Dell Dimension 8300 - possible to significantly upgrade?

Hello there,

Have a Dell Dimension 8300, purchased back in 2002 I believe. Through the years, have done basically everything I could (maxed the memory, upgraded the PCI graphics card) to increase performance. More recently, I had a hard-drive failure - so the HD is a pretty new 300 GB IDE drive; also needed a new power supply around the same time, so it has a new 400w one.

What I'm wondering is, can I buy something like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Comb [...] mbo.610985

And upgrade the "guts" - mobo, CPU, memory, etc. of my 8300? Or is there a specific reason why not?

Figured it might be a way to get modern-PC performance, on the cheap. If not, I'll probably just go whole hog and do a first-timer build around a i5-2500k and new everything else (case, power supply, mobo, memory, ssd, BD burner, etc).

Any advice is appreciated - thanks for your help. I read the threads about dropping in a dual-core processor in place of my P4 3.0 Ghz Prescott and why that wouldn't work... but I don't recall seeing anything asked quite like my question. Thanks again.

Been there, tried that and failed.

Most likely the motherboard on your dell is not an ATX standard, so you would not likely be able to use the case without modifying the position of the standoffs.

Even if you could somehow secure the motherboard, then the start button, power on and hdd led connectors are probably non-standard, and you would have to jerry-rig that.

You might be able to save your hard drive, but frankly, an ide connection is so slow and hard drives are so cheap, that it is probalby not worth the effort there, although you could keep it for a second drive in your new machine.


Why not just buy something like this? Antec Two Hundred for $30 after rebate Get it this evening before it goes off sale.

The i3 combo will probalby do everything you need it to. Check the power supply to make sure it fits a standard case - Dell has a tendency to screw those up, too. I am never going to buy antoher one for these several reasons.