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Upgrading Dell with new M/B

D

dprocket

Member
Hi. I've been helping my buddy out with his computer. He is looking to wipe his hard drive clean and "start fresh" with new OS etc. I am reccomending that he put in more memory, unfortunately his computer is a Dell XPS800R which means that he has Rambus memory. In order to get to 512MB, he's going to have to pay close to what I could get him started with a nice new board, Athlon XP, and a half gig of Corsair DDR ram. My question is, has anyone here ever taken a manufacturer's PC like a dell and swapped motherboardS? I'm not sure if this is an ATX form case (I'll have to check) and not sure how great the power supply is (probably only 250W?). I'm just wondering if anyone has any experience or advice with this. If I could help my freind out, we could reuse his case, P/s, hard drive, CDR, floppy, zip etc.

Thanks, dprocket
 
Dell case/motherboard/power supply are all usually priporiety (sp?) so basically you would be better off building a new tower from scratch.
 
That's exactly what I'm planning on doing. It all started when I decide I needed more RAM, and then checked the rambus prices and flipped. No way in hell am I spending that much money simply to upgrade this Dell. I'm going all new mobo (IS7), case (Sonata), processor (2.6c), memory (HyperX 3200). Should be around $550 rather than just upgrading another 512 megs of Rambus made for my dimension 8100 for $300.

DO NOT, and I repeat, DO NOT, use the power supply on a new mobo. At best it won't work, at worst it will start a fire on your friends PC . They use a different standard power supply and it is only made to work on Dell mobos. (Look here) About the case... it's possible to cram a new mobo in a Dell case, but you'll have to drill new holes and stuff.

It's best to just buy a new case and power supply combo from Antex Here's on that I like for $80, but I'll probably go with the Antec Sonata. Good luck.
 
Your friend can get a little money by ebaying the barebones Dell. Newegg for parts of course, and the Antec SLK3700 is another good, fairly cheap case to consider ($65 + $15, includes power supply).
 
Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Your friend can get a little money by ebaying the barebones Dell. Newegg for parts of course, and the Antec SLK3700 is another good, fairly cheap case to consider ($65 + $15, includes power supply).
Click to expand...

When you say barebones - what would that include?
 
thanks guys. I'm with you. I haven't had a chance to actually dig into his system, so I wasn't sure if Dell had a propritary case design or not. Thanks for the help. I am going to reccomend he let me build him a new one just like I have:

AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (Thoroughbred) w/packaged heatsink
Abit KD-7 MB
Maxtor 160GB
Antec SLK3700AMB Super Mid Tower (350 Watt p/s)
(2) Kingston 256MB PC 2100 DDR
(2) K-Byte 256MB PC 2700 DDR
PNY GeForce4 MX440se 64MB DDR AGP Video Card
 
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