Motherboard form factor question

[nomak]

I was wondering if you can put a atx form factor mobo into a dell case. Will all screws line up for mounting them in the case or are dell cases required to have a propritary mobo in order to fit there cases..Reason I ask I have a dimmension 8200 with a bad mobo and was wondering if I could grab a new one from the egg and swap them out with no probs.. thanks for any input..

 

[charlesshoults]

It's doubtful you could swap one in as-is. Most of the time, Dell cases are heavily proprietary. Usually, they don't have screw holes, but instead have slots on the motherboard. There will be one screw or a spring-loaded pin that you pull up on, then slide the motherboard to release it. Now, the 8200 does use a removable motherboard tray that is held in place by one screw. If you wanted to do a little work, you might be able to modify the tray, or make a new one that a standard motherboard could be connected to, but considering time and materials, it might be cheaper/easier to buy a new case.

 

[scorpiious]

yeah, dells are very proprietary i tried replacing the motherboard on my dell with an asus mobo and it wouldnt line-up properly

 

[DDigital]

Like the others have said, Dell tends to be pretty proprietary. One solution would be to just buy a Dell replacement board, but honestly you could buy an entire used 8200 for about the same price (with everything except a hard drive for obvious reasons). If you want to hold off on upgrading to a new system, this is probably your best bet (you would most likely be able to just toss your hard drive in and boot right up without much hassle since the components should be pretty much the same, plus you could add the ram from your system to give a little boost, if there are slots available).

Keep in mind that you are still spending $80 to keep using a, what, 7 or 8 year old system? If it works for what you use it for, that might be worth it to you, but it doesn't seem a wise investment to me (of course, I'm an upgrade whore, so take that with a grain of salt).

 

[Diablo2K]

Another point to be warned about is the Power supply. some Dells use the 20/24 pin molex connector but there not wired the same as an ATX power supply. swapping either one will cause hardware failures, if you change one you need to change both.