Upgrading my xps to a sff PC

aurora

aurora

aurora

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29 Oct 2006
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3
Hi all,

I own a fairly new dell :rolleyes: XPS 600, it has a pentium 840ee processor (currently running at 3.6ghz), 2g ram (2x1gb @667mhz), 1terrabyte hard drive space (2x 500gb in raid 0), 2x 7800gt gpu's in sli, and a x-fi extreme music pci card.

What I would like to do with the system is take all the components except the cpu and put them in a falcon northwest fragbox case. I would then like to swap the cpu with a core 2 6800 extreme and ofc replace the motherboard with a suitable core2duo model.

I am wondering, is this possible, what hurdles do i face and what sort of motherboard am I restricted to, this will be the first PC I have put together and I do expect to replace parts down the line however the xps parts are still under warranty so I have to keep them and assuming a part breaks it will all be going back in the (horrible) xps case for the engineer to look at for a free repair or replacement ;) With this in mind I doubt I will make any significant upgrades until the warranty expires, at least then we'll be well into DX10 territory :D

Any advice you can give me would be great, I have my heart set on this particular case so if you could bear that in mind when replying I would appreciate it, I dont know why i want the case.. i guess its just because it was the first pc I saw that really blew me away cosmetically and now I have the chance to own the pc that got me looking at SFF. :D
Thanks all
 
Not going to happen in a SFF i'm afraid, at least not for now.

I'm assuming the FragBox takes mATX boards. There are NO Conroe SLi or Crossfire boards in that form factor yet. There IS a mATX SLi board, made by EVGA, however I believe it's socket 939.

My recommendation would be to stay with what you have for now, it should blow any game you throw at it away, and wait for now. If/When there is an SLi mATX Conroe board available, upgrade then.
 
Thanks for the quick reply, tbh I dont 'need' sli.. if I could have it then great, but this is something I've been wanting to do for a while so I can live without the second card. Really I just want to get as many of the XPS components into the frabgbox as possible and replace the CPU with something that isn't so power-hungry and doesn't run as hot. Ofc I will be keeping the second gfx card just incase an SLi board is released that suits my needs, but it can wait - one 7800gt will do everything i need for the moment.
As for the motherboard, yes it does take matx - the website says they haven't found a component yet that wouldn't fit into the case so hopefully all matx boards should be fine. :D Thanks again, I'll get searching for a mobo!
 
If you're willing to accept the hassle, personally i'd get rid of the Pentium 840 and pick yourself up the EVGA mATX SLi board.

http://www.evga.com/products/moreinfo.asp?pn=131-K8-NF44-AX&family=20

Let's face it, you're going to get much better performance out of an Athlon64 X2 with 2 7800GT's than you are with a Conroe and just one 7800GT.

Your chip should still fetch a good price second hand, it's dual core and also an Extreme Edition, so you shouldn't have to put too much money to it to pick up an X2.

If you are determined to go Conroe, then the Asrock Conroe945G-DVI board will suit you fine, it's also (in my opinion) the best Conroe mATX board currently available. It's no overclocker, but none of the Conroe mATX boards are.
 
Thanks

Thanks for the reply, I'm now torn between the AMD + SLi option or the core2duo cpu. :rolleyes: You've given me plenty to think about conscerning my priorities regarding my PC usage. I think I'll go away and have a long hard think about what I really want from the new system and make my decision then
Thanks again Tute. :cool:
 
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