Project: Alternate Dimension

paradigm

paradigm

paradigm

Caporegime
Joined
26 Aug 2003
Posts
37,514
Location
Leafy Cheshire
Whilst having a clear-out at work, I stumbled across an old Dell Dimension E520 (5100) tower. It's not too bad-looking for a 4-5 year old mass-produced tower, and acoustically at least they are very quiet, not to mention mBTX (Micro BTX) layout.

I'm going to be building it up to run an OS which I cannot name due to forum rules, but needless to say the mock-up pictures will make it rather obvious.

Anyway, Pictures:

i4ha1h.jpg


egzadi.jpg


sg0pd5.jpg


Now, I plan on removing the front vents (as they only lead to the HDD's anyway, the front fan intake is through the cavity on the side panels), debranding the side panels either by filling the "DELL" logo or by cutting a window, probably the former in all honesty, re-branding the front panel "DELL" sphere with something more fitting of the project, and then possibly a colour change, but as yet I'm not sure what.

Anyway, here be an artists impression of the mods I'd like to achieve:

jtasfm.jpg


34goykz.jpg


1231mrc.jpg


It's going to house a C2D clocked at 3GHz, a 9800GT 512MB, two 1TB drives, two DVD-RW's and that's about it. I'm hoping for a relatively quiet and cool build.

So, does anyone have an suggestions, either for changes to my planned mods, or additional mods, or even colour choices? As you can see, the side-panel will be a touch bare without anything added to it.
 
just like to say that this is my main gaming machine at the moment, been using it for 5 years and still runs fine, just cant play the most recent game out now. (last 6 months)

It only has the one fan which is pretty weak and the CPU can get very hot i recomend replacing the front intake fan and putting a removable dust filter where the grill is as that can become very dusty very fast and its hard to get it off. i also recomend modding the back panal to put another fan in to help with the poor ventelation of the case. (i sometimes have the side panal off during the summer as it gets too hot.) if its the same MOBO as mine then you can only put 2gb of ram in it i think. also i think you should find a way to add some form of rubber to the HDDs as these get ery noisey as they have no dappaning of any kind and are bascily just laying on the case floor.

How are you filling in the dell in the side panals? filler?
 
Last edited:
Bit of a waste surely to put that OS on it, when really it's just a collection of open source software with a different sticker on it.
 
DotA said:
My mistake it can take 4gb of RAM but it reduces speed to 533mhz.

This may come in handy before you do anything. http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim5100/en/sm/parts1.htm#wp1370145

also you may have trouble with the 9800gt as it dosent have a pcie slot but a agp slot for grpahic cards
Click to expand...


This definately has a PCIe slot not AGP (I know it will be PCIe 1.1 but it would still work fine), but that matters not given I'm probably going to change the board.

To quote that page you just linked me to:

support.dell.com said:
Your Dell™ computer provides the following slots for PCI and PCI Express cards:
  • Two PCI card slots
  • One PCI Express x16 card slot
  • One PCI Express x1 card slot
Click to expand...
 
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