This is my first post here.
I am an owner of a Dell 435MT. It's been a decent machine, i7 920, 8 gigs of ram. I am a 3D artist by profession however and this machine is no longer cutting it. I pulled it apart the other day to see what I could do to speed it up, and quickly realized why I will never buy another factory built machine again. Dell has eliminating any possibility of upgrading the components. It's an odd case with a non standard layout. Too small to fit a decent power supply in, which means I can't upgrade the video card. The MB bios is crippled which means I can't overclock the 920. From the research I have done the MB doesn't support an SSD, and it is supposedly rather tricky to find any RAM that will work on that MB in any configuration larger than 8gb.
So I'm stuck with two options. Get a new case and a new MB for the i7 920 and build a new machine around that. However MB's for that CPU are now extinct, though I can find some on ebay, but I hate to put money into dead architecture. Still with a new MB and a new case I could overclock the 920, get some more ram in there, and install an SSD. That could keep me afloat for a few more years for relatively little money.
The other option is to just build a new machine. I would have about a 1,000 budget. I was looking at building an AMD 8350 system, but looking at cinebench scores (relevant since this machine will be for 3d rendering) it only scores a 6.92 at clock speeds, while the i7 920 overclocked to 4 ghz scores a 6.91. I don't normally overclock but that is pretty disappointing anyway.
So anyway what would you guys do? The machine would be for 3d rendering, video editing, and photoshop work.
I am an owner of a Dell 435MT. It's been a decent machine, i7 920, 8 gigs of ram. I am a 3D artist by profession however and this machine is no longer cutting it. I pulled it apart the other day to see what I could do to speed it up, and quickly realized why I will never buy another factory built machine again. Dell has eliminating any possibility of upgrading the components. It's an odd case with a non standard layout. Too small to fit a decent power supply in, which means I can't upgrade the video card. The MB bios is crippled which means I can't overclock the 920. From the research I have done the MB doesn't support an SSD, and it is supposedly rather tricky to find any RAM that will work on that MB in any configuration larger than 8gb.
So I'm stuck with two options. Get a new case and a new MB for the i7 920 and build a new machine around that. However MB's for that CPU are now extinct, though I can find some on ebay, but I hate to put money into dead architecture. Still with a new MB and a new case I could overclock the 920, get some more ram in there, and install an SSD. That could keep me afloat for a few more years for relatively little money.
The other option is to just build a new machine. I would have about a 1,000 budget. I was looking at building an AMD 8350 system, but looking at cinebench scores (relevant since this machine will be for 3d rendering) it only scores a 6.92 at clock speeds, while the i7 920 overclocked to 4 ghz scores a 6.91. I don't normally overclock but that is pretty disappointing anyway.
So anyway what would you guys do? The machine would be for 3d rendering, video editing, and photoshop work.
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