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Dell XPS R/T Series Cases

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First post, by senrew

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I'm in the process of moving which should hopefully be done in the next couple of weeks. Once I'm in the new place I'll have ALL of my hardware and such with me which means I'll be facing the ridiculously time consuming task of organize and paring down my collection.

I picked up a few of these XPS models a few months back from a friend and was considering transplanting all of my ATX systems into these cases. I've always loved the look of them and as they are all uniform, it makes finding space to keep them setup a bit easier.

My questions are:

- Are the cases themselves standard ATX? Should I be able to transplant all the bits from my systems into these cases and not have any issues?
- Are the power supplies/motherboards from this era of Dell proprietary and require the specific wiring or can I mix and match parts with the other standard ATX rigs I have?

Halcyon: PC Chips M525, P100, 64MB, Millenium 1, Voodoo1, AWE64, DVD, Win95B

Reply 1 of 2, by chinny22

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Your talking about the Slot 1 era right?
The I/O shield is well, there isn't one its part of the case. Rest of the dimensions are correct so a case mod should be easy enough.
Yes they are using Dells evil wiring but this site explains how to get round that
http://www.roberthancock.com/dell/fpconn.htm
http://duhvoodooman.com/mitchedo/Dell/casemods.htm

Reply 2 of 2, by Old Thrashbarg

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I used to have a Socket 939 system built up in a Dell XPS R-series case. The IO shield is removable, but it's not quite the same as a standard ATX snap-in type. You'll have to fabricate one, or just go without. The power supply is also Dell proprietary, but you can put a regular ATX PSU in its place. For the front panel connector, there's no need to splice wires or any of that... the metal pins can be removed from the plastic 'block' by releasing a clip with a jewelers' screwdriver... just pop the pins out, and either rearrange them in the existing housing, or use a different housing. I personally re-used the existing housing, just cut it down to size with a razor knife.

There was also a bit of a caveat with the motherboard mounting. You cannot use a micro-ATX motherboard at all, and it'd be best to go with a 'narrow' style ATX board... in other words, one like this would be fine, but one like this would be problematic since the case doesn't have the extra row of mounting holes... the board will fit, but the whole edge would be hanging unsupported, making it tricky to install RAM or plug in the power connector.

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