Which motherboard+cpu combo for dell poweredge 1300?

[sganesh]

Hi,

I have a dell poweredge 1300 and want to upgrade to a P4 system. Which is
the best motherboard which fits to this system? I will be very grateful if someone
can provide me information about their upgrade, if they had upgraded their
poweredge 1300. I don't want to have onboard sound and video. I already have
good cards for that.

Thanks
Sivaji Ganesh

 

[LiLithTecH]

Depends on how deep your pockets are.

Which 1300 do you have (450, 500, 550, etc...)?

 

[sganesh]

Thanks for your reply. I have PIII 500Mhz single processor in a dual processor board.
I believe, Cost of uprading this system to dual processor will be cheap when compared buying
a new board. I'm looking for a decent combo within $200. Since I already have good
USB 2.0 card, AGP Card, Sound Card and Network card, I'll not need these onboard.

 

[LiLithTecH]

What do you use the Server for?
Simple File Servering, Print Server, etc..

You best value, if you can still find it at reasonable price, would
to be to upgrade the CPU to a PIII 800 (600, 700mhz also an option)

If you are not doing anything that puts heavy loads on the server, a dual setup
might be overkill (it would depend on how cheap you can find the CPU for).

Since you have everything else you need, adding the faster CPU and additional ram
maybe all the boost you need (and keep within your budget).

 

[sganesh]

Hi,

This machine is not a server anymore. I've purchased this system from my company and now
use as a home pc running windows XP. I have a firewire card installed and in process of converting
all my old vhs to vcd. This conversion process needs more cpu power. Ram is 512mb...so I don't think
that is the bottleneck. But current video card is a 32mb PCI geforce2 mx100. I have a spare 32MB AGP card, which
I was thinking to put in the new system.

Any suggestions for a decent case, motherboard and cpu combo and place to get it. I have all other
peripherals and would like to use them.

Thanks
Sivaji Ganesh

 

[redbeard1]

Putting a different board in a dell case has it's issues. They don't use standard ATX power supply wiring, so you can blow up a non dell system board or short the power supply. I believe there are now some companies that make adapters, so you might want to check it out before you try too hard to put something in to it.

The other thing you might run into is that the case power on and led connections may be in a plug that is special to that board. So you may have to figure out which wires are what, just to get a different board to turn on.

 

[LiLithTecH]

Are you using the SCSI drives and the RAID controller
that came standard on that model?

While you would benefit from a CPU upgrade, the drive
speed, plays a bigger factor in converting (ripping) video.
If your Video Software supports Dual CPU's, that would also
be a big boost.

Ram can also boost your performance.
Installing the AGP video card will help with a few CPU cycles also.

If you have a $200 limitation, there is little chance of you
finding anything you could afford.
The Motherboard and CPU combo (descent INTEL P4 1.8Mhz) would cost
you well over that. Add the case + Ram (can't use the old ram)and you doubled your budget.


redbeard1

Most of the Poweredge 1300 I have come across used Intel BX and Tyan BX motherboards.
The Tyan boards supported both AT & ATX PSU's, while the Intel's used standard ATX PSU's.

 

[sganesh]

Thanks LiLithTecH and redbeard1.

Since new P4 systems without monitor from dell are available from $450 after rebates, I thought
within $200 I will be able to get a descent motherboard and cpu. Well I think now the PSU will
be a problem. Thanks again for your help. I'll wait for a good price from dell.

 

[redbeard1]

Here is an article talking about how dell has their boards set up to take non standard atx wiring. The plug is physically the same, the wiring is not.

Dell wiring

 

[sganesh]

Thanks.