Advice for an amateur

Rlessary

July 6, 2012 1:29:29 AM

Hello,
So here's my dilemma, back before I knew how to work on computers I bought a dell xps 8300 due to getting a college discount that not only came with a free Xbox but also at a price comparable to if I built it myself, I did check newegg, TD and so on. The specs are as follows as it sits now
i5 2400,
12 gb Ram (upgraded to g.skill ripsaw),
1TB, SATA3, 7.2K,Western Digital HDD
430w psu
Mobo http://www.ebay.ca/itm/DELL-Studio-X...-/261044573955
Gigabyte USB 3.0 Card

The rest is unimportant I assume unless I do a completely new build, but basically I bought a sapphire hd 6850 to replace my garbage gt420 and it had a faulty fan and died quick, I sent it to hong kong for rma but over the year I have learned a lot more about PC's. I fix all my friends and family's and have done many of repairs, a lot of them hard ware, but have never built one from the ground up. Now I decided to upgrade and bought a EVGA gtx 480, a Diablotek 775w PSU with a 60v 12a rail (I usually would avoid Diablotek but everything I've read on this one is 5 stars and reviewers say its the best Diablotek PSU with rarely any problems). I also have 2 brand new cases unopened from a friend who ordered them thinking he could do a couple customs and realized he knew nothing about builds and bought a Mac instead. So I got a Thermaltake Armor a60 AMD edition, and a Raidmax Blade for 50$ for both. In your opinions should I use either case and strip the dell parts out and put them in one along with the new PSU and gtx 480, or should I get a new mobo, case or anything (even all new parts) and do a fresh build and when the 6850 returns stick it in the xps and sell it for what I can get? I do not know much about these cases as I haven't opened them in case I want to return them(he bought them 3 weeks ago from newegg and amazon and I got the receipts) and get a better one for the 110 I'll get back? I'm lost on what to do and need advice. Sorry for such a long post I'm just stressing and need my pc up and running. The dell case I feel would melt from the gtx lol since its a known oven. Any help is much appreciated!

Also it will be used for gaming and adobe master suite cs6 mainly, i wont be OC, I live in the U.S, my budget is 400$! I do have windows key and my monitor features are 24" Dell U2410 Display with1920x1200 (max) WUXGA 16:10 Wide Aspect Ratio, 6-Millisecond Response Time2, 80,000:1 DCR

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Anonymous

July 6, 2012 1:56:38 AM

simply swap PSUs and put in the 480. no reason to rip apart the build until you get another motherboard and a quality PSU.

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Pizzaa

July 6, 2012 2:08:19 AM

I agree with the previous poster, as you would need to buy a new operating system if you switched the MoBo. One quick thing to be careful of though, is make sure your graphics card fits in the Dell MoBo since some have non-standard/older model slots. Really, any case has better cooling than a dell, and if your temperatures run hot (>60* Celcius) you should probably switch the whole rig to one of your better cases.

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Rlessary

July 17, 2012 5:47:34 AM

I made the switch, everything went perfect, runs so much cooler now, my pc vantage score went from 1600's roughly to 2,400's. I got the raf 912 case for 40$ on sale, and am going to waituntil next years tick or tock from intel so i have the whole new architecture, then ill get the best mobo and the best i7. Its funny, everyone in hardforums said i couldnt switch cases because of dells f_panel switch not being published. Gues being a computer engineering major helped alot, even if im only on 2nd semester this fall. Got my comptia A+ tests next week back to back, wish me luck lol. Thanks for the great advice guys.

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