the Monsoon Planar Media? 7 Speakers w/ Subwoofer? Are there any settings that can be changed in the BIOS for o'cing purposes?

What brand of RAM do the Dell 4550's come with? What brand is the motherboar?

What is the response time of the 15in flat screen? Any good for gaming, or is there a lot of "ghosting"?

TIA!

if you got one of the incredible specials that were going on you get a 15" LCD, p4 2.4GHz, etc, for like $500. you can't beat the value. speed should be on par with other i845 boards once you format the drive and get rid of all the crud. dell almost exclusively uses intel boards, though i've seen an asus or two. the ram is micron/crucial. even intel's "enthusiast" board doesn't offer overclocking, so you're not going to see it on the dell version of the same. though softFSB and pcredit might be able to help out there. as for the monitor, i'm not sure, the e151 is an acer, the 1504 is a samsung, maybe they'll know more

 

[Keego]

I ditched the 40gb drive that came with it and installed a SCSI card/18 gig scsi drive and a 120gb WD for my extra crap. Works great! Got it up and running without ever even powering on the 40gb.

 

[Keego]

My ram was Infineon (1 512mb stick)


For the people who used the rebate... Where is the rebate form?

 

[brian_riendeau]

Can you comment on the speed, value, overclocking abilities (or lack thereof)?

After my mail in rebate, Ebates, and getting $50 back from Dell when I called about them adding a CDRW to the promos, my system will cost $553 shipped for the base model 4550 with a GF4 Ti4200 and the flat panel monitor. I added in 256MB of extra RAM, a 40X CDRW, and a second Seagate hard drive on my own at my own cost to round out the system. The deal itself was pretty unbeatable and the system is very fast overall. The computer is much faster than my previous Athlon MP 1.2GHz in computationally heavy task and just about the same in standard office/web tasks. The Dell is not overclockable at all from within the BIOS. The P4 is cooled by a huge heatsink covered by a shroud which has a 120mm fan pumping air out the back of the base. The Dell is also nearly silent while my old Athlon tower was loud with a Delta CPU fan and four high output case fans.

Also, can someone comment on the Monsoon Planar Media? 7 Speakers w/ Subwoofer?

Never used this model myself...

Are there any settings that can be changed in the BIOS for o'cing purposes?

See above.

What brand of RAM do the Dell 4550's come with? What brand is the motherboar?

Not sure what RAM came with my system. My video card is from MSI and other have speculated that MSI makes the motherboards as well.

What is the response time of the 15in flat screen? Any good for gaming, or is there a lot of "ghosting"?

Originally I was worried that I should have purchased the 1504FP instead of the 151. The 151 is actually working better than I expected. I would say the streaking is moderate and could be improved. The 151 suits me just fine for the games I have tried so far except maybe Asheron's Call 2 where text over characters and monsters is thin and moves slowly around the screen while blurring. I am more of a console gamer in all honesty though.

Rebates can be found at http://www.dell.com/smallbizrebates

 

[Passions]

Anyone successful on throwing the PS and Motherboard into an ATX case? The problem I am concerned about is the case wires, since I heard Dell uses a single connector. Coo, thanx.

 

[Hulk]

One thing to be aware of is the MS software license with OEM software. I just got off the phone with Microsoft.

Here's what I was told:

The operating system you purchase with an OEM computer can only be used with that computer. If you sell that computer you basically have to sell the OS with it. I don't know how they can identify the computer, I mean what if you upgrade the motherboard, doesn't that make it a "new computer?"

The same goes for any incarnation of Office XP you purchase with the computer. It can only be used on that computer. You can't load it on another computer.

If, on the other hand, you purchase retail versions you can take them off one computer and reload them onto another.

Quite frankly, I told the MS person that this is sneaky. He said "you agree to it in the end user license when you activate the product."


Opinions? To me it seems as though you SHOULD NOT purchase Office XP or upgrade to XP Pro unless you plan on having this computer for a very long time.

 

[Hulk]

Anyone?

 

[kurt454]

Originally posted by: Hulk
One thing to be aware of is the MS software license with OEM software. I just got off the phone with Microsoft.

Here's what I was told:

The operating system you purchase with an OEM computer can only be used with that computer. If you sell that computer you basically have to sell the OS with it. I don't know how they can identify the computer, I mean what if you upgrade the motherboard, doesn't that make it a "new computer?"

The same goes for any incarnation of Office XP you purchase with the computer. It can only be used on that computer. You can't load it on another computer.

If, on the other hand, you purchase retail versions you can take them off one computer and reload them onto another.

Quite frankly, I told the MS person that this is sneaky. He said "you agree to it in the end user license when you activate the product."


Opinions? To me it seems as though you SHOULD NOT purchase Office XP or upgrade to XP Pro unless you plan on having this computer for a very long time.

I did not get my 4550 with Office XP, but I can tell you that Dell uses System Restore cd's instead of a regular Win XP cd. The restore cd probably would not work if you switch mobo's.

 

[Engineer]

Anyone found a temperature / hardware (fans, etc) monitor for this system (4550) yet? MBMonitor didn't work (at least for me) and I haven't found anything yet that may work? Is it even possible?

Thanks

 

[RalfHutter]

Originally posted by: Engineer
Anyone found a temperature / hardware (fans, etc) monitor for this system (4550) yet? MBMonitor didn't work (at least for me) and I haven't found anything yet that may work? Is it even possible?

Thanks

If it's actually an Intel board, maybe Intel's own "Active Monitor" utility would work? It's pretty basic compared to MBM or Asus Probe but it does show case and CPU temps, voltages and fan speeds. It also has configurable warning thresholds for some of the parameters.

 

[bbrontosaurus]

I plan on reformatting my 4550 when I receive it. I'm sure several people have done this.....can anyone tell me what to watch out for? Does the Dell Dimension package include all the drivers? I have the OS software, I would assume that I would just need the drivers of all the other components (video card, sound card, cdrom, etc)?

Thanks!

 

[brian_riendeau]

everything should be on an included driver and utility cd. drivers can also be found in c:\drivers and online at support.dell.com.

 

[kimagurealex]

Does anyone know how to modify the front phone jack to work with my old SB Live card? I don't want to spend any money on any creative soundcard anymore since I don't get much chance to use the EAX. Thanks
Alex

 

[abovewood]

I would like to know how to modify the front phone jack to work with my old SB Live card too.

BTW, Nero software says the 40x CDRW has 8mb cache and burnproof. The built in Intel NIC is fast and works well.

 

[Viper32]

What program can we use in XP to try and overclock the processor and the memory timings?

Viper

 

[Hulk]

bbrontosaurus-

I reformatted my drive when my system arrived. It was pretty easy actually. There is one strange thing that happened though. At first I tried to use a WD utility to reformat and partition the drive. The utility found a partition on the drive it couldn't recognize. I thought I was screwed by some mysterious Dell program or something.

Next I tried to boot directly from the Dell restore CD, you have to press F12 (I think) on the start up to select boot from floppy. From the install you can delete the funky Dell partition and the main partition so that you can create whatever partitions you want. After that installing XP is easy. After that just install the drivers using the driver restore disk. Watch out though. You have to write down the number of where you are extracting each driver, they title the folders with numbers, not the name of the driver.

I have to say that I'm very impressed with system so far, especially the thermal design. I wish the case was made out of metal instead of plastic though.

 

[aircasper]

Originally posted by: brian_riendeau


- Drives that support Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM) are set to limit noise production at the expense of speed. There should be a BIOS setting to change this or bypass it entirely. My BIOS was set to Bypass but the drive itself was set to the slowest mode possible. You can download the IBM Feature Tool from http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm (worked on my non-IBM Seagate drive) or get a tool from your drive manufacturer.

All Dimension 4550 owners should feel free to add more info to this thread or ask questions!

i understand what you mean about the BIOS "bypass" setting, but could you explain what you mean when you say "the drive itself was set to the slowest mode possible"? i purchased the 40 gig maxtor d740x harddrive with my dimension 4550. but when i run sisoft sandra, i only get around 19455kB/s. sometimes it'll hit about 22274kB/s, but then it'll go back down to 19500+ on the next test. any suggestions on why my drive is performing so slowly? could it be due to the fact i currently have only 128MB of RAM installed?

if others wouldn't mind, could you post your HD test results and your system config. thanks. i've bene going nuts trying to figure this out. oh, btw, i've turned off the write-verify function using maxtor's wvset utility (it automatically turns off after 10 power shut-down cycles, but you can do it manually). i've also messed around with the BIOS "bypass" setting, switching that to "performance." no change in performance however.

thanks in advance for your help.

aircasper

 

[brian_riendeau]

i understand what you mean about the BIOS "bypass" setting, but could you explain what you mean when you say "the drive itself was set to the slowest mode possible"? i purchased the 40 gig maxtor d740x harddrive with my dimension 4550. but when i run sisoft sandra, i only get around 19455kB/s. sometimes it'll hit about 22274kB/s, but then it'll go back down to 19500+ on the next test. any suggestions on why my drive is performing so slowly? could it be due to the fact i currently have only 128MB of RAM installed?

My Seagate 20GB drive was set to the quietest AAM setting possible on the drive and Bypass in the BIOS when I received it. The quietest settings limits the read/write heads the most (and hence slows performance). I still have the BIOS on Bypass and used the IBM tool to set the drive into a higer performance mode since it is not clear what the BIOS setting changes. I reccomend that you try to manually change the drive's AAM setting with a tool and leave the BIOS on Bypass. I get just over 24,000kB/s with my drive in Sandra.

The utility found a partition on the drive it couldn't recognize. I thought I was screwed by some mysterious Dell program or something.

Part of the drive is the utility partition. If you ever call Dell tech support, they usually have you boot to the utility partition and run some diagnostic tests from there. I am pretty sure you can just download the Dell diagnostics to floppies anyway...

 

[bbrontosaurus]

Hey all,

Quick RAM question:

In my search for more RAM for this 4550 (only got the 128 meg configuration), I noticed that PC3200 RAM is about the same as PC2700. Would it be ok to use the PC3200 for this Dell system? It's just going to default to PC2700 anyways, correct? I found a pretty good deal on a ORIGINAL PC3200 SAMSUNG M368L6423DTM-CC4 512MB (geniune SAMSUNG PCB) at memorylabs.com....cost me around 162 (including shipping). I figure if I'm going to upgrade in the future, might as well buy the PC3200 RAM right now. Any problems with this thinking? Anyone running PC3200 in their Dell Dimension 4550, or have some they could test?

Thanks!

 

[Viper32]

Originally posted by: bbrontosaurus
Hey all,

Quick RAM question:

In my search for more RAM for this 4550 (only got the 128 meg configuration), I noticed that PC3200 RAM is about the same as PC2700. Would it be ok to use the PC3200 for this Dell system? It's just going to default to PC2700 anyways, correct? I found a pretty good deal on a ORIGINAL PC3200 SAMSUNG M368L6423DTM-CC4 512MB (geniune SAMSUNG PCB) at memorylabs.com....cost me around 162 (including shipping). I figure if I'm going to upgrade in the future, might as well buy the PC3200 RAM right now. Any problems with this thinking? Anyone running PC3200 in their Dell Dimension 4550, or have some they could test?

Thanks!

You will be fine with that, but I would look around a little more, I feel like ya can get a better deal than that.

Viper