My old Dell XPS 600 just broke and I'm looking to build a new PC but salvage some of the old parts to save money. I've never build a new PC just upgraded existing ones so I know little about motherboards and cases. Graphics: 2 nvidia 7800 GTX cards in SLi CPU: Dual Core Intel Xeon 3.42 GHz with HT Tech Ram: 2GB (1gb x 2) PC2-5300U Is there a motherboard and case that would support these? I don't know where to look. I have DVD drives and everything else, just need a case and motherboard. Thank you.
Oops, I was thinking too, I'm not sure the dell fans would work in anything else, and Dell uses it's own power supply which I can't remove. :S
You can certainly salvage the graphics cards, CPU and RAM, but for what you have to expend on the system there seems little point. One $65 graphics card will outperform the pair of 7800s and use 40W doing it versus the 200+ the SLI setup will use. I'm somewhat doubtful the Xeon is actually a Dual core unless it's a Pentium D. Even if it is a Pentium D (Smithfield), again, a $50 Core 2 Duo will smash it to pieces. As salvagable as the main components are, you may as well go for the full system build. Your PC would have been powerful in its heyday, but that was 2005, four years is a long time for any hardware.
Dell fans usualy have proprietary connectors on them. They are still 12V, and can be easily adapted to work with a non-dell machine. They do use very nice fans in their servers, so it may be worth the effort to convert them. The power supply can be removed (http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/xps600/en/SM/parts0.htm#wp1055309) and converted to standard ATX connectors, and it is a 650W unit, so it is probably worth the effort to remove it and try to find a space for it in the new case (it is not the same size & shape as a normal power supply that the new case will be desinged for) The media card reader & DVD drive can also be moved to a new system. I would have to agree that the rest of the parts you have are not worth buying a new mainboard for....the ram is very outdated, the Xeon (are you sure it's even a Xeon?) can be beaten by most laptop processors, and the 7800GTX is hopelessly outdated (even with a pair of them).
My bad, yes it's a Pentium D, and it's actually 3.46Ghz and overclockable to 4GHz. Thank you alot on the power supply, that will save some money. I'm not majorly bothered by it being old, but in my new rig if I can make it run much faster for cheap parts then I'll go for it. I'm trying to keep things in as small a budget as possible though, I just want a working desktop at home so I don't have to use my laptops all the time. Here's what I was originally going to buy for my new setup, I am trying to make it as cheap as possible, it will be used for gaming somewhat, mainly Counter-Strike: Source, TF2, UT3, I do own Crysis & Warhead, and STALKER Clear sky however but don't play them much. COLORSit ATX-L8029 No PSU ASUS P5N-D MOTHERBOARD Sweex Power Supply 650W Low Noise Black (I will not buy this now that I can salvage my dell one) Samsung Black DVD-+RW SH-S202N/BEBN Lightscibe Optical Drive HEATSINK COMPOUND (Self-Explanatory) Would those parts work if I salvaged my old parts and put it together? I think it should, I'm not sure my sound card would fit using that motherboard but it has HD Integrated Audio anyhow. You say that mid-range parts nowadays are way way faster than my GPU and CPU, what could I get? does that mean I would need a different mobo and would that mobo be cheaper? Thanks
It's just as well you didn't, there are no parts in there bar the CD drive that are remotely useful. The P5N-D is a very poor board, the Sweex PSU is worse, ColorsIT cases are poorly made. You would do much better with something like: Antec Three Hundred Gigabyte EP31-DS3L Sapphire Radeon HD4670 Corsair CX 400W PSU
Is there a cheaper nvidia setup? I prefer their driver support with PhysX & Cuda and I'm quite active with benchmarking and modding them at laptopvideo2go.com. I looked up all your parts by the way and it came out at about 350$ which is a pretty good price.
And my dell PSU is pretty useless, I took it apart but it's basically the entire base of my old case and would just barely fit diagonally in a completely empty case let alone with a mobo inside. Unless it cane be dismantled further, all I've done is what's shown in the manual.
OK I'm actually going to go with an nvidia 9800GTX+ the minimum is 450 watts on nvidia's site, and I'm using my old Pentium D which I don't know how much power it needs. I want to get one of the motherboards here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/qid=12391...60800,k:atx+motherboard+775+-micro&sort=price What would be the best for price/quality/performance? Are the cheap Asrock ones any good?
No, cheap AsRock boards aren't very good. I'd go with one of the Gigabytes, preferably one without an nvidia chipset, as they're very unreliable. I will warn you, the 9800GTX+ is an end of line old product, you're very likely to pay far too much for it considering its performance. Go with a GTS250 1GB if you want something in that range. For a start it uses a lot less power.
Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units It says that a GTS 250 is just a rebranded 9800GTX/+ and on amazon they are about 30 pounds more expensive than the Palit 9800GTX+ here.
They have more memory which helps, and they are also far more power efficient, and less susceptible to minimum frame drops, sometimes gaining 50% extra performance for that reason. On top of that, why are you buying from Amazon? That's one of the most expensive places to buy PC parts from, especially in the UK. 512MB: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/512M...it-2200-MHz-GDDR3-GPU-738-MHz-HDTV-DVI-Retail 1GB: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/1GB-...DDR3-GPU-745MHz-128-Cores-D-Sub-DL-DVI-I-HDMI You will note the 512MB card is actually £10 less than the 9800 at Amazon.
Thanks for that Right... NOW I'm getting the talit GTS 250 1GB. I'm going to do the build with scan because it's cheaper. I need a motherboard, case & 450w+ PSU to support the GTS 250, Pentium D, 1 Hard drive, 1 DVD drive, 1 sound card, and 2 x 1GB ram. Should I opt for micro-atx since I'm not using that many components?
Not really, MicroATX boards are pretty naff quality in most cases, they won't necessarily save you much money. I'd recommend a Corsair VX 450W PSU.
he will only see a few frames per second difference at normal resolutions i.e. 1680x1050 and below if he gets the 1gb version. its only 256-bit so the extra 512mb wont do him any good. unless of course you are going to be gaming at above 1680x1050. i would save the money and get the 512. thats an extra few bucks you can put towards a better processor or ram.
That's usually my stand on things in this pat of the market as well, but I thought I would at least give him the option.
Sorry if I'm dragging on, I'm finding this quite fun and interesting My monitor is a Dell 2005fpw with 1680x1050 resolution exactly. On top of that I feel I should get a 500w psu instead of 450w one so I can be a bit over, it seems you are very insistent on a corsair PSU but there isn't a 500W. Here's my build so far (again)(hotlinked). Asus TA-881 Black/Silver Midi Tower Case w/o PSU Asus P5QL, iP43, S 775, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), DDR2 1066/667/800, SATA 3Gb/s, ATX 1GB Palit GTS 250, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), 2000MHz GDDR3, GPU 745MHz, 128 Cores, D-Sub/ DL DVI-I/ HDMI And some PSU, maybe from here My budget's 333 pounds (including vat & shipping) but I would prefer to keep well under that. I've tried to find higher quality things that are still relatively low price.
