Looks great!!

Why you use only old slow Pentium 4 there instead some Core Duo or Pentium Dual Core E2220 or E5300? With newer processor you can have lower temperature and power consumption and far better perfomance.

Tiger433 wrote:

Why you use only old slow Pentium 4 there instead some Core Duo or Pentium Dual Core E2220 or E5300? With newer processor you can have lower temperature and power consumption and far better perfomance.

because Dell are btx and give no respect to the standards.

Good luck with this thread ! I hate it when Dell, HP or IBM make non standard computer, the Apple way, they are destined to the trash bin.

its maxed out on cpu cuz of the older chipset and there is nothing standard on this board all the parts are interchangeable with the older dimension series i can pull the motherboard and swap it with another, but im not going to. it was my first dell and ive been tweaking it ever since 2006

ElBrunzy wrote:

Tiger433 wrote:

Why you use only old slow Pentium 4 there instead some Core Duo or Pentium Dual Core E2220 or E5300? With newer processor you can have lower temperature and power consumption and far better perfomance.

because Dell are btx and give no respect to the standards.

Good luck with this thread ! I hate it when Dell, HP or IBM make non standard computer, the Apple way, they are destined to the trash bin.

The nice thing about standards is there are so many of them.

yes they are very easy to acquire i have about 20 different models in the closet ranging from p2 to core2quad

Here's mine:

This poor E520 was going to be thrown in the trash. It was my grandmothers system. It lived most of its life inside a closed in desk cabinet running warm with Windows XP and 50 icons named random things such as "New Folder (3)". It also chugged along 2 expired antivirus and god knows how much actual malware. Every time I'd go over there I would do a quick msconfig / autoruns clean up to keep it going just a little longer. Well, it did its job. She used this system for YEARS, not once reinstalling Windows XP. Earlier this year she wanted to upgrade, so this thing was retired. I offered to take it.

Here is the poor troopers original specs:

Pentium 4 2.8ghz (with HT, so that's a plus atleast)
2x 256MB DDR2-533 (512MB)
250GB HD
Floppy Drive
56K modem (she MIGHT have actually used this before she got broadband, not sure, haha)
Integrated Graphics
Dell 305W PSU

Case badges tell the story of the struggle:

Thanks grandma for this junker. Let's see what we can do with it. I was somewhat excited I admit, since it DID have a PCIe 16x slot, PCIe 1x slot, and 4 x DDR2 DIMM slots. My initial impression was that it has potential to be decent. The manual states it runs an Intel 965 based chipset with a FSB of 800/1066. That's a GREAT start. That means we might be able to run Core2 ! It also states a maximum of 4GB in 4x1GB layout, but we all know how manuals can be with their somewhat outdated information, so I had hopes I could push it to 8GB, a theory reinforced by the wiki page showing 965 chipsets can run 8GB.

My Core2Duo proved a success and booted right up. But I decided to take it a bit further and throw in a Core2Quad because why not? SUCCESS! It runs great! The only problem was that it was running HOT. I had to upgrade the heatsink. This heatsink with it's heat pipe goodness is from a different Dell system and is labeled J9761:

Installed and ready to go:

And you know what? We don't really need a floppy drive right now, and the manual shows it has a "FlexBay" header on the board - ie a USB 10 pin header for card readers, so lets throw this guy in:

The funny part about this card reader is the USB labels are SS ie "SuperSpeed" which is reserved only for USB 3.0. This is a USB 2.0 card reader with a USB 2.0 header, so it's labeled wrong, but regardless I thought that was amusing. Looking better:

Now, the GPU was an interesting problem. Since it's a BTX style motherboard, everything is flipped upside down. This system only officially supports single slot GPU's, any dual slots won't fit or would interfere with the CPU heatsink shroud, here's a good pic showing the issue:

But lucky me, when I bought my Radeon HD 4830 years ago, I got the MSI version with the orb style cooler. I cut the mounting bracket in half to make it "single slot".

I also added a nice little 500W PSU and an Intel Pro/1000 Gigabit nic. So now here we are:

Grandma's tricked out Dell E520:

Intel Core2Quad Q6600
8GB DDR2-800
1TB HD
Radeon HD 4830
Card Reader w/ 4 USB
Intel Pro/1000 Gigabit Nic
500W PSU
Windows 7

It now has no problems doing modern tasks, with a modern OS. It can play most 2012 and under games nicely and can multitask like a beast now with the quad and 8GB ram.

Living a peaceful cool life now as a living room computer, don't mind the desk, it's temporary:

nice build, only a true builder can mod just about anything

Well done, fyy!!

That is the first purple computer case I've seen!

I think this says more than enough about the stockpile of Dells I have:

From top to bottom:

* Dell OptiPlex GX110 - P-III 667MHz/256MB RAM/810 chipset and graphics/40GB HDD/Windows 2000 Pro. Used to have a very similar system years ago, except it was the tower version and I think it was slightly faster, with a 733MHz P-III.
* Dell OptiPlex GXa - P-II 266MHz/128MB RAM/440LX chipset/ATI 3D Rage Pro/6.4GB HDD/Windows 98SE. Not really that much to say about this one.
* Dell OptiPlex GXi - Pentium 200 non-MMX/32MB RAM/430HX chipset/S3 Trio64V+/2.1GB HDD/Windows 95. Possibly the fastest retro system I have.

All systems acquired for free from the dump, and all still work just fine to this day.

used to own a Dell Precision 220 , which unfortunately isnt working anymore (and given its Dell , finding spares is not easy/cheap), so instead here is my Dell Dimension 8100

very early socket 423 machine I upgraded

S423 Pentium 4 1.7Ghz (thats a Williamette)
2GB PC800 RDRAM (because why not)
Quadro4 XGL 900 (just a Geforce4 4600) , drivers 56.64
SB Audigy ES
160GB IDE HDD
LiteOn DVD drive (doesnt match the case but replaced the LG CD drive that wasn't working)
has a dual boot of WinME and WinXP SP1

I would laugh at it, as that CPU struggles to keep up with either the Athlon 1400 or Tualatin 1400 , but to be fair to it , this system can run Doom3 at medium settings , usually at around 30fps.

Dimension L800r

Pentium III-s 1.4Ghz (pin modded and modified bios)
512MB RAM
80 GB PATA hard drive, 7200rpm
Right now it has some old PCI Quadra inside of it for a GPU, no AGP.
SoundBlaster Live
NIC/USB2.0 Combo card
CDRW
No floppy drive, missing fastener

Dimension 4600

Pentium 4ee 3.2Ghz
3GB DDR 3200 RAM (Two 512MB, Two 1GB sticks for dual channel)
80GB SATA hard drive, 10,000 RPM (Velociraptor)
RadeonHD 4670, AGP
Soundblaster Audigy
NIC

Both have new Power Supplies, the L800r needed a cable adapter because of Dell's weird psu standard.

Both Run Windows XP, although I haven't been able to check on the L800r because for some reason my newer monitor refuses to recognize it. I only have room for one monitory, so it was a bit of a let down. I assume it still works.

nice, so what does the modded bios allow on the l800r

Sorry, I guess modded isn't the right word, more like, unofficially supported.

The Dell BIOS was overwritten with an Intel BIOS that recognizes the Tualatin Pentium III-s.

still its pretty cool tho

ElBrunzy wrote:

Tiger433 wrote:

Why you use only old slow Pentium 4 there instead some Core Duo or Pentium Dual Core E2220 or E5300? With newer processor you can have lower temperature and power consumption and far better perfomance.

because Dell are btx and give no respect to the standards.

Good luck with this thread ! I hate it when Dell, HP or IBM make non standard computer, the Apple way, they are destined to the trash bin.

After having extracted all usable components 😁

I really dislike anything that has very specific applications, especially stuff that also takes up a lot of space and has extra additional proprietary side-effects (like needing a proprietary PSU, it's extra hassle for no reason at all).

BUT otoh to each his own.

edit: I might get flamed for this, but even when I started this hobby over 10 years ago, I already developed a strong dislike for IBMs and actually enjoyed taking apart these proprietary tanks in the same way some IBM lovers on a few certain forums disliked anything PC-clone wise.

thats what makes it a challenge

Not a fan of "trendy" cases, simple classic design for me please, but have to admit those purple highlights do look good!

I've got
Dell XPS T500, only one I paid for, a whole £5!
Don't seem to have a better pic of it!

Now has a 1Ghz CPU but my Asus P2B-DS Duel 600Mhz PC is more sexy so poor Dell doesn't get used a lot now.
I did give it its own topic when it was my main 9x box though.
Dell makes surprisingly good retro PC's

More recently

The T5500 has had a 2nd CPU and RAM added but not much else (no time)
Actually installed 2003 on one of the R710's to backup all my data past 2 weeks as my external HDD is making funny noises. Twice now the single 1TB HDD the OS is installed to has corrupted itself. Lucky all the data was safe on a separate RAID 5 array made up of the original 750GB drives. Not sure what is the cause may have to try out the other server but this had a slightly better raid card and iDrac Enterprise

Oh and a latitude E5500 I maxed out the CPU and RAM running Windows 10.

Have to say, I've always been a HP guy since Compaq times for office environments. But apart from the evil non standard ATX power supply (They could have at least made the connector different) business class Dell's have impressed me with the more recent servers being better then their HP counterpart.

Never liked home end stuff, Dell or HP's