Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

[TechGeek]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

Lockups/crashes/bugs due to all the drivers getting ripped out when the 10/11 upgrade takes place, plus hardware accelerated GPU scheduling causing crashes. (Though not all of that may be a direct result of W11 itself, it still paints a pretty dim picture right off the bat.)

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

Lockups/crashes/bugs due to all the drivers getting ripped out when the 10/11 upgrade takes place, plus hardware accelerated GPU scheduling causing crashes. (Though not all of that may be a direct result of W11 itself, it still paints a pretty dim picture right off the bat.)

I haven't ran into anything like that as of yet....and honestly I haven't seen a Windows PC that didn't have some kind of hardware issue hard-lock since the Vista days....

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

Here's another corpse thread exhumed......as here's a $20 ebay find X7DCA-L. Yes, by modern standards these are getting whiskers on them.....but for 20 bucks..... It came with a pair of quadcore L5420's @ 2.5GHz 12mb caches and 32gb RAM. The heatsinks which are getting hard to find and expensive were just some freebies I saved from an old server I scrapped.







In the oven with only 16gb RAM remaining. There were 6x sticks; 2x 8gb and 4x 4gb. Two of the 4gb modules were bad, so I just pulled all of them and left the 8gb; leaving 16gb. I'll probably just run with this, as I don't have any more of this type of RAM (PC2-5300 REG/ECC). These boards do not use the miserably hot-running & power sucking FBDIMM's (WHEW).



This is the first time I've had one of these boards in the oven. I was pleasantly surprised over how much power they DIDN'T use!! They seem to be quite efficient, even under light to medium loads.





Ok, this additional build wasn't by accident. A few weeks ago I was given a weird aluminum case. I did some quick eyeball measurements and it looked like one of these boards would clear this case along the bottom edge without any hackery. When I actually put a ruler to it, it will clear by a good 1/8".....tight on that edge, but will clear with no interference...so the search began for another X7DCA-L.







Butt shot.... The twenty dollar board didn't come with an IO shield....but I did find one on ebay from China for 8 bucks shipped....



Will this one be as stunning as the Aurora R8 build? Never......but it's one worthy of mentioning. I have an Audigy FX sound card to add. The HDD cage is missing from this case.....but that won't be a problem for little old me!

[Dan81]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

ABIT KV-85 is what I spot in that XPC-like clone. Just another ECS clone sadly, based off the K8M800-M2 rev1.0.

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

ABIT KV-85 is what I spot in that XPC-like clone. Just another ECS clone sadly, based off the K8M800-M2 rev1.0.

Yea, that's what it is. I was never a fan of this generation of AMD CPU (it's a Sempron)....it'll wind up in the scrap bin. It doesn't work anyway.

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

Ok, today was wasted doing some case prep, test fitment, and cleaning. I can't assemble this until the IO shield gets here from China (may be a while), so I figured it was a good time to verify a few things and get everything ready for when it does.

This case was disgustingly filthy....I believe it was stored in a backyard storage shed....everything that was raw (unpainted) steel had a light dose of surface rust....the one time I'm glad the case was aluminum (as much as I was never a fan of AL cases). The dust was caked on everything, no doubt it would have to be washed.....but I did blow it out with the air hose so not to make a dusty mess on my bench.





I discovered that this has a removable motherboard tray.....which sounds all well & good, but the X7DCA with it's slight extra length won't clear the opening....so it'll have to be assembled with the tray in the case... The old board:



The board stripped down and tossed in the scrap bin. The tray.



Very little had to be modified, I had to grind a few millimeters off the heatsink bottom plate so it would clear the standoffs, normal for these boards.





Only one ill-placed standoff had to be removed.



The test fit:

All standoffs now line up perfect.





This is the one that counts!! The bottom edge! Clears by a good 3/16"





Now time to test fit a GPU. No problem. A full length would clear as well, but would render the floppy header unusable. This is likely the GPU I'll use; it's period-specific to the motherboard.







Now time for disassembly & cleaning.



Removed the 'ultra' branded fans. I will replace them with some nicer brand PWM's.



The front fascia is actually two pieces....was fun getting that apart without breaking things.



During disassembly, I noticed this. Front USB completely frucked.....





PCB has a burned trace on the +5v runner. Apparently someone plugged in a USB device that the motherboard wasn't happy with.



A donor from a junk case.....It's a common connector.



Removed.



The donor removed.



...and fixed!





Back in the case.



Everything washed & dried..... Can't go any further....so here we are.



Added a 40mm fan to the NB chip....they get hot....and that's all for today.



I thought about a little paint creativity with this case.....still haven't made up my mind. The original paint is in good (not great) condition..... I'll have to ponder that one...

[lti]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

PCB has a burned trace on the +5v runner. Apparently someone plugged in a USB device that the motherboard wasn't happy with.

That's probably because of the mangled USB connector, and the Abit-rebadged-ECS motherboard didn't have any kind of protection on its front USB header (common for cheap stuff).

That case looks like one of the Apevia X-Qpack knockoffs (or maybe they were all made by the same company). The Apevia version needed a special short power supply, even though it had standard ATX mounting holes.

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

That's probably because of the mangled USB connector, and the Abit-rebadged-ECS motherboard didn't have any kind of protection on its front USB header (common for cheap stuff).

That case looks like one of the Apevia X-Qpack knockoffs (or maybe they were all made by the same company). The Apevia version needed a special short power supply, even though it had standard ATX mounting holes.

It may very well be. I couldn't find any badging on it anywhere. It had a full size PSU, but probably wasn't the original.

You're probably right on the USB....the thought crossed my mind as well.

[lti]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

I remember some of the later clones being a little deeper to hold a standard power supply, but there still wasn't much space between the power supply and optical drive.

[ratdude747]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

FWIW my wife still uses my X7DCA build as a daily driver and gaming rig... Despite having built her a newer and (as of recently, only mostly) faster system.

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

FWIW my wife still uses my X7DCA build as a daily driver and gaming rig... Despite having built her a newer and (as of recently, only mostly) faster system.

They're still very capable by today's standards for sure.....and they're absolute freight trains.

I'm not really sure this case is worthy of what's going in it....but just another neat build nonetheless.

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

I wrapped this one up today.



The IO shield arrived last Friday.....but I was busy revising 'the oven', so this naturally got bumped.... I resumed it yesterday afternoon and finished it today. All the assembly was done yesterday, today was mostly software installs and testing.

Anyway....

Perfect fit!





80mm PWM fan installed in the front, pulling air in.





Dell 120mm PWM fan in the rear drawing out.



Dell plug modified for a normal fan header. Shaved the tabs off the back and depinned & repinned it in a standard config.



I used the Dell rubber standoffs to keep vibration down.....but they were made for thicker plastic and were a little loose-fitting. Nothing a couple washers couldn't fix.



Kingston 120GB SSD (I've got gazillions of these)....in an unknown brand SAS tray that some SAS SSD's came in. I had to use a HP SAS to SATA adapter.....but good way to use up some of these trays; I have quite a few of those as well. They came from some junk server I gutted.



Added a DVDRW. I wouldn't have except I didn't have the bay cover for it....so something had to go in there.



Attached the temp sensor to the northbridge chip.



tidying up cabling.





GPU, sound, and power supply added. PSU is a powerman 430w, recapped of course. This board was surprisingly light duty, this will hold it without issue.







Nice butt shot....



As expected, it worked.





This case was not of the greatest build quality; not really worthy of what went in it.....but since it actually fit, I figured what the hell.... Only glitch, the temp readout on the front has a bunch of dead segments. I did not investigate as to why.....but chalk this one up to another weird X7DCA-L build!

[Topcat]

Another ebay rescue of one of these boards. Complete system core including IO shield & dynatron coolers. 2x X5460 CPU's @ 3.16 and 16gb RAM. I paid less for this entire setup than what one of those dynatron heatsinks normally go for. No build in mind for this; I don't have any uATX cases that could fit one of these at this time....but there will be another build when I find one.