New CPU/Mb in Dell XPs 720 system

Hi WR2

Thanks for taking the time. Ok, I'll get a new enclosure that can fit an ATX board.

My 720 is from Feb 2008.

Valar

Yes, I did wonder about that. I'm running Vista 32.

I have upgraded my DELL Dimension 720 to 4 x 2 GB RAM, as I found out that 4 GB wasnt the limit, I went for 8 GB which is.

I'm currently running Core2 E6580 on it (3.0ghz) but I am considering to upgrade to the biggest Quad core I can get to work with BIOS A06... think its Q9550 or something.

It has two 8800 GT running SLI from DELL so those might get a replacement next too, as their fans are terriblely noisy... even in "normal" desktop mode... just running windows.

I got my machine with Vista 32-bit... and I must say, that was NOT a happy time. I decided to try Windows 7. Downloaded the beta, installed it... ran pretty good.. but still bad... then I found out that eventhough I bought it with 3 GB RAM, the two graphiccards with 512 MB each ate up more than 1024 MB of address/memoryspace, so I had less than 3 GB in total for VISTA.

AHA... downloaded Windows 7- 64bit and BINGO!... that worked... suddently I had 4 GB RAM + graphiccards available.
Decided to upgrade my RAM and buy a Windows 7 license, eventhough DELL states its not compatible... sure... just buy another machine from us... right? NO WAY

So I upgraded my RAM to 8 GB and switched to 64-bit...

Windows 7 (Home Premium or Professional) in 64-bit just installes the needed drivers by itself... after network and basic drivers are up, then go to nVidia and grab the drivers for the motherboard (680i chipset) and the latest nVidia Geforce drivers too and BOOOOM you have a GREAT desktop computer.

VISTA MUST DIE... ) (or is already in my mind, going to throw away any DVDs containing any VISTA image)