Best Dell board that will fit an Optiplex GX520 case?

[Gregg Eshelman]

These Optiplex GX boxen are almost, but not quite, exactly BTX. It's likely that a 100% BTX specification board would fit, but some hacking would be required for the power button due to Dell using a proprietary design for their front panel power button and LEDs.

I know an Optiplex GX620 used the same case, I have a dead one I scavenged the power supply from for a 520 without one. So I could get some 620 boards pretty cheap - but I'd like to know the absolute best model of Dell that used these mini tower cases.

 

[dangus]

my only question is....why? seems like a waste of time/money messing with such an old computer

 

[Tisesme]

I'm trying to find out something similar. Most of the Optiplex Boards look the same, from what I can tell, so I imagine that most will fit in another case. I'm running an Optiplex 755 and I'm looking to get either an Optiplex 360 or 380 motherboard off of eBay or something for like $15 but keep in mind the newer Optiplex boards have better specs, for example; the Optiplex 380 uses DDR3 RAM but still has an LGA775 socket (which is what I personally am looking for). I'm not sure what you mean by 'best' since most are the same but you can look at the Dell Optiplex Wiki in the section labeled "Models, in relative chronological order." It tells you what model has what specs and is compatible with what hardware.

 

[Tisesme]

my only question is....why? seems like a waste of time/money messing with such an old computer

The Optiplex computers are old, but they are so cheap and the power supplies in the Mini-Towers are non proprietary, meaning you can get any ATX power supply (maybe one that can be used for another build in the future) and then with that you can get a nice graphics card with the help of PCI-E raisers, just look at what this guy did with his Optiplex. Another thing you can do is adapt an LGA771 Xeon to LGA775 (which is the socket of these motherboards) and run a cheap core 2 quad equivalent, but with only certain models, which is why I'm looking at replacing my motherboard.

 

[Gregg Eshelman]

I looked at the Wikipedia page, and googled some of the later ones. Would be nice if the article had a column noting which form factor they all are. The 980 looks like it would fit the Matrix "Smith" mini tower.

In the plus column for that case, it looks cool. It's super rugged. Easy to open. NO TOOLS required to open or change anything except the mainboard and power supply. Takes a standard power supply. Upgraded unit = "theft proof". No crook looking to steal a PC is going to look twice at a box with an Optiplex 520 badge. 😉

For GPU, Zotac nVidia GTX 1050 Mini. It's short enough to not hit the CPU cooler shroud and only has a single wide slot, despite being a 2x thickness board. It's like they made it specifically for BTX systems, most of which with a PCIe x16 slot have it uppermost so the GPU won't block another slot.

Why a GTX 1050 mini? Because it costs less than a GTX 9xx, uses less power (tops out at 75W so needs no extra power connection) than a GTX 9xx, performs better than a GTX 9xx, and does hardware HEVC encoding like a GTX 9xx.

 

[Tisesme]

It's short enough to not hit the CPU cooler shroud and only has a single wide slot, despite being a 2x thickness board. It's like they made it specifically for BTX systems, most of which with a PCIe x16 slot have it uppermost so the GPU won't block another slot.

It doesn't really matter the length of the card, if you look at this video, you'll see a little after 1 minute, he shows that his graphics card is not touching the CPU shroud since he used PCI-E Raisers.

 

[Gregg Eshelman]

Some useful info here. https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmods/comments/3x3784/years_too_late_everything_about_dell_front_panel/