Change from dell case to better cooled

[wein]

Hello everyone.

My current dell is a 8250 tower. I would like to improve my gaming experience/whole experience on a computer by changing the dell case to a more well cooled case. I came up with this conclusion the first time my dell fan failed. As I browsed a major computer business for another fan. I was helped by a friend of my brother who worked there and when I told him my problem he said the fan I held was specially made for dell and I could only get that from them. It seems the port is designed to be different then most if not all other fans. I called up customer service of dell to get a tech guy to come replace the fan, well, he didn't show up and I was still under my warranty. Since I am not under this warranty anymore I guess I could improve performance.

This is where I become stuck. I am not new with computers just new at different set ups and afraid of trying out different concepts. I would like to remove all the parts from my current tower and place it in a tower with more cooling and a different motherboard. The motherboard is dell and 4x agp. I am going to upgrade a nvidia ti 4200 64mb to a ati 9800 pro.

The ATI 9800 pro is very heat intensive and takes a lot of power. I plan to buy a seperate heat sink for it.

I hit a few problems when I want to do this;

There is a stupid grill to release the heat into a fan. Would I be able to remove the grill and CPU from the motherboard so that I may place the cpu on another motherboard with a heatsink? And for a new motherboard would there be any configirations I need to do? I have to find one with 8x agp that can use the cruddy RDRAM. I don't want to spend too much money on the project since the video card alone sets me back some.

Im wondering if dell does any other 'special' useless stuff to their machines to improve their profits and reduce people from doing custom things to their computers?

If anyone could help me out step by step on this information, it would be sooo great. If any other information is needed, please just post here and I will get back to ye asap.

 

[bbyemployee]

If I were you I would just stick it out with the Dell untill I had enought funds to build a whole new setup.

But thats just me.....

 

[jammydodger]

Boards that support RDRAM might be hard to come by now, you could prob get one second hand though. What CPU have you got? You should be able to remove the heatsink from your CPU, I doubt they use epoxy to stick it on. Just be VERY carefull when doing so, and if it doesnt cum off too easily try not to force it.

I have to agree with the d00d above, I think it would be best to get sum cash together and then upgrade everything. New CPU, RAM, MB, Graphics, Case.

[Insert witty comment here]

 

[Crashman]

Most Dell computers don't use a standard motherboard form factor, so that most Dell P4 boards don't fit an ATX case. I have seen a few Micro ATX Dells, but those are rare.

Unless you have one of those Micro ATX Dells, you're stuck buying a new board just to replace the case.

Everything else is standard on Dell P4's.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[wein]

Well most everything in the case is pretty expensive. The CPU is intel p4 2.8ghz and the ram is 1536 RD ram which was damn expensive to upgrade. I was planning on getting a new motherboard for a new case since dell boards are the worst. The cpu is cooled by a grill placed over it, thats where I am stuck. I don't know if it is safe to remove it and not damage the cpu.

So over all I plan on a new motherboard and graphics card. I know if i do enough research on the internet for a RDram board that supports 8x agp card, I could still find a place that sells them and if not I will get a new board and new ram.
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by wein on 03/15/04 11:02 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[wein]

Ah, I have searched on ebay and found I could sell my ram for more 60% what I paid for so it won't be the biggest lost.
Considering that, I can get a new motherboard/ram type. Anyone have an recommendations considering all the factors, price, quality, value, depreciation value?