Ickis

Well, it turns out that Sampson had the right idea. I discovered that the dell motherboard is bolted to the case with their own proprietary clips. So even if I was able to get the motherboard off, I didn't have a new motherboard with the same clip holes. I took pictures, I'll post them later. I will put the dell case with a bunch of crappy spare parts in the living room as an internet computer/DivX machine, so I will need that power supply there anyway. Fry's sold me a new case with 450w power supply for a total after tax of $74. It's pretty cool, has temprature guages for the hard drive, cpu, and system displayed on the front. The point is, if you buy a dell, don't plan on being able to upgrade it easily or cheaply. Now that I have the knowledge and am able to, I can build my own, and will never go back to getting anything preassembled, plus, putting a computer together is like my new legos. Thanks to everyone that took a look at my post, and thanks for helping.

I have a dell dimension 8100. I bought it years ago, way before I knew anything about putting together my own computer. But the time has come and I am finally upgrading my ram. However, the ram I required for a dell motherboard (which is modified to where you have to use as much dell made stuff as possible) requires the most expensive ram ever made. I have been to stores like circuit city, best buy, to ask questions about ram and such (I should have just gone to Fry's right off the bat), and they all told me that they don't even carry that ram because no one uses it because it's so expensive. So I bought a new motherboard and processor, and new ram, which eneded up being half as cheap as buying just the ram. Now I have run into a myriad of new problems. It turns out dell motherboards are modded to use specifically dell power supplies. So now I have to use one of my roommates power supplies until I get a new one for myself. Then I realized, his power supply doesn't properly fit inside my case, so I will have to mod my pc. I call this mod, power supply outside the case. After looking through forums for well over three hours, I ran into another chump like me that bought a dell a long time ago, and needs to replace his motherboard, but can't figure out how to get the damn thing off. One person said that dell crazy glues their motherboards to their cases. Does anyone know if that is true? Can I get my old motherboard off that case? I want to keep that case to put all my new stuff in. And I was going to use my old motherboard and spare parts to put a DivX machine in the living room on the tv, just set it up naked (without a case). Or does anyone know where I can get a cheap case? I already spent a lot on the new motherboard and ram, now I need to buy a new power supply, so I don't want to buy a new case, but if I absolutely can't remove the motherboard, anyone know where I can get a butt-ass cheap case? This is my first post to a forum ever in my life, so sorry it's so long, someone please help out this NooB. Ickis www.three-rings.com/ickis