What mobo is in the Dell 537s?

[csh8428]

Does anyone know what make/model mobos are in the Dell 537s desktops?

Thanks,

Craig

 

[LoneEagle]

I believe they are proprietary from Dell.

I don't think they are standard and be replaced with an ASUS or whatever. Even the PSU is not standard. Not sure.

 

[chunkymonster]

Dell has their mobos made for them to spec by the likes of IBM, Intel, and Asus...

If you are planning on replacing the mobo in your Dell as part of an upgrade, let me save you some time and say that you should just start from scratch...get a new case, psu, mobo, proc, and memory...the most you can really salvage from a Dell prebuilt machine is really the hard drive, floppys, memory/cpu (depending), and the CD/DVD ROMs...

 

[mhz2us]

I had always heard that Dell PSU's are different. But more than a year ago my sister's Dell 537 mini tower failed. After some examination of the PSU connecter, I figured what'th'hell and installed an OCX 500 watt PSU.

We have not had any problems since.

Prior to the PSU failure, this machine was upgraded with and E7500 core 2 CPU and 4gb of DDR2 800 ram.

Funny that Dell support stated that they do not support CPU upgrades. At the time I upgraded to E7500 from a well known retail outlet, I considered buying a different CPU directly from Dell that was marketed specifically for the Dell 537. It is hard for me to believe that Dell does not support what it sells from it's web site for their machines - Do marketing and technical support ever talk to each other?

It still takes more than 2 minutes for this machine to boot and another 30 or 40 seconds to go from log in screen to desktop.

At first I though it was likely filled with spy ware or under control of some kind of bot. But tests with several well know programs reveal nothing exceptional.

Test with passmark benchmark indicate the CPU is performing OK, but the hd drive seems slow.

Aside from the extremely frustrating performance there is not much to say about the machine.

As a candidate for upgrade - the drive bay seems designed for one HDD despite ample room for one more drive. I could not see how to mount a second HDD with out doing some sheet metal work, punching screw holes, etc, ect.

The motherboard itself only has 2 SATA conectors - one for the DVR and one for the HDD. So if you are considering more drives a cheap HDD controller will be necessary.

This machine is essentially maxed out from the factory. I would recommend using it for an internet cruzer or limited word processor - ONLY.