Dell Studio XPS 8000 Power Supply Upgrade

[dsmoore]

Not a question, just an informational post. Recently bought a Dell Studio XPS 8000 from Best Buy. Love the computer, works great, but I've already added a hard drive, will be adding a Blu-Ray burner as a second optical and may add a TV tuner card. The stock 350W supply just seemed a bit puny so I swapped in a Corsair TX750W supply. It works fine.

I know that's overkill but Fry's had it on sale for $79.00, 30 bucks cheaper than the 650 I was going to buy.

Issues:
The stock power supply is 140mm deep, this one is 160mm deep. Made for a tight fit but nothing had to be forced. Don't go larger than that though.
The Corsair has (4) PCI-E connectors, only one is needed in this PC so you have three extra cables to stash (none of the cables are detachable).
There are two SATA cables with four connectors each. Two hard drives and two optical drives can be run off one cable. Sweet. Leaves an extra cable to stash.
There are eight old style 4-pin connectors on two cables, so two more cables to stash.
The 8-pin EPS connector splits in two so it works for the 4-pin EPS on the mainboard.

Very quiet, I like it, but if I had to do it over again I'd likely go with something with detachable cables. The bundle of unused cables is large but fits in the space available where horizontally-mounted hard drives would normally be (the Dell has them mounted vertically).

 

[CMMoonan]

Just bought the 650TX after reading this, any tips you learned while swapping the power supply out?

 

[dsmoore]

As far as the PS itself, no. Pretty straightforward with what I already described. If you're going to install a second optical drive I would do it at the same time. I ended up moving my drives around to accommodate the cables, much easier to do with the power supply removed. The front panel swings open like a door, release the tabs on the left side and swing it open to get to the front of the case for sliding new optical drives in.
Another thing about the second optical drive: I bought the LG Blu-ray burner, and the button on the front of the case isn't arranged right to open the drive. You need to eject the tray via explorer, or use third party software to eject the drive. Other DVD drives may have the same issue.