Buying a Dell mobo off of eBay for a new pc build?

[Honeybadger191]

I want to build the cheapest light gaming PC possible, my plan is to buy a used i5 2500 and pair it with a used lga1155 mobo and pick up an rx 550 (i have all the other parts already). i don't see a problem with that but i just wanted to run it by you guys first? do you a see a problem with this? ill leave some links below. thank you.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Genuine-Dell-Optiplex-790-LGA1155-DDR3-SFF-Motherboard-D28YY-0D28YY/232746696588?epid=127431328&hash=item3630c8bf8c#viTabs_0

https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Dell-XPS-8300-Vostro-460-LGA1155-motherboard-DH67M01-TB0420-Y2MRG/291925763944?hash=item43f821a768:g:88AAAOSw5cNYE38i

 

[inanition02]

Many OEM (Dell, HP, etc) mobos have things that prevent them from being used outside of that company's PCs. I've seen mobos that only work with power supplies from that OEM (looking at you, HP) and mobos that are non-standard shapes/sizes or even backwards (that's a dell thing) and won't fit in other cases. It's fairly impossible to tell from the pictures about compatibility with power supplies but it does look like a non-standard shape (mATX length, but wider).

Also, I don't see the jumpers for the front panel power button.

So if you have a matching dell case and power supply, could be a good deal. If you don't, steer clear.

 

[Honeybadger191]

Many OEM (Dell, HP, etc) mobos have things that prevent them from being used outside of that company's PCs. I've seen mobos that only work with power supplies from that OEM (looking at you, HP) and mobos that are non-standard shapes/sizes or even backwards (that's a dell thing) and won't fit in other cases. It's fairly impossible to tell from the pictures about compatibility with power supplies but it does look like a non-standard shape (mATX length, but wider).

Also, I don't see the jumpers for the front panel power button.

So if you have a matching dell case and power supply, could be a good deal. If you don't, steer clear.

i understand that, but i plan on completely making a custom case, plus that mobo im fairly certain works with my psu. im torn here.

 

[william p]

Dell uses a proprietary front header with diagnostic LEDs and temperature sensors. They change the pinout and features there.
A "cheapest" light gaming PC would be just about any LGA1156 Optiplex MT (Tower) witha GTX1050Ti video card and 12-16GB RAM.
An Optiplex 990 should do what you want. Just use the whole thing.
http://www.userbenchmark.com/System/Dell-OptiPlex-990/578
Or Optiplex 790.
http://www.userbenchmark.com/System/Dell-OptiPlex-790/3864
A cheap mid range gamer would be a T3500 workstation LGA1136 iwth an overclock on one of the unlocked CPUs. It supports 150W GPUs as is.
You can look around in here if that interests you..
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/throttlestop-overclocking-desktop-pcs.235975/
My budget gamer is a $20 Dell Optiplex 380, Q9550, 8GB RAM and ZotacGTX 1050Ti Mini.

 

[faalin]

if your set on a dell board know that the bios is locked and your ram will run at 1333Mhz CL9, you also need to check and see if the 2500 will work on that board. We have Dell Optiplex 790's at work and they came with i5 2400's and will not take anything above that.

 

[william p]

The links I posted show both machines running i7-2600, maybe a later BIOS is needed. I also saw some i7-2500K unlocked CPUs running in those.
There's a possibility of a multiplier overclock there. But Optiplexes don't have a lot of headroom in the VRM for that.