Dell 9200 and E520

[JimGosden1]

G'day, I have a Dell 9200 which has Unix on it and a Dell E520 which has Windows8 on it. I know nothing about computers but can see that the E520 has 2 hard drives and the 9200 just 1 and the E520 has 4 ram sticks and the 9200 just 2. The 9200 clearly has aplace to put another hard drive and 2 more ram sticks. Can I just wack the bits out of the E520 into the 9200 and would it make it faster or whatever?
Cheers
Jim

 

[nostall]

Jim, I have never worked with/on those computers, but looking at their manuals
http://downloads.dell.com/Manuals/all-products/esuprt_desktop/esuprt_dimension_desktops/dimension-9200_service%20manual_en-us.pdf
and
http://downloads.dell.com/Manuals/all-products/esuprt_desktop/esuprt_dimension_desktops/dimension-e520_owner's%20manual_en-us.pdf
it looks like the RAM M I G H T be interchangable: BUT without knowing the exact specifications of the memory modules it is impossible to know. Adding the E520 modules to the 9200 could very well cause the PC to Not function.
The forum can give you a better answer if you can post your PC specs. The RAM sticks/modules can be carefully removed from their slots and should have stickers on them that tell you what speed they run at (600, 800 etc) and what the various timings are. You should be able to find what processor is in your PC's by going to Dell.com and entering the service tag number found on (usually) the back of the PC.
The hard drive can be moved, but more then likely the HDD from the E520, with W8 on it, will NOT boot up in the 9200: This is because, someone correct me if I am wrong, the Operating system (W8) is "tied" to the motherboard of the 520 (assuming that the OS was installed by Dell as an Original Equipment install and not as a retail install. It Could be used as a storage drive for music, pictures, documents etc.

It is possible that you might gain a little speed from adding more RAM, but both systems are quite old and it might just be a better idea to save some money and replace them. If you have never worked with PC's trying to speed one up a bit by part swapping can turn into a real nighmare: Hell, even if you work on them often it can be a nightmare.

Good luck, I hope that this helps.

 

[JimGosden1]

Jim, I have never worked with/on those computers, but looking at their manuals
http://downloads.dell.com/Manuals/all-products/esuprt_desktop/esuprt_dimension_desktops/dimension-9200_service%20manual_en-us.pdf
and
http://downloads.dell.com/Manuals/all-products/esuprt_desktop/esuprt_dimension_desktops/dimension-e520_owner's%20manual_en-us.pdf
it looks like the RAM M I G H T be interchangable: BUT without knowing the exact specifications of the memory modules it is impossible to know. Adding the E520 modules to the 9200 could very well cause the PC to Not function.
The forum can give you a better answer if you can post your PC specs. The RAM sticks/modules can be carefully removed from their slots and should have stickers on them that tell you what speed they run at (600, 800 etc) and what the various timings are. You should be able to find what processor is in your PC's by going to Dell.com and entering the service tag number found on (usually) the back of the PC.
The hard drive can be moved, but more then likely the HDD from the E520, with W8 on it, will NOT boot up in the 9200: This is because, someone correct me if I am wrong, the Operating system (W8) is "tied" to the motherboard of the 520 (assuming that the OS was installed by Dell as an Original Equipment install and not as a retail install. It Could be used as a storage drive for music, pictures, documents etc.

It is possible that you might gain a little speed from adding more RAM, but both systems are quite old and it might just be a better idea to save some money and replace them. If you have never worked with PC's trying to speed one up a bit by part swapping can turn into a real nighmare: Hell, even if you work on them often it can be a nightmare.

Good luck, I hope that this helps.

 

[JimGosden1]

Thanks for taking the time to come up with that for me, it gives me a clue what to check out before I go switching things around.
Cheers

 

[nostall]

Thanks for taking the time to come up with that for me, it gives me a clue what to check out before I go switching things around.
Cheers

You're very welcome, Jim. Let us know what you decide to do and we will try to help as best we can. Lotta knowledge here on Tom's.

 

[hang-the-9]

G'day, I have a Dell 9200 which has Unix on it and a Dell E520 which has Windows8 on it. I know nothing about computers but can see that the E520 has 2 hard drives and the 9200 just 1 and the E520 has 4 ram sticks and the 9200 just 2. The 9200 clearly has aplace to put another hard drive and 2 more ram sticks. Can I just wack the bits out of the E520 into the 9200 and would it make it faster or whatever?
Cheers
Jim

You can't just go by how many RAM sticks it has, 4 old slow RAM sticks are worse than 2 faster and larger capacity RAM sticks. It's like looking in someone's garage and seeing they have 4 cars in it and saying that they are richer than the guy that has two. While the guy with two cars may have a Ferrari and a Porche to the 4 that are Cooper Minis.

 

[william p]

The Dimension E520, and Dimension 9200 are basically identical except for the bigger case with more expansion slots and bigger PSU with GPU power cable in the 9200. 0WG864 is E 520 MB, 0WG865 is 9200 MB. The 9200 has room for a 2 slot GPU, the E520 requires modding. See my sig. and tutorial "Overclocking Dell BTX Computers" to see what can be done with these.
QX6800 is max. CPU, 8GB DDR2 @800 is max. RAM. Aftermarket PSUs fit.

 

[bdarc23]

The Dimension E520, and Dimension 9200 are basically identical except for the bigger case with more expansion slots and bigger PSU with GPU power cable in the 9200. 0WG864 is E 520 MB, 0WG865 is 9200 MB. The 9200 has room for a 2 slot GPU, the E520 requires modding. See my sig. and tutorial "Overclocking Dell BTX Computers" to see what can be done with these.
QX6800 is max. CPU, 8GB DDR2 @800 is max. RAM. Aftermarket PSUs fit.

William- I'm curious if you have ever tried to exceed 8GB RAM in the Dell 9200/XPS410. I have seen comments on forums with people claiming to be running 16GB. My setup is Q6700, 8GB RAM, Samsung 840 SSD, EVGA 750ti GPU

 

[william p]

I never tried it. Dell used to list 4GB DDR2 667 as max. Crucial.com says 8GB DDR2 800. I only have the E520. maybe the others are better somehow. Look at the chipset specs. and see if there's any difference there.

 

[william p]

DDR2 is a faster technolgy at the same speed than DDR3 due to lower latency. DDR2-800 is just as fast as DDR3-1066. Until you get up to DDR3-1600 there isn't much in it.
As memory speeds up part of the increase is lost to latency which are empty cycles. So the speed increase is less than linear anyway. DDR2-1066 is a couple percent faster than DDR3-1333. But not enough to worry about. I'm not saying newer isn't better. But sometimes it's not by much.
Some chipsets ahve better memory controllers than others and this can make a bigger difference than the memory itself. DDR2-800 on an X38 chipset is much faster then on an older 965 chipset. Which unfortunately the E520 has. It's an old computer, but it's hardly useless.