Dell Mobo

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I have an old dell computer, and I am wondering if the mobo can be upgraded. Is it worth it? Does Dell have any proprietary parts that might prevent me from upgrading? \

Any help would be great. TIA

Mike
 
Hi Mike,

How old are we talking here? Pentium? Pentium 2? 3? 4?

What parts do you want to retain from the old system? And what do you want to upgrade to?

My general experience is that older Dells did have some nasty proprietary (ish) features, like risers and the such which could hamper your ability to migrate some components from one mobo to another.

Richard
 
Thanks for your reply. I have a 3yr old Dell.

Mobo: Intel D845PT
P4 2.4 ghz 400 FSB
768mb PC2100


I'd like to retain all parts if I could, and I guess just upgrade to mobo that can give me temp info, and maybe the ability to OC just a little. I dont want to upgrade cooling system.

My concern I guess is in regards to those propietary measures, risers and such. Keep hearing that a Dell mobo can not be upgraded.

Any help you could give would be great. I LOVE this forum. :knock:
 
That's not an uncommon motherboard - so there's shouldn't be too many surprises Mike. It's has a CNR riser - so Modem may be an issue. A replacement PCI modem won't set you back much. If it's used for RJ45, then just replace it with a board that has integrated LAN

Being a socket 478 chip - I can't really think of anything that would really hamper an upgrade. The only thing I haven't tried before is putting a 400Mhz FSB chip in a 533/800 FSB motherboard. I don't know if anyone else has tried this? Presumably there will be some boards what will let you 'under-clock' them but I'm a bit ignorant in that regard to be honest.
 
OOO - one thing you will need to do Mike (and it's kinda important!) :eek:

Dell have an 'amusing'/'annoying' habbit of rewiring their ATX PSU's and Motherboards... just so that you can't buy replacements from anyone other than them. Even more amusing is that they use exactly the same ATX connectors as real ATX components. This WILL cause nasty surprises.

There are pinout diagrams available that explain how to re-wire them. Personally I'd just ditch the Dell PSU and buy a proper ATX one. (And if you're doing that, why not treat yourself to a new case too).
 
Thanks again for the reply.

You kind of lost me on the second reply. ATX and PSU's? Little new to me.

But I want to elaborate a bit on what I was looking for. I think a mobo I can grow into would make the most sense, but at this time I want to make sure its backwards compatible with what I have. Down the road, I can grow into a new CPU, memory, etc.

Case in point. I would love to get rid of the box making it much easier to get a compatible mobo, but at this time I am not ready to do that. Little by little. mobo first. Thanks for any help.

Mike
 
Sorry Mike, just to clarify:

PSU = Power Supply Unit.
ATX = The standard created by Intel for power supply and motherboard connectivity. Also referred to as the 'form factor'

Intel created the ATX form factor as an industry standard. And pretty much everyone followed it... except our good friends at Dell. Not only did Dell alter the specification by swapping a couple of wires around in the connector, they even talked Intel into creating motherboards that defied their own standards.

Last I heard Dell had (fairly) recently stopped this practice. But unless you know for sure, then as well as changing the motherboard you ought to change the power supply. You may completely trash your system otherwise, or worse, injure yourself.
 
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