XPS730 Case - Upgrades

bombs away

Have an XPS730 (Air Cooled) for the past few years which is due a few upgrades, to be honest I'm just gonna rip out everything and install current gear in the chassis.

First things first I need an new mobo. The XPS works off an ATX board so was wondering what's the best motherboard on the market right now that would fit the case. I'm looking down the line at an extreme i7 chip and was wondering is the intelX58 mobo any good and would it fit this chassis?

Any ideas would be appreciated

the untitled user

What's your budget? X58 as a platform is great, but very pricey, but then as you mentioned the possibility of an extreme edition so I'm guessing you have a lot of dosh to play with?

Wouldn't bother with an extreme edition first off, get a i7 930, a large heatsink (something like the Noctua D14, if it fits) and overclock the bejaysus out of it. With hyperthreading, a 6 core extreme is going to show up as a 12 core to your OS and there are very few games or apps out there for the average user that make those extra cores worthwhile.

bombs away

Yes money would'nt really be a factor although obviously I don't want to spend a huge amount when I could just buy a new system for that.

So at the moment I'm thinking about 2000 max, maybe a little higher as if it got much more than that I'd just trade up.

The main issue for me at the moment is whether or not the x58 would fit the chassis as I'm not to sure on that one.

My current system would be pretty similar to the one in this link with the exception that it's the air cooled model so does not have the ceramic water cooler system (H2C). (it used to but the damn thing leaked so I had to remove it )

http://hothardware.com/Articles/Dell_XPS_730_H2C_Performance_Gaming_System/

So the idea is to upgrade pretty much everything, cpu, mobo, graphics card's (I'll be switching out both of em for two new ones), and some upgraded ram.

What would you suggest?

Lu Tze

Is it just gaming you are using it for? If so what resolution is your monitor(s)? Also what is your current spec?

bombs away

Spec would be the same as in the link with two 3870x2 cards, An Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 3.2ghz processor although the ram is standard Dell 4gb (2 x 2gb) DDR3 SDRAM 1333mhz as opposed to the corsair variety. As I mentioned, it does'nt have the water cooling block which I removed for air cooling. The tower itself is quiet large and since the removal of the H2c unit there's an awful lot of room in there. I'm using a 1440x900 Dell widescreen at the moment.


It would pretty much be used exclusively for gaming so performance is the priority. I've been told that the motherboard's in the xps730 can be swapped for aftermarket ones fairly easily but am not sure which would fit it. The current one is in upside down with the cpu at the bottom and the graphic's cards above it, would this be a problem with installing a new one like the X58?

this is the one I'm considering at the moment

http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/motherboards/DX58SO/DX58SO-overview.htm

think it's around 250euro in Peats

the untitled user

It's standard ATX anyway, you should be able to fit in whatever you like in that form factor (see here). The orientation shouldn't really make a whit,
just as long as the CPU cooler gets enough air. You may have to extenders for the 24pin and/or 8pin connectors on the PSU though.

Tbh though, there's not a huge incentive to upgrade the Mobo/CPU/RAM, you've already good a pretty good quad core in there well capable of handling most games. I'd just upgrade the graphics cards (I think it's an SLI board, so might be able to do two 460s), get an SSD for the OS and a better monitor.

massy086

do you plan to build your own or buy a pre built pc 2000 is a great budget

bombs away

Intially just considered upgrading the graphics cards but to be honest I want to convert to the i7 chip which my current mobo won't support. Need something that will be Direct X11 compatiable.

2000 euro would just be for parts upgrades for this machine, don't think I would consider it a new build although I'll probably end up replacing most of the parts for that

the untitled user

bombs away wrote: »

Intially just considered upgrading the graphics cards but to be honest I want to convert to the i7 chip which my current mobo won't support. Need something that will be Direct X11 compatiable.

eh... DirectX is a standard for the graphics pipeline, i.e. your graphics cards. Your CPU has no direct bearing on what version of DirectX you can run as long as the appropriate version of windows will run on it. You do not need to upgrade your CPU to get DirectX 11 in that machine, you'd be pissing cash away basically...

bombs away

Ahh ok, I had a feeling it was just the graphics cards that would'nt allow me to run Direct x11 so upgrading them will sort that.

I figure though that it would just be best for me to upgrade everything now and save myself the trouble of having to do it later, I was always intending to swap out the motherboard at some stage and upgrade it for an i7 compatible one

massy086

why not put your current pc up for sale on adverts and do a complete new build you will need a new psu new mobo cpu ram gpu the only usable things you have are your hard drive and dvd drive

A_TV_WATCHER

I've been looking at upgrading my 730x system as well,

The only limitation on the case is the motherboard tray; You need to leave this in and use it under any new m/board,

There are lipped edges on it so it won't take larger than standard ATX boards and if you want to use any of the H2C cooling in the future you need to make sure the CPU is in a similar position; there is an MSI x58 motherboards that's a drop in replacement and supports the 980x EE i7 chip but most of their boards seem to be close enough. There is a facebook site that has most of the details on it.

On the otherhand if you want to go for a standard ATX case I'd be happy to buy your 730 case off you!