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Naked computer

jhal

jhal

Titanium Bliss
It was time to clean the dust out of the Dell XPS that is my main computer. I purchased this machine in April of 2010 for $150.00. After adding 2 more hard drives, some more RAM, another video card, and my M-Audio sound card, the price was about $400.00 total for a very nice machine.

It was high end and very expensive back in 2007 when it came out, but now it's nothing special in terms of performance. I do admire the layout of the unit, it's almost like a mini rack the way it's put together with the hard drives the way they are. Very upgradable, unlike most new machines with their onboard everything MB's. A total of 6 quiet fans keep it cool. It's also very heavy, probably 60lbs.

It's an Intel dual core at 2.4 ghz each with 4 gigs of ram, 2 gigs of video in SLI mode, and 2.5 Terabytes of hard drive space.

I'm running XP, but have been thinking of going to Windows 7 after doubling the RAM. This machine came with Vi$ta and I promptly removed it. That was the reason I got it cheap. The Vista OS was wadded beyond repair.

Anyway, here's some pics. I think I did good with my bargain machine.
 

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win 7 ok ..take a thought about win 8 .. apparently will run from cd drive like linux .. i think bill might be getting on the right track at last
 
Wow, I didn't know it was that expensive when new. I thought $3000 at the most. That is score material there! It is a big pig that's for sure. 22 1/2" x 8 1/2" x 22 1/2". That's almost twice the height and depth of most machines.

This machine should last me another 4 years since I am not a big gamer. As long as it can handle HD video editing I will be ok. I plan on adding a Blu-Ray drive and the capability to do HD video projects. I know an upgrade to Window 7, as well as more RAM will be needed for glitch free performance.
 
Every XPS I've seen is a BTX, except for that antique Pentium XPS M200s I've got.

I now am using an XPS 410, which has had pretty much everything upgraded except the card reader, motherboard and fans (really, power supply, optical drives, ram, hard drive, video card, sound card, operating system and processor have all been upgraded).

I love the red motherboard in your system though, that is just strange since I use a green board system (XPS 410). That case is also noticably larger than the XPS 410's case. I haven't see a case that large since I used an Antec Plus 1080AMG case...which weighed a good 40 Lbs empty being about 3' tall and made of steel.
 
Interesting layout in that case, for sure. I'm a firm believer in using at least a full-tower case, preferably a server case, especially when running 2 or 3 monster video cards. Red PCB usually means MSI, wether mobo, vid card, or whatever else. That's just been their trip, for as long as I can remember, though they have used green at times too. I actually just installed an SLI mobo today, an older Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe. It's socket 939, & came with an Athlon 64 x2 3800+. I haven't messed with AMD for awhile now, & got a nice deal on these, so thought it'd be fun. The only problem is, I don't think I have the right SLI cable, it needs to be flexible (the PCI-E slots are spaced funny), & the ones I have are rigid, like a PCB. I might have one buried in a box or drawer, I just need to dig around some more. But it's running now, it's what I'm typing on.
 
Ooh...X2 3800. I would try and find a Athlon 64 X2 4600 socket 939 version, they seem a lot faster when you're using them. I know since I used a X2 3800 for a while then I was given an X2 4600 and it seemed a lot faster.
 
Heh, I was looking around a bit, & it looks like the 4400+ & 4800+ have the biggest L2 cache, but they all look to be good overclockers. I'd have to find a chip really cheap though, for it to be worth upgrading, I only have $28 after tax into the mobo & CPU. ;) Plus, I'd be better off just getting more RAM, it uses old-fashioned DDR, & I only have 1 gig in it, 2x 512MB sticks. :D
 
I built a new computer last January and gave my dad my old one after updating the processor to a 4800+ X2. That computer is more than fast enough to do anything an average user could need.
 
Yay, I got 3 gigs of RAM in it now. :D I spent most of the day & about $60, but I not only got 2x 1 gig sticks of Corsair XMS in it, but also 2x 512MB sticks of the same, for 3 gigs altogether. :thmbsp: I also got a flexible SLI bridge and a better heatsink, but neither of those is installed yet. The heatsink looks pretty decent, with a thinnish copper base, (lighter), lots of aluminum fins, & some heatpipes. Plus it only cost me like $3, which was pretty cool.
 
almost all of the business grade dells and HP computers at work are BTX.

Nice looking system. looks to be made right around when dell bought alienware.
When that purchase happened, the XPS line came out, and it was basically an alienware PC with a dell box.

Nice cards in SLI, what model are they?
 
Actually, the XPS has been around for darn near forever. I've got an old XPS M200s from 1997 with a whopping 200 MHz Pentium MMX, 64 MB ram and a 6 GB hard drive.

However, before it was just "XPS" it was Dimension XPS.
 
Hey, I finally got this thing cranked up, with a nice 25% overclock on the processor. :thmbsp: It doesn't seem like I'll get anything more, without investing in radical cooling solutions, but this is plenty quick enough. :yes: http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2176861 I'm not sure if that vcore is reading right, there's some weird stuff you have to do in the BIOS. But the temps stay in the 40s C, maybe just easing into the 50s slightly, under load, so it's fine there.
 
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treserious said:
what I meant was the high end gaming XPS machines...
Click to expand...

Actually, that WAS high-end gaming gear back then. :D The mighty 233 MMX would set you back a few dollars, and was a full 33MHz faster than that 200 Compgeke posted. :D I didn't get into Dells much at all back then though, because I was totally against their proprietary cases & hardware layouts. One bad experience was all you needed. ;) That was before the ATX format became the industry standard, & things got easier for system builders.
 
I have one of the early ATX Dells, the M200s is an ATX board, however Dell (being stupid) used a custom power supply on them. The case also happens to be the same as the slot 1 Pentium III MicronPC computers.
 
I got a bit distracted & forgot to post this earlier. I figured out a couple more things in the BIOS, & got up to 2600 MHz. good & stable, without any more voltage, so it still runs nice & cool. :thmbsp: 2620 was useable in Windows, but 2640 wasn't, so I backed off to 2600 even, to make sure it's stable. The crazy thing is, I have a Delta server fan & fan mate on the processor, running slow, so I "could" still crank it up, & add more voltage. :D These are some nice chips, for OCing, keep in mind the stock speed is 2000 MHz. http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2178511
 
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I just learned that my old Athlon X2 4600 board can OC also, it's technically an emachines motherboard but it turns out that there are both OC BIOS's for it, and control-F1 enabled overclocking support directly from the OEM BIOS...strange. I need to clean the dust from the fan and see how high I can get that clock using some crappy PC-4300 ram and a GeForce 6800 GS...if I kill it, well, it never stood a change against the Core 2 Duo I have now anyways.
 
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