Worst designed MOBO ever?

S

ShadowSoldier89

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 13, 2011
Messages
130
so friend online I play FFXI with has a video card thats crapping out, still in college no money father refuses to get a new family computer yada yada yada

so I say I'll help u find a new GPU for XI thatll work in ur computer, send me the model number

Dell E510

so I google and find this abomination of design to be the MOBO in that computer

http://www.amazon.com/GENUINE-DIMENSION-DESKTOP-MOTHERBOARD-WG261/dp/B002N7XADC

seriously WTF, slanted CPU socket o_O, northbridge heatsink would easily block most coolers, RAM sockets split by capacitors, 20(4) pin power horizontal near the RAM

anyone got pics of anything worse?
 
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Well that E510 motherboard is specifically designed for a certain case. Not sure why the socket is angled, but the cooler is horizontal and pulls air from the front of the case, across the heatsink and towards the back. And the 20 pin power connector is right below the power supply.

IMG_20111220_143458.jpg
 
Yep, most Dell boards are super proprietary.

You cannot use an aftermarket heatsink on them because they also use a proprietary mounting system.

At least now most of their systems can accept standard ATX power supplies. Their old XPS and Precision systems had proprietary power supplies to boot.
 
Slanted CPU socket is part of the BTX design I believe. And yeah, pretty much everything else is proprietary, specifically designed for that case.
 
That is a BTX board. However the PSU is rated at only 305W and knowing those Dell PSUs in particular are not going to handle an external Video Card very well. However it looks to be a standard ATX PSU with custom cabling. You really should invest into a PSU before attempting to replace the current on-board solution.
 
you should really be kicking your friend around for buying that system.

PC Chips made some real winners back in the Socket 7 days.
 
From the looks of it you can use an off the shelf power supply, with a 24 pin that will split into a 20, and the ATX12 plug, anyone's guess if you can get it to fit in that case though, eight times out of ten they won't, either a wee bit too big, or the mounting holes for the screws are in the wrong location, normally need a new case if your that attached to the system (and BTX is pretty hard to find these days).

That's probably the most compatible with regular parts, Dell I have seen in a while.
 
And they sell that abomination for $75- 80 every day on ebay if not for more, some rev. of the board only support P4, some could take a Pentium D at max.
Someone gave me one about 2 years ago with a dead board, figured if I could get mb for 50.00 I could make a little money, after a couple more boards(non working) I placed it at the curb for the scrappers, one of my worst experiences.
About 2 weeks later I get a call from a friend wanting me to fix up their pc, guess what is?yuuuup
 
Yeah I have met several people who cried about their computers lagging in games, and wanted a video card upgrade or something, yet none of the dual slot video cards would fit in their PCIE slots. Gee, I wonder why.....
 
Quick note about Dell PSUs: They rate them at continuous power so should be able to handle most modern mid-range cards. But make sure the PSU has a PCIe connector! If the original design did not offer discrete GPUs or only the board-powered one, the PSU itself would not have the cable. It is their philosophy of not putting extra cables on the PSU beyond what the case is designed to support. So if you MB has 5 sata ports, it will have 5 sata connectors, not more not less.

Regarding the space between the memory slots: it helps dissipate heat. RAM used to run at much higher voltages earlier and that is why we still have those fancy heat spreaders (which supposedly do more harm by trapping heat).

Read more about the BTX design philosophy here; notice the reason they did not catch on was primarily the reduction in heat as voltages went down with smaller silicon geometries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTX_(form_factor)

http://www.anandtech.com/show/1157
 
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