Is it possible to upgrade an old Dell Dimension E520 into a gaming computer?

[screaminseahawk]

Is it possible to upgrade an old Dell Dimension E520 desktop and turn it into a decent gaming computer? Or are there hardware restrictions?

 

[sz0ty0l4]

There are always different variations of prebuilt desktops, so you should provide the hardware specs instead of a name to properly answer such question. However i would suggest to start from scratch, i'm pretty sure that would turn out to be the best option ;d

 

[justajohn]

The short answer before you read the book is yes you can.
*Upgrades for consideration in order*
-Upgrade Bios to latest version. Do this anyway its FREE
-Power supply any standard 450w or higher rated unit preferably.
-CPU Intel Q6600, Q6700 or QX6800 quad core processor and newer heat sink assembly (Dell Part NO: J9761, D9729)
-4X2GB of pc2-5300 667Mhz RAM
-Radeon HD7850 or Nvidia 750ti or better. It can use the best cards out there as long as you can make em fit. R9 295X2 8GB cut it in half if you have to! LOL I KEED! I KEED!
-A cheap 120gb SSD for your OS boot drive (SATA 2.0 is not going to achieve super blazing fast response rates but still way better then old HDD)

Now for the book.
I have to say yes you can get quite a bit out of it yet with the right upgrades.
Granted it won't blow your mind playing the latest generation of games at 1080p resolutions on Ultra but it will definitely hold its own with most modern titles at 720p resolutions on 4XMSAA and Very High settings for most games quite wonderfully. A lot of medium range games or older titles it can definitely handle at 1080p ultra settings.
I am currently typing up this post from my very own Dell e520 which I have upgraded to a very good gaming box. On mine I upgraded the PSU to a 500w unit. The CPU I upgraded to is a qx6800 2.93Ghz quad core processor I believe the highest rated you can put in it. Those are still quite pricey unless you can find a good deal I recommend a q6700 pretty close performance and a whole lot better power savings and much cheaper. I have an HD 7850 1GB for the video, 8GB of system RAM (which is the maximum supported for the e520 4X2GB) and an SSD for the boot drive.
The trickiest part to make happen is the video card. I am currently running an older xfx Core edition HD 7850 1GB card with the single fan in mine but there is also a 2GB version available which should also fit (FX-785A-CNL4 gotta search around like on eBay and make sure it's the single fan version). The reason why that specific card is because I know it works. Maybe there are others including some nvidia cards like maybe a GTX750ti with the small form factor which would be even better. As you know there are a ton of much lower spec'd GPU's out there that will work with absolutely no need for modifications but at the sacrifice of much better performance and the ability to play the best games and still look better then an Xbox 360 doing it.
I have had Dell BTX cases and there headaches of limited upgrade-ability for a while now like the old e310 I finally got rid a few years back and an e510 that still works for the kids which has a Pentium D and an HD5670 in it and that pretty much has the same identical layout as the e520's internals.
to make the xfx HD7850 with the single fan work you need to unscrew and remove the aluminum shroud that covers the fan then it will have enough room to actually sit in the pci-e x16 slot without trying to break the heat sink housing from the e520's CPU or try to do some other crazy funky stuff to the video cards heat sink to make it work. The placement of the single fan and smallish centralized heat sink on the xfx card allow it to clear perfectly and it still cools the card fine without the boxey cover. On mine I also had to cut a portion from the extended double slot bracket where it locks into the back of the case because it is a double spaced pci-e x16 card and so it has the double expansion slot shield where it fits into the back of the PC. As you probably know the e520 is only capable of accepting a single spaced pci-e x16 card by design as this is the last expansion slot and there is not another open peripheral space available in the right direction to make this work without modifications. It wasn't too difficult to do this and for my purposes I think it was the best solution (I am not going to try and sell the video card or the computer later) though I have also seen people remove the mounting shield bracket from the video card completely in order to make theirs work in other systems with similar issues in order not to damage the bracket. Most screw right off without problems. Finding a decent enough spec'd video card that will work is by far the hardest bit of trying to bring the old box up to decent specs for sure.
I ain't kidding when I say it can do the best GPU you can fit in there. If you rigged a pci-e x16 extender you could run a GTX970 for sure. With the QX6800 processor you might get some bottle-necking and not quite the performance you would want out of the GPU but I would say it would smoke the living hell out of my e520.
Is this advised If you are willing to do it? HELL YEAH!!!
Is it the smart thing to do? Hell to the NO.
For the money if you already have the e520 a decent overhaul on the cheap is just what the doctor ordered. Anything else you might as well buy a newer system altogether.

One other issue you should be certain to resolve is the original heat sink that comes with the e520 isn't very adequate for a higher powered quad core processor such as a qx6800 you'll have to find a Dell Part NO: J9761, D9729 heat sink.
The heat sink is for all respects a simple swap out affair which I recommend regardless as it is a much better triple heat pipe design and will be able to handle the increased heat from a quad core processor like a q6600 q6700 or a qx6800 like I'm running. Even with this heat sink mine can get pretty toasty when engaged in CPU intensive tasks. When I originally installed it it used to idle around 45c and I saw it rise to 68c during a bench test. I immediately went out and got some arctic silver 5 thermal compound to put on it. Since then it rises to about 62c at the highest only noticed this during benchmark testing usually during physics tests. Since the better thermal compound was applied it usually Idles at 33c and most of the time doesn't get over 54c.

Mine currently has a windows index score as follows

Processor 7.2
Memory 7.2
Graphics 7.9
Gaming Graphics 7.9
Hard Disk 7.0
Overall 7.0

CATZILLA Benchmark

1080p 4756 1 Star Tiger
720p 7945 1 Star Tiger


Passmark Performance Test 8

2050-2065 passmark rating scores routinely

CPU 4050
2D 446
3D 4040
Memory 900
Disk 1610

Not super outstanding but it's still got some life left in it.

Notice the windows index of 7.0 for hard disk is due to the SSD running on a SATA 2.0 standard so it will never achieve it's best performance for transfer rate speeds. Get one anyway just don't buy the super fast expensive ones based on performance cuz you'll be wasting your money. It's nice to start it up and be ready to work in half a minute or so. And the overall performance in win7 or ate will be way better.

This is my entertainment PC for my bedroom so it mostly handles watching stuff on netflix or the occasional blu-ray movie night. I do play the majority of my Steam collection on this PC once in a blue moon. Notably Skyrim I can play on 1080p with V-sync enabled and I don't really notice any slow downs or problems it will get pretty warm around 75c at times. I mostly end up playing theHunter in my room which I have set at 1080p highest settings 8X antialiasing 16X anisotropic and note the same high temps. With both games the temps drop way down to around 58c when run in 720p. One title I have to play in 720p or it suffers performance big time is Grid2 but it will do fine on ultra with the soft ambient occlusion set to off and with 4XMSAA in 720p. My older games like the first Grid and COD4 Modern Warfare it will play maxed out in 1080p and temps in the mid to high 50's.

So hope that helps. If you got any further questions about specifics just ask me.
Peace.

 

[justajohn]

Oh I forgot to mention I have my HD7850 overclocked to 1050Mhz on the Core and 1525Mhz on the VRAM. Unless you mod the BIOS probably won't be able to OC the CPU at all. I can't even get a small FSB bump OC going as most software OverClockers out there don't recognize the chipset. Another reason dells blow. *shrugs*

 

[bambiboom]

Is it possible to upgrade an old Dell Dimension E520 desktop and turn it into a decent gaming computer? Or are there hardware restrictions?

screminseahawk,

The comments by justajohn are very good. I would add my experience and what I've found to be a useful method to work out upgrades.

I was given an E520 by an office that was closing. This system had been used as a general business system -accounting, email, contracts and also for designing and maintaining the company website.:

Dell Dimension E520 (2006)( Original): Pentium D 830 dual core @3.0GHz > 2GB DDR2 667 > GeForce 7300LE > 2X Dell 19" LCD > Windows XP Professional 32-bit
[Passmark system rating = 384, CPU = 613 / 2D= 248 / 3D=72 / Mem= 562 / Disk=521]

My initial reaction was to wonder whether there could be much improvement so I looked up the performance on Passmark Performance Test and found that the top rated systems were actually doing reasonably well, the top 5 system ratings being:

2083
2043
2032
2000
1964

> and my system No. 62 of 102 tested.

The top 5 systems used the following CPU's and GPU's:

Core2 Extreme Q6800 (4-core 2.93Ghz) __ Radeon HD 7850
Core2 Extreme Q6800 (4-core 2.93Ghz) __ GTX 650
Core2 Quad @ 2.93 __ Radeon HD 7850
Core2 Quad @ 2.93 __ Radeon HD 7850
Core2 Quad Q6700 __ GTX 650

All 5 top systems also used SSD's

OCZ Vertex 2
Intel 530 240GB
OCZ Agility 3
OCZ Agility 3
Samsung 830

It's possible that systems 3 and 4 are the same, the higher scorer having 8Gb RAM to the lower scoring 6GB.

The top 5 GPU's in 3D scores were all Radeon 7850, scoring in 3D from, 4078 to 3924

From this, I would say the best performance would be to have a Core2 Quad Extreme QX6800, 8GB RAM, an OCZ or Samsung SSD, and Radeon 7850.

As I wan't planning on using this system for much if any 3D work, and intended to keep the original HD's, I decided to take what I thought would be the best cost /performance approach. Looking down the Passmark results for the best performing dual core and NVIDIA Geforce I bought:

Core2 Duo E6700 dual core @2.66GHz ($22)
2GB DDR2 667 ($16)
GeForce GT440 (1GB GDDR5) ($30)

And, after spending $68:

Dell Dimension E520 (2006)( Revised): Core2 Duo E6700 dual core @2.66GHz > 4GB DDR2 667 > GeForce GT440 (1GB GDDR5) > 2X Dell 19" LCD > Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
[Passmark system rating = 1219, CPU = 2024 / 2D= 457 / 3D=978 / Mem= 828 / Disk=576]

> And which moved this system from No. 62 to No. 15- the highest scoring 2-core E520.

I applied this technique to a Dell Precision T5500 I bought for $171:

Dell Precision T5500 (2011) Original: Xeon E5620 quad core @ 2.4 / 2.6 GHz > 6GB DDR3 ECC Reg 1066 > Quadro FX 580 (512MB) > Dell PERC 6/i SAS /SATA controller > Seagate Cheetah 15K 146GB > Linksys WMP600N WiFi > Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
[ Passmark system rating = 1479 / CPU = 4067 / 2D= 520 / 3D= 311 / Mem= 1473 / Disk= 1208]

> and you can see the results after spending $675 below.

This was a surprising and satisfying result fro the E520, given the small investment and another good example of the very good potential for inexpensive, obsolete systems using some research and patient Ebahhh shopping.

Cheers,

BambiBoom

HP z420 (2015) > Xeon E5-1660 v2 six-core @ 3.7 /4.0GHz > 16GB DDR3 ECC 1866 RAM > Quadro K2200 (4GB) > Intel 730 480GB > Western Digital Black WD1003FZEX 1TB> M-Audio 192 sound card > Logitech z2300 > Linksys AE3000 USB WiFi > 2X Dell Ultrasharp U2715H (2560 X 1440) > Windows 7 Professional 64 >
[ Passmark Rating = 4918 > CPU= 13941 / 2D= 823 / 3D=3464 / Mem= 2669 / Disk= 4764]

Dell Precision T5500 (2011) > Xeon X5680 six -core @ 3.33 / 3.6GHz, 24GB DDR3 ECC 1333 > Quadro 4000 (2GB ) > Samsung 840 250GB /WD RE4 Enterprise 1TB > M-Audio 192 sound card> Linksys WMP600N PCI WiFi > Windows 7 Professional 64> HP 2711x (1920 X 1440)
[ Passmark system rating = 3339 / CPU = 9347 / 2D= 684 / 3D= 2030 / Mem= 1871 / Disk= 2234

 

[screaminseahawk]

The short answer before you read the book is yes you can.
*Upgrades for consideration in order*
-Upgrade Bios to latest version. Do this anyway its FREE
-Power supply any standard 450w or higher rated unit preferably.
-CPU Intel Q6600, Q6700 or QX6800 quad core processor and newer heat sink assembly (Dell Part NO: J9761, D9729)
-4X2GB of pc2-5300 667Mhz RAM
-Radeon HD7850 or Nvidia 750ti or better. It can use the best cards out there as long as you can make em fit. R9 295X2 8GB cut it in half if you have to! LOL I KEED! I KEED!
-A cheap 120gb SSD for your OS boot drive (SATA 2.0 is not going to achieve super blazing fast response rates but still way better then old HDD)

Now for the book.
I have to say yes you can get quite a bit out of it yet with the right upgrades.
Granted it won't blow your mind playing the latest generation of games at 1080p resolutions on Ultra but it will definitely hold its own with most modern titles at 720p resolutions on 4XMSAA and Very High settings for most games quite wonderfully. A lot of medium range games or older titles it can definitely handle at 1080p ultra settings.
I am currently typing up this post from my very own Dell e520 which I have upgraded to a very good gaming box. On mine I upgraded the PSU to a 500w unit. The CPU I upgraded to is a qx6800 2.93Ghz quad core processor I believe the highest rated you can put in it. Those are still quite pricey unless you can find a good deal I recommend a q6700 pretty close performance and a whole lot better power savings and much cheaper. I have an HD 7850 1GB for the video, 8GB of system RAM (which is the maximum supported for the e520 4X2GB) and an SSD for the boot drive.
The trickiest part to make happen is the video card. I am currently running an older xfx Core edition HD 7850 1GB card with the single fan in mine but there is also a 2GB version available which should also fit (FX-785A-CNL4 gotta search around like on eBay and make sure it's the single fan version). The reason why that specific card is because I know it works. Maybe there are others including some nvidia cards like maybe a GTX750ti with the small form factor which would be even better. As you know there are a ton of much lower spec'd GPU's out there that will work with absolutely no need for modifications but at the sacrifice of much better performance and the ability to play the best games and still look better then an Xbox 360 doing it.
I have had Dell BTX cases and there headaches of limited upgrade-ability for a while now like the old e310 I finally got rid a few years back and an e510 that still works for the kids which has a Pentium D and an HD5670 in it and that pretty much has the same identical layout as the e520's internals.
to make the xfx HD7850 with the single fan work you need to unscrew and remove the aluminum shroud that covers the fan then it will have enough room to actually sit in the pci-e x16 slot without trying to break the heat sink housing from the e520's CPU or try to do some other crazy funky stuff to the video cards heat sink to make it work. The placement of the single fan and smallish centralized heat sink on the xfx card allow it to clear perfectly and it still cools the card fine without the boxey cover. On mine I also had to cut a portion from the extended double slot bracket where it locks into the back of the case because it is a double spaced pci-e x16 card and so it has the double expansion slot shield where it fits into the back of the PC. As you probably know the e520 is only capable of accepting a single spaced pci-e x16 card by design as this is the last expansion slot and there is not another open peripheral space available in the right direction to make this work without modifications. It wasn't too difficult to do this and for my purposes I think it was the best solution (I am not going to try and sell the video card or the computer later) though I have also seen people remove the mounting shield bracket from the video card completely in order to make theirs work in other systems with similar issues in order not to damage the bracket. Most screw right off without problems. Finding a decent enough spec'd video card that will work is by far the hardest bit of trying to bring the old box up to decent specs for sure.
I ain't kidding when I say it can do the best GPU you can fit in there. If you rigged a pci-e x16 extender you could run a GTX970 for sure. With the QX6800 processor you might get some bottle-necking and not quite the performance you would want out of the GPU but I would say it would smoke the living hell out of my e520.
Is this advised If you are willing to do it? HELL YEAH!!!
Is it the smart thing to do? Hell to the NO.
For the money if you already have the e520 a decent overhaul on the cheap is just what the doctor ordered. Anything else you might as well buy a newer system altogether.

One other issue you should be certain to resolve is the original heat sink that comes with the e520 isn't very adequate for a higher powered quad core processor such as a qx6800 you'll have to find a Dell Part NO: J9761, D9729 heat sink.
The heat sink is for all respects a simple swap out affair which I recommend regardless as it is a much better triple heat pipe design and will be able to handle the increased heat from a quad core processor like a q6600 q6700 or a qx6800 like I'm running. Even with this heat sink mine can get pretty toasty when engaged in CPU intensive tasks. When I originally installed it it used to idle around 45c and I saw it rise to 68c during a bench test. I immediately went out and got some arctic silver 5 thermal compound to put on it. Since then it rises to about 62c at the highest only noticed this during benchmark testing usually during physics tests. Since the better thermal compound was applied it usually Idles at 33c and most of the time doesn't get over 54c.

Mine currently has a windows index score as follows

Processor 7.2
Memory 7.2
Graphics 7.9
Gaming Graphics 7.9
Hard Disk 7.0
Overall 7.0

CATZILLA Benchmark

1080p 4756 1 Star Tiger
720p 7945 1 Star Tiger


Passmark Performance Test 8

2050-2065 passmark rating scores routinely

CPU 4050
2D 446
3D 4040
Memory 900
Disk 1610

Not super outstanding but it's still got some life left in it.

Notice the windows index of 7.0 for hard disk is due to the SSD running on a SATA 2.0 standard so it will never achieve it's best performance for transfer rate speeds. Get one anyway just don't buy the super fast expensive ones based on performance cuz you'll be wasting your money. It's nice to start it up and be ready to work in half a minute or so. And the overall performance in win7 or ate will be way better.

This is my entertainment PC for my bedroom so it mostly handles watching stuff on netflix or the occasional blu-ray movie night. I do play the majority of my Steam collection on this PC once in a blue moon. Notably Skyrim I can play on 1080p with V-sync enabled and I don't really notice any slow downs or problems it will get pretty warm around 75c at times. I mostly end up playing theHunter in my room which I have set at 1080p highest settings 8X antialiasing 16X anisotropic and note the same high temps. With both games the temps drop way down to around 58c when run in 720p. One title I have to play in 720p or it suffers performance big time is Grid2 but it will do fine on ultra with the soft ambient occlusion set to off and with 4XMSAA in 720p. My older games like the first Grid and COD4 Modern Warfare it will play maxed out in 1080p and temps in the mid to high 50's.

So hope that helps. If you got any further questions about specifics just ask me.
Peace.

Wow!!! I didn't expect this kind of response! Thank you very much for this well thought out answer to my question. If I want to go the route of rebuilding this computer (for fun really), I now have a better idea of how to do it. It's my 3rd computer, so it's not really necessary, but I was curious what was possible with older generation PC's. Thanks again!

 

[william p]

Throttlestop software designed to underclock laptops for battery life and a Core2 Extreme cpu will overclock one of these.
QX6700 @ 3.2GHZ 1.4V. will run Prime 95 4x very stable
QX6800 SLACP will run 3.45GHZ @ 14.625V. will run 3X Prime95, and pass 3Dmark 06,11 benchmarks, might need to heatsink MB.
You can save a stable setting then O/C on the run. Set volts first or it will crash because it sets multi. when you select it not when you save. If it crashes it will reboot to saved speed. C state button controls Speedstep.
http://valid.x86.fr/rj66jm

 

[william p]

My video card is PNY GTX750Ti O/C 2GB DDR5 single fan version. Cut bracket in 1/2. trim back plastic in same area so air can go out rear vents.
I recommend cooler T9303 if you're willing to "move the holes" in the cover. Cools a little better and allows more airflow to the GPU.
High GPU temps can come from hot air in the expansion slot area. An expansion slot blower will fix this easily.

My windows experience is 7.2 limited equally by CPU and RAM, Video 7.8, and SSD 7.8 (Crucial M500 240GB).
I ran Passmark got 2091. Never used it before. It reads my setup as 13X209fsb, Throttlestop and CPUZ both read 13X266. It seems to be reading my overclock backwards. It won't save my result due to "Anomalies" FWIW

 

[justajohn]

Thanks for that update... I tried a few software overclockers with the e520 a long time ago, but none with any luck.
I gave up hope on overclocking it. This is real good info and I'll be giving throttlestop a spin.

Thanks for taking the time to drop this nugget William. Came at a good time too.
I recently pulled the qx6800 and installed a $30 scored off eBay Xeon3230 (= q6700) and if I can overclock it I bet it will probably do much better then what the qx6800 could pull at stock with the temps it was running at already.

I use MSI Afterburner to OC the GPU and monitor the temps and it could easily hover around 38-42c while just streaming on netflix. I'm sure it wasn't very power efficient for the amount of processing power I was (or wasn't =P ) able to get out of it. And it would routinely get passed 54c playing games. Depending on the game it wasn't unusual to see it rise to 58-60c intermittently. I installed another fan right behind the heatsink pulling air through and towards the back of the case as well as a fan in the open space at the back of the case to exhaust heat out. I also drilled some holes into the side case door right around where the video card sits and a little low of it so I could mount another fan exhausting out the side. This all has helped the GPU stay in the 66-68c mark at it's most intense. Before all those extra fans The GPU could get around 78c due to the hot air being put off by the components sticking around in the box.
The BTX design is actually pretty good with the right fan configuration... and in fact the single monster fan Dell uses for the case which sucks air into the CPU heatsink from the front can really get spinning... but the bios has the fan tuned way down to the point it's not doing much of anything to hold down temps for the sake of being pretty quiet.
Which it is.
With full 12v power applied it screams pretty good and pushes enough air to turn the case into a vacuum.
You don't want that thing running at full throttle I can tell you.
I bet there is something that could be done about this as well though if throttlestop has a CPU fan controller built in that works it will be perfect.
Speedfan couldn't do it.
I wouldn't mind the fan being a bit louder as long as it could actually cool the CPU more reliably.

Assuming the xeon can overclock like the q6700 it will be the better suited for the e520... if it can't OC I'm not too concerned. It is only down 14% or so from the Passmark rating of the qx6800 at stock. And in real world results it will still do everything I need it to wonderfully for my needs and more efficiently.
I'm also not too concerned because a friend donated an Asus P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe mobo to me... So I will be throwing together another older system but this time one which can utilize the qx6800 to better potential and without the limitations of the Dell BTX madness.

I have to say the old Dell is hanging in there pretty good though. I put it in the livingroom around the time I wrote the last post and it has since taken over duties as the the family HTPC. It's a daily user and it's pretty snappy and responsive still. It's also been rock solid, reliable and probably one of the quickest booting win7 systems I'm running atm.
It starts right up and gets to business and does it without headaches... important as I'm not always available to troubleshoot issues.
So all in all it's going to be sticking around for a good long time looks like. I hope anyway.

Thanks again to contributing your successes with your e520 it really helps those who don't want to follow the disposable PC model Dell and other similar PC manufacturers would want us to follow. I also want to thank Bambiboom for contributing so much valuable information also. Top notch recomendations as usual, thanks.
-John

 

[william p]

You need the unlocked multiplier on the Core 2 Extreme to use Throttlestop. So the Xeon cool as it may be wont do it. I tried the old software overclocks and failed also. Throttlestop leaves FSB and PCI speeds alone. Just volts, and Multi. Try an expansion slot exhaust blower, the little cheap ones, air can hide back there. Have you tried lapping the CPU and cooler, I use TX4 paste. Your QX6800 should get good temps at 3.2GHZ no problem. Gateway sold a BTX with QX6700 @ 3.2Ghz OEM. BIOS was locked at 3.2. With TS the steps are big. To get 3.45 on a QX6800 SLACP you will have to work for it. The T9303 cooler has fewer fins and helps airflow quite a bit. The heatpipes are more evenly spaced. It cools a little better. My next upgrade is a Delta GFB1212VHG twin engine fan. It fits right in the mounting, but has 8 wires and draws 3.4A. You just think your fan is loud!

 

[william p]

QX6700s sell for $40 and will go 3.2GHz Prime 95 all day long.
I've been told if you put a toggle switch in the PWM wire (blue) the fan will go to 100% speed when you interrupt the signal.

Running Prime95 X4 I'm happy with70*C, 65*C. benchmarking 3Dmark 6, or 11. Video runs 73*C. The Dell PWM doesn't get serious about cooling until almost 80*C. I think you might be trying too hard on temps.

Since your QX6800 is out, try a T9303 lapped with it. The cover mod is really simple. The D9729 is good for bolt in, but it's 14 fins per inch kills air flow,the T9303 has 10 fins per inch and cools as well or better. I'm running 3.45Ghz daily use with stock fan and this setup. Passes all benchmarks but can only run Prime 95 X3. One core on my chip runs 10*C hotter than the others, I'm getting another chip. So my results are with a borked chip I got from China.

 

[william p]

You should be aware that your E520 has 4 phase VRM, which is very rare in a Dell. This makes it a prime candidate for overclocking, especially Core2 Extreme Quad cores. The hard part will be getting the best video card you can in there.

CPUZ validation http://valid.x86.fr/rj66jm

 

[william p]

I was just looking at some ITX graphics cards and came across this. Sapphire's ITX Compact R9 285.
Needs 8 pin power connector (usually 6-8 adapter). Has dual BIOS, Legacy/EUFI so no worries there. Looks like cutting the bracket in 1/2 and trim back the plastic cover would work, faster than GTX760.

 

[william p]

http://valid.x86.fr/l2j5p1 Dell E520 3.99Ghz QX6800SLACP, added GFB1212VHG Delta twin engine fan. Bolts right in except for wiring to molex for power, PWM, and tach to MB. 3.72GHZ is now speed for daily use.
Forgot to mention much better example of SLACP. 4*C spread between cores, one of them is running COLDER.

 

[william p]

I'm learning as I go here, and I just learned a lot playing around with the borked QX6800 (core0 +10*C.). It would crash when it reached 78*C when the fan got serious about cooling it down to 71*C. It seemed like the fan was causing the crash. Since it draws up to 1.6A. of power It seemed like it was causing a "brownout" to the CPU. Also it was waiting too late to start cooling. So I got another QX6800SLACP, and a Delta GFB1212VHG "twin engine" fan which draws 3.4A. lapped the CPU, and A T9303 cooler. I installed the fan but ran all power and ground wires to a Molex on the PSU. Ran both PWM wires to the MB, and 1 tach. wire. The results were amazing.
Before 3.45Ghz prime95 3X @1.4625V. 72*C Now 3.45Ghz @ 1.3875V. 65*C Prime 95 X4 and much quieter fan! "Til I got sick of it.
Before 3.72Ghz 1.5250V. validation only crashed with any CPU load. Now 3.72Ghz. @ 1.5375 Prime 95 3X 67*C, runs all benchmarks.
3.99Ghz.@ 1.5875V. Run fan @ 100% (unplug blue PWM wire) Validation run only, very unstable. no more voltage available.

My recommendation is get the fan GFB1212VHG. It bolts right in. Run it off of PSU. it's quieter, and when temp. hits 71*C it pulls it right back to 65*C.
Not really that loud at 100%. A growl, instead of a howl. I did get a "fan failure" message, Which required F1 to start. probably related to unplugging the PWM. It's gone now. It might be necessary to still run 1 motor of fan off MB if this persists but it's only doing 1/2 the work so should still be good. So bottom line is 3.45Ghz. can be rock solid on one of these. Above that you're probably looking at heatsinking the MB chips like I did.

I didn't try this because I already had the big fan mounted, and wiring harness made, but you could try this with the original fan and see what it does for you. take the power wires off the MB connector and run them from a Molex. See how your volts, and temp. respond. If you interrupt the PWM wire the fan will go 100% speed and you can get an Idea of results you might expect.

 

[william p]

I just got a Sapphire R9-285 ITX O/C video card. Man is it a tight fit. All the interference is plastic trim piece though. Metal fins touch at one end. will definitely have to remove card to work on cooler, or CPU. So far I've just mocked it up on a spare MB with cooling bits attached. You might want to wait for final results in case the MB won't power this beast or something. Might be heat issues with hot air out front of card. I solved them with HD6770 easily, but it wasn't 200W card. This card features dual BIOS for legacy and EUFI support. This could be important for older computers.

There is a Dell issue with running fan off of PSU. "Alert previous fan failure hit F1 to continue" at boot.. Even if you put fan back it wont clear. It must be manually cleared in BIOS/mantenance/ event log.
Setting POST to don't report keyboard errors helps temporarily.
I tried a few dummy loads across the fan pins no cure. There is a fix but it involves putting a 1.2A. load back on the MB. I'm just putting it in sleep mode for now. I'm not willing to give up the performance I found with this mod. over this issue.

 

[william p]

I got the Sapphire R9-285 ITX to fit. Had to grind some fins down a little at the rear to clear cooler mounting, not too much though. Usual bracket and vent mods at other end. On this card the silver trim is not paint, or decals, it's actual metal sheets glued on. I need a new PSU to run this. The 8 pin power connector is to save space by not using 2X 6pins. My PSU had a 6 pin and another 6+2 pin. I would advise against using the 6+2, and go with the 2X6 pin adapter to 8 pin. The 6+2 would = a single 6 pin with jumpers for 2 more. Not what they had in mind for power. I've ordered an Antec Super Cyclone 3 speed 2 slot exhaust blower because the hot air coming out the front of the card will be trapped back there. $7.99 @ Antec. Not much use for 2 Legacy PCI slots anyway.

 

[william p]

Thanks for that update... I tried a few software overclockers with the e520 a long time ago, but none with any luck.
I gave up hope on overclocking it. This is real good info and I'll be giving throttlestop a spin.

Thanks for taking the time to drop this nugget William. Came at a good time too.
I recently pulled the qx6800 and installed a $30 scored off eBay Xeon3230 (= q6700) and if I can overclock it I bet it will probably do much better then what the qx6800 could pull at stock with the temps it was running at already.

I use MSI Afterburner to OC the GPU and monitor the temps and it could easily hover around 38-42c while just streaming on netflix. I'm sure it wasn't very power efficient for the amount of processing power I was (or wasn't =P ) able to get out of it. And it would routinely get passed 54c playing games. Depending on the game it wasn't unusual to see it rise to 58-60c intermittently. I installed another fan right behind the heatsink pulling air through and towards the back of the case as well as a fan in the open space at the back of the case to exhaust heat out. I also drilled some holes into the side case door right around where the video card sits and a little low of it so I could mount another fan exhausting out the side. This all has helped the GPU stay in the 66-68c mark at it's most intense. Before all those extra fans The GPU could get around 78c due to the hot air being put off by the components sticking around in the box.
The BTX design is actually pretty good with the right fan configuration... and in fact the single monster fan Dell uses for the case which sucks air into the CPU heatsink from the front can really get spinning... but the bios has the fan tuned way down to the point it's not doing much of anything to hold down temps for the sake of being pretty quiet.
Which it is.
With full 12v power applied it screams pretty good and pushes enough air to turn the case into a vacuum.
You don't want that thing running at full throttle I can tell you.
I bet there is something that could be done about this as well though if throttlestop has a CPU fan controller built in that works it will be perfect.
Speedfan couldn't do it.
I wouldn't mind the fan being a bit louder as long as it could actually cool the CPU more reliably.

Assuming the xeon can overclock like the q6700 it will be the better suited for the e520... if it can't OC I'm not too concerned. It is only down 14% or so from the Passmark rating of the qx6800 at stock. And in real world results it will still do everything I need it to wonderfully for my needs and more efficiently.
I'm also not too concerned because a friend donated an Asus P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe mobo to me... So I will be throwing together another older system but this time one which can utilize the qx6800 to better potential and without the limitations of the Dell BTX madness.

I have to say the old Dell is hanging in there pretty good though. I put it in the livingroom around the time I wrote the last post and it has since taken over duties as the the family HTPC. It's a daily user and it's pretty snappy and responsive still. It's also been rock solid, reliable and probably one of the quickest booting win7 systems I'm running atm.
It starts right up and gets to business and does it without headaches... important as I'm not always available to troubleshoot issues.
So all in all it's going to be sticking around for a good long time looks like. I hope anyway.

Thanks again to contributing your successes with your e520 it really helps those who don't want to follow the disposable PC model Dell and other similar PC manufacturers would want us to follow. I also want to thank Bambiboom for contributing so much valuable information also. Top notch recomendations as usual, thanks.
-John

I'm going to continue here instead of jumping another thread. justajohn said there that he didn't have much luck overclocking an E520. It seems his had 3 phase VRM.
I have 3 E520 MBs #0WG864 and they all have 4 phase VRM. I haven't seen one without it. Sorry to hear it didn't work for you. I posted a Tutorial here,"Overclocking Dell BTX Computers" and there are pics. at OCN as Retrorockit in my album. LGA775 Club, and Delta Fanatics Club. Dimension 9200 is same MB design (4phase VRM with vertical MOSFETs, # WG855) in a tower with 2 slot GPU support and 375W PSU with 6 pin PCIe connector. I hope this helps. It won't fit MT case because of extra expansion slots.

 

[zzzzzz]

motherboard maybe can not be upgraded because dell use special screw to attach mobo to chassis

 

[william p]

Click the link in my sig. and you will see what the E520 MB can do.