DELL 8200 plans

[Airforce33 0]

ok here are my plans and I am asking you all if it would work.

 

I have a 8200 dell well the PC800 memory cost way to much for me to upgrade to 1gb I have 512mb now.

 

So I was thinking could I buy a new case with a good power surpply and a new mother board and buy 1GB of memory and a new CPU all new for the case. But is it possible to move the other hardware in my dell 8200 computer to the new mother board and new case?

like my

video card

sound card

CD-rom

floppy drive

harddrive

modem

ect...

 

I am kind of new at doing this if there is a website to help me out that would be great. Also if you would like to give me any other tips would be great to.

[Sampson 0]

Most Dell units have the video, sound, and ethernet integrated into the motherboard. So, moving them would be impossible. In the scenario in which Dell has a separate video card and sound card apart from the motherboard, keep in mind that Dell often uses modified drivers for those cards.

 

You could probably move the CD and the floppy drive, but for the cost, you would do better just getting them off the shelf. As to the hard drive, Dell is also peculiar. I don't remember whether they still use the same trick as Compaq where they put special info on their hard drives that makes them incompatible with other drives.

 

I guess the long and the short of it is, it all depends on what you are going to use the machine for. If you are going to play a lot of games, you might want to consider an AMD processor. If you are going to play with video editing, use an INTEL processor.

 

Any number of motherboards will have both video and audio built in. It is an inexpensive alternative to purchasing separate boards. But, depending on what you will use the machine for, know that this option will limit you.

 

The bottom line is that if you are going to build a new machine, put it together the way you want and leave the Dell alone. You will bump into one headache after another if you try cannibalizing parts. Besides, with a good router (or switcher), you can network the two machines to practically operate as one by sharing peripherals or the internet.

[Airforce33 0]

OK THANKS FOR THE HELP. Well I am going to mainly use it for gaming. Also I was going to get the BFG 6600GT 128mb card for my dell so I can run Battlefield 2. Would upgrading this even be possible now?

 

Also I am just starting to plan a new system to build I never done it before. For a beginner any tips that would help me out would be great. So for gaming what kind of rig would you suggest?

 

[MGrobe 0]

Doing a quick search on ebay Rambus RDRAM reveals quite a few auctions that might be within your price range.

 

Otherwise if you decide to go to another motherboard/cpu you can use your Dell components on it. Just like was previously mentioned you need to use Dell's drivers for the sound and video, etc. They tend to buy modified versions of the cards that typically don't work right without the Dell driver. All that is easily obtained from Dell's support website.

 

If you do go another computer route, you might be able to sell the remaining pieces on ebay to soften the blow.