[SOLVED] Upgrading a Dell XPS 8500

Oct 26, 2020
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I’m currently looking to upgrade a Dell XPS 8500 Desktop bought in 2012. I’m looking to use it for a Quest 2 that’s on its way, as well as amateur photo and video editing, which at the minute is quite sluggish.

The games we'd hope to play indicate that the graphics card needs upgrading. I’d hope to get a Nvidia graphics card, possibly a Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Super or something similar to have something decent but not silly money.

I don’t think my power unit is strong enough. The power leads from the unit to the graphics card only has 6 pins, and a second 6 pins a bit back on the lead. Would anyone have any advice on upgrading the power unit and the graphics card. Is the fact that it is a Dell-made machine going to make things incompatible or complicated?

The Dell power unit has 460w.
The motherboard is a Dell make.
The CPU is an Intel i7-3770.
The graphics card is an AMD Radeon HD 7700.
It has 2TB of hard drive.
I’m awaiting another 16GB of RAM to arrive this week, so it will be 24GB.
 
Solution
You'll want to measure inside your case to determine how much width (perpendicular to the mobo) and length your case can accomodate in a GPU.

PCPartPicker Part List

Storage: Crucial MX500 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive (€126.19 @ Custompc)
Video Card: Asus GeForce RTX 2060 6 GB Phoenix Fan Video Card (€369.70 @ Custompc)
Power Supply: Corsair TXM Gold 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply (€85.98 @ Currys PC World)
Total: €581.87
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-10-26 16:26 GMT+0000



Are you Nvidia-only?
Oct 26, 2020
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Based in Ireland, so shopping in Ireland & UK. Budget might be about €600, but not set in stone. Monitor is old, but not upgrading yet as gaming would be on the Quest 2.
 
You'll want to measure inside your case to determine how much width (perpendicular to the mobo) and length your case can accomodate in a GPU.

PCPartPicker Part List

Storage: Crucial MX500 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive (€126.19 @ Custompc)
Video Card: Asus GeForce RTX 2060 6 GB Phoenix Fan Video Card (€369.70 @ Custompc)
Power Supply: Corsair TXM Gold 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply (€85.98 @ Currys PC World)
Total: €581.87
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-10-26 16:26 GMT+0000



Are you Nvidia-only?
 
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Solution
Oct 26, 2020
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No, not Nvidia only. I seem to get the feeling that they are a little better than the competitors from what I've been reading.
I see you've added a SSD to the list. Would that be something I should be thinking about including? I haven't spent anything on the desktop since 2012 so planning on upgrading it piece by piece as necessary over the next year or two, without having to fork out for a prebuilt machine all at once.
 
SSD is an ABSOLUTE recommendation. You'll see a 2x improvement in program load times. In terms of overall system responsiveness, its going to make a HUGE difference.

Do you NEED a 1TB SSD? I have a 500GB one with a half-dozen games installed and still have plenty of left over space (I keep photos/videos/documents on a 2TB internal HDD). An SSD can be transferred over to a new system, just like a GPU/PSU without worrying about compatibility, so it's not a "dead-end" purchase. Your choice on capacity, but I wouldn't recommend less than 480GB.
 
Oct 26, 2020
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I need a lot of space. I currently have about 600MB of family photos/videos, which I really need to go through and reduce in numbers. I use Lightroom and Photoshop quite a bit to work with them.
 
Oct 26, 2020
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You might want to check on the Dell forums to see if the RTX cards will play nicely with an XPS 8500. Older Dells are notoriously finicky about newer video cards.

Thanks. I hadn't thought of that. Will check that out. Don't want to be tied down by older Dell parts, so will upgrade what I need to move on and improve.
 

King_V

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Ambassador
I'm not sure. The XPS 8300, which was 2nd gen Intel, is not.

I thought I'd read that late XPS 8300 machines had 3rd gen Intel support, but don't hold me to that.

And, from what I understand, the XPS 8700 (4th gen Intel), which has UEFI, can be a little unstable with the 16- and 26- series Dell PCs. Though I think it's workable with some change to the PCIe power/sleep setting (?)


That said, I don't really know a lot about the 8500, so I'm erring on the side of caution.
 
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