Well... yesterday my friend had me over to move his dell into a new antec case. Well... I went hoping that Dell would have decided to make an industry standard mobo. instead of some weird format... Well, I hopped wrong. There are a few things I would like to point out to anyone trying to undertake something like this.

TOOLS NEEDED
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1. Dremal
2. Knife
3. Hex screwdriver
4. Phillips Screwdriver
5. Drill Press
6. 7/64" drill bit
7. Plyers (sp)
8. Some guts and a drink

THINGS TO WATCH OUT FOR
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1. Maxtor HD that comes w/ the computer is not quite 3.5 inches (more like 3.35) which makes it near impossible to fit into the drive bay
2. Dell Mobo has 4 screws in it... then there is a plate under the mobo, the plate is attached to plastic things holding down the HSF, to get the mobo off the plate you have to cut the plastic part in half and then dremal around the plate then take plyers (sp) and rip off the remaining metal part...
3. Dell mobo is not ATX, microATX, or anything with the letters A, T or X in it... you have to drop the mobo in and line it up using the PCI slots... then make marks and drill a hole there... you must use a drill press, hand drills dont cut it (I tried a hand drill and burnt myself... kept the drill running for like 1.5 minutes and nothing happened and I touched the bit after i gave up... burnt myself really bad). At this point you need to thread the hole you just made . Then you need to screw in the mobo... It will be hanging by 1 screw at the bottom left corner and the PCI/AGP cards. Kinda scarry
4. Dell mobo dosent have traditional power sw/restart sw/speaker/power led/HDD led jumpers so you have to dremal out the power switch and use that instead of the one the case came with... at least you get the extra audio/usb ports


Thats about it... if you decide to do this I hope this helps...

That must have taken forever.

6 hours or so

That sucks. I set up a folding computer in 30 minutes

That's my main gripe with Dell's...everything is propierty. The PSU will only work with Dell boards, their meant for only dell cases, etc...

Dell is the anti-modding company

And DELL will probably change or die in a near future as more peoples are aware of this so very stupid way to build a PC

Correction :Forget change, they should die bunch of #%$}&%*

actually dells challange modders, its harder to do... more of a challange

Wow Kevin, you're one heck of a friend. I would have looked at it for 5 minutes and said screw it. I hate all of that proprietry stuff...it's almost as though Dell (and the other big manufacturers) are turning into Apple, so to speak. All proprietry, and nothing that end users can (easily) do with them. But you showed them wrong!

Well if thats how they are built then dude, I'm going to buy a dell.

thats a dedicated modder there

well.. my dell was easy to take apart.. 1 screw in the side held the mobo in place.. and some other little clip thing.. and the hsf is one of the easyest things in the world to work..you just connect both ends and pull it back.. ?? but its easy anyway.. lets just hope it starts when i need to make it my dedicated server/folding machin!!

but they way your explaining it.. sounds like ... they did not want people screwing with it

i would have got out the old hack saw and vice grips

dell sux everything is like not standard

Think Dells bad try Packard Bell, I dont even want to go there

dude took me like 1 hour to put my whole emachine included cdrw and all in my chiftec case

I usuqally dont buy name brand computers(anymore) I have a dell laptop...that is all.....hmmmm I have thought about moding that case out.....hahaha but will have to look on the cover of the lcd screen so see i I could make light shine through the the back

Dell is apparently anti-mod. I posted a thread in their forums requesting empty Optiplex GX270 cases to experiment cutting, and the thread was deleted and never replied to. Peh. I guess I'll just learn to weld and go that direction.

Ouch, that was awfully harsh of them. I wonder who actually makes the dell cases? It would be kinda funny to get just the case, and then build a monster of a comp inside it. It would be like the trojan horse or something.

Im in the process of doing something like the trojan horse thing. I'm putting a crazy gaming rig in an old atari 2600 . Right now slow cash flow is holding me back.

sounds fun!! lol..