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Case advice for a repurposed Dell PC

J

jacqg

Gawd
Joined
Dec 15, 2009
Messages
864
I own a Dell Dimension E521 that I recently turned into my htpc with a low profile Radeon 6450. Unfortunately the case looks ugly and too big to be under the table holding the TV so I would like to ask help on which case to get... Would this require a Mid tower or can I get something smaller? The only upgrade I've done for it is add the graphics card and added more ram but that shouldn't interfere with the case chosen.

37789_4226584455409_1337817571_n.jpg

specs.htm


Here is a picture of the system and I want to keep the DVD drive which I will replace with a blu-ray drive in the future and maybe add a 2.5" card reader.

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dime521/en/SM_EN/specs.htm

Thanks for the input!
 
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You will not be able to purchase a case that those parts will directly fit into. You will have to custom make something.
 
You've got some digging to do, as that is a BTX motherboard... plus, you want the case to look aesthetically pleasing in a HTPC scenario.
 
I think you'll be better off buying a motherboard, cpu, ram, psu and case for your HTPC then transferring the video card, hard drives and optical drives to the new setup.

All that could be done for under $500.
 
Aw darn now that just sounds tedious. I guess I would rather just leave it alone since it performs what it needs to as of now. Initially expected to just spend money on the case.

Question though: would an SSD benefit this baby in terms of video playback? And another thing is blu-ray, is there such a thing as minimal specs requirement for it? I've upgraded the ram to 4GB because I got it on a sale and the graphics card is a 512 MB DDR5 Gigabite 6450. Would I be able to play blu-ray without lag from a blu-ray disc? I haven't bought my drive yet but I'll get it if I can use it.

Thanks guys. :\
 
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Well depending on how handy you are, you can get a case and mod it to fit the dell motherboard. Its not too difficult, just requires a drill, drill bit and a tap. Then drill the holes in the case for the motherboard to mount to and you should be good to go.
 
Skillz said:
Well depending on how handy you are, you can get a case and mod it to fit the dell motherboard. Its not too difficult, just requires a drill, drill bit and a tap. Then drill the holes in the case for the motherboard to mount to and you should be good to go.
Click to expand...
The trouble is it's a BTX (or at least a deriviative of BTX) system. BTX is roughly speaking a mirror image of ATX (in towers this typcially manifests as the motherboard being on the opposite side of the case). So to mod a standard ATX case to take the board you would have to totally rearrange the back panel to accomodate the location of expansion slots and motherboard ports.

If you get a new motherboard (newegg still sell one that should take your CPU and ram http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157274 ) be aware that the dell copy of windows will be BIOS locked and IIRC MS considers new motherboard=new PC so to remain fully legit if you replace the motherboard then you will also need a new copy of windows.
 
^^ Depending on the case, that might not be that difficult to overcome either. Just remove the back panel, flip and and mount it back on should solve the problem with the mirror image. Probably more trouble than it's worth though.
 
That would work if the back panel was a 2D structure but it isn't, the space arround the expansion slots is shaped to accomates the card mounting.

I'm not saying such a mod is impossible but on most cases it would require some reasonablly good metalwork skills to pull it off.
 
Yeah you would have to cut those out and flip them as well. Like I said, probably more trouble than it's worth. Wish I had an extra case laying around, I'd give it a shot just to see.
 
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