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complete DELL overhaul


Crawlerz246

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hello again, dear community!

 

you may remember me as the infuriating new member who wanted to upgrade his DELL XPS410 (because his NEW build fell through FOR NOW)... well, the thing is, my 8800GTX "burned out" it seemed... now I bought a HIS Radeon 4890 and because this video card needs more than the stock DELL 375W PSU (and because I will use these components in the new build), I bough a brand-spanking-new 910W continuous, 80mm fan, non-modular P&C PSU. now this mother is huge! with a capital H. the cables are huge and inside a net-like metallic casing. so - heh - the obvious problem arises - where do I put them? and another not-so-obvious problem - DELL's PSU's wires are tucked under everything (the fan/heatsink and mobo) making them impossible to take out. my idea? CUT the old PSU out with some sort of cutters. (and, of course, I checked the workability of the new PSU before I cut out the old one.) during this stage - the old one is not yet out, and the new one is already in, the comical stage of Frankenstein can be witnessed, hense the photo...

 

later, when everything booted up, I disconnected everything, cut out the old PSU and screwed in the new one. I had a dickens of a time getting the new one in (pardon the pun) as DELL isn't made to be upgradeable. but I finally screwed it in (pardon the damn pun please). now the cables hang out the open side panel and I have heating questions. shopping for a new case. -btw, will the antec 900 contain this moster or will I have the same problems and I should get the antec 1200?

 

p.s. my WD 640GB caviar black came w/o a box, manual(s), or SATA cable(s)... is this wrong? or is "black" meaning without packaging, like a tuner card I had - "white box"? because now I need to borrow my dad's SATA cable.

post-67675-1245252543_thumb.jpg

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With some finesse you should be able to squeeze those cable in there somewhere, possibly. :P

 

 

If not there really isn't anything wrong with running it like you have it in the picture (temporarily until you build your new PC), it will just increase the chances of spilling something into the case or dropping something int here.

 

You could always mod that case to push all the extra wires into the back, you aren't gonna need that case once you upgrade anyways...

 

 

A far as the "black" box goes you should have received cables and everything, maybe you bought the OEM blackbox?

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you bought an OEM hard drive. 99% of them are OEM's on newegg. You didnt get jipped on the deal. Newegg sells mainly OEM hard drives because they figure you are a system builder so you have SATA cables from your motherboard or some other source.

 

Anyways whats wrong with running it like you have it temporarily. Looks like an octopus or something

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yeah well. about cables - I kinda clamped the whole of it (unused ones - a ton of them) together and let em hang off the side. ugly but works. about the HDD, yes I bought an OEM. now I went to newegg again and bought a SATA cable (free eggsaver 3-7 day shipping). (btw - doesn't it suck whenever the shipping costs MORE than the product?!)

 

now something went screwey - before finding I had no SATA, I still connected the power cable to the HDD. so basicly, it's connected to "nowhere". no the PC worked fine. then it sloooooooowed down. nearly stopped. I could not understand it. why? the video is in place. the power's connected. RAM isn't knocked out (otherwise it wouldn't've worked). what I did was take the box open again and fiddle with the wires. I disconnected the extra power of the HDD that went nowhere (it was warm to the touch - obviously spinning.) now it seems to work - was that really the problem? or it cooling problems due to the gargantuan amount of cable? why has it nearly stopped working? and btw, it's still slow on start-up.

 

oh oh! almost forgot - about HDD power cables... I have (as I'm sure you do) several power connectors in a row on one PSU wire. which is better to use for a HDD first - the first or the last one in the row? does it even matter?

 

thank you.

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oh oh! almost forgot - about HDD power cables... I have (as I'm sure you do) several power connectors in a row on one PSU wire. which is better to use for a HDD first - the first or the last one in the row? does it even matter?

 

thank you.

 

It doesn't matter. Even when all the power connectors are plugged in the wire should deliver the same amount of power to each drive.

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If you power a HDD without the SATA connected, it'll just spin like it's waiting for commands to come in. It won't kill the drive or anything

 

oh oh! almost forgot - about HDD power cables... I have (as I'm sure you do) several power connectors in a row on one PSU wire. which is better to use for a HDD first - the first or the last one in the row? does it even matter?

 

It doesn't matter ;)

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thank you very much. very helpful.

 

if I could get one more in - the PC seems slower than usual on startup after connecting the new PSU and Radeon 4890... is that because of the ATi utility that starts up with windows? it's really stretching the startup out into more than before. and, yes, I checked what's hapening at startup using CrapCleaner.exe - nothing out of the ordinary. a lot but nothing new. ATi, quicktime some task, itunes some starter, google notifier (what the heck is that and why do I even need it?), and so on...

 

*EDIT* can the slowness at startup be explained because Radeon is AMD- and not Intel-based?

Edited by Crawlerz246

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if I could get one more in - the PC seems slower than usual on startup after connecting the new PSU and Radeon 4890... is that because of the ATi utility that starts up with windows? it's really stretching the startup out into more than before. and, yes, I checked what's hapening at startup using CrapCleaner.exe - nothing out of the ordinary. a lot but nothing new. ATi, quicktime some task, itunes some starter, google notifier (what the heck is that and why do I even need it?), and so on...

 

I don't know how they do it but my old Dell E520 boots faster than my much faster rig.

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Press the windows key + R.

 

Now type MSCONFIG in that box.

 

Now go to the startup tab and de-select anything you KNOW you don't need starting up. (itunes, quicktime, google notifier, etc.

 

Restart your computer.

 

Watch it boot up twice as fast.

 

You're welcome.

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