Re: Dell Precision 9100 upgrade ?


"johns" <johns321@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:7325cc46-da8b-450c-afb8-16b3d24270fe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Has anyone done this? I have a bunch of them with 375 watt
psupply which has a weird size, so something like an Antec
won't fit the case. Then I have 1 gig ddr2 ram. And, an
nVidia GS6800 pci-e card. Seems like a nice machine, but
I need to run Vista and modern CAD apps for Vista .. like
AutoCAD 2008 and Solidworks.

Problems I know about .. or at least suspect:

The 6800 won't run the latest shaders at all.

Power supply is weird size ( thanks a lot, Dell ), and
at 375 watts is a bit small for an upgrade video card like
an nVidia GF 8600 GT.

1 gig ram is too little for Vista running CAD apps. 2 gigs
would work fine.

My goal is to upgrade to a Vista box with a dx10 card
and 2 gigs ram ... and try to do that for around $200, but
not buy in to a bunch of cheap crap. these boxes need
to be stable and fairly long lasting ... 3 years maybe.

johns

So what's the problem? Get a cheap case, a good power supply, a good video card and some RAM. :) My suggestions follow:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817189005
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811116010
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220142 (you have 1GB already, right?)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814141072

There, that's about $200 -including shipping-. Should be very stable and long-lasting. If anything fails on you it will likely be one of the recycled components. But first check the dimensions of the Dell mainboard to see if the mainboard will fit a standard ATX format case, including the mounting holes! -Dave


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