"It's old and slow, take it" - mini story

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PornoSatan

2[H]4U
Joined
Sep 3, 2004
Messages
3,493
I just rebuilt an older PC a relative was gonna throw away. It was one of those "here take it, it's old and slow" machines. They were dead set on getting a new machine anyways. Here's it's factory specs:

Dell E520:
Pentium 4 (775 Prescott)
1GB DDR2 533
250GB HD
Integrated Graphics
305W Power Supply

Here's its specs now:

Core 2 Duo E6400
4GB DDR2 800
1TB Western Digital Blue
Radeon HD 4830
500W XClio Power Supply

I had to saw off the top half of the video card mounting bracket (because of the BTX form factor on older Optiplex's / Dimensions stuff is upside down) on the Radeon 4830 to make it fit, but after I did that it fits completely snug. Normally the Dell E520 would only take single slot cards, but the heatsink on this MSI branded Radeon takes up just the right amount of room

It's expandable to a Quad Core (1066fsb Core2Quads) and 8 GB of ram, but I don't have those on hand. Right now though it seems to be working out nicely.


Before:
2af891.jpg


After:

wgrynl.png


With the top half of the bracket sawn off, the video card fits PERFECTLY. At the other end it's literally a few millimeters from some capacitors.

Just thought I'd share
 
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You can get half-height brackets. There would probably have been one in the box in which the video card came.
 
I will admit it's an impressive upgrade (for a system people had given-up hope for)!

But most of the time OEM motherboards are not NEARLY so generous in terms of allowed upgrades, despite everything being LGA 775! You have to do your research, and be willing to take chances on old used parts, so I can't say I blame the the relative who told you to take it away. They can take the easy way out and just drop $300 on the Pentium special:

http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-3...dcwst302&model_id=inspiron-3647-small-desktop
 
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defaultluser said:
I will admit it's an impressive upgrade (for a system people had given-up hope for)!

But most of the time OEM motherboards are not NEARLY so generous in terms of allowed upgrades, despite everything being LGA 775! You have to do your research, and be willing to take chances on old used parts, so I can't say I blame the the relative who told you to take it away. They can take the easy way out and just drop $300 on the Pentium special:

http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-3...dcwst302&model_id=inspiron-3647-small-desktop
Click to expand...

You are absolutely right. OEM socket 775 support was miserable from most manufacturers. Most boards wouldn't let you upgrade the from P4 to next-gen P4, never the less C2D.
 
I'd strongly recommend the E6x00 - That's dual core, 1066FSB, and *pretty* fast, and lower power draw. They are very well supported on older boards, but no support is universal. The E5x00 series are almost as fast, and have better support, and run 800FSB.
 
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