Dell Precision 490 dual xeon 5130 -need new video card and hard drives

[ByTheKOZ]

Approximate Purchase Date: between now and end of the year
Budget Range: under 500
System Usage from Most to Least Important: Graphic design & Web design (Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Muse), CAD (Rhino, AutoCAD), standard desktop stuff (Chrome, Excel, iTunes, etc.) - I don't do any gaming.
Are you buying a monitor: No. Running dual - 22" Asus, 22" Acer
Parts to Upgrade: Hard Drive, Memory, Graphics card
Do you need to buy OS: No - I already have Windows 7 Home Premium (OEM was XP Ultimate)
Preferred Website(s) for Parts: newegg.com, ebay.com
Location: Arkansas
Parts Preferences: prefer stability over price. Still want good deals, but "cheap" is not the primary motivator.
Overclocking: No
SLI or Crossfire: ?
Your Monitor Resolution: Both monitors are set to 1680x1050

Additional Comments, Why Are You Upgrading: : Have had this Dell Precision 490 for 5 years now and love it. Spent good money to get a good workstation with a xeon 5130 processor. Some of the USB ports have failed on this mobo, so I picked up another one to put in that is like-new (I now have dual xeon 5130s...yay!). I'm also putting in 4x4GB RAM (yes, I have the correct stuff - don't need help on that part - not much selection available...LOL). I am thinking if I can get a new set of hard drives and a good video card (plus the memory upgrade I already have) I can breathe another few years of life back into this "ole reliable" power-workstation. I'd have to spend more than $2k to get a comparable system today.

I need advice on the following:

Hard drives
I am thinking the best way to go will be an SSD for programs & scratch disk, and a large 7200 rpm drive for storage.

Looking at these:
SAMSUNG 830 Series MZ-7PC128B/WW 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147163

Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 ST3000DM001 3TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148844



Graphics card
Just needs to do dual monitors and support Adobe/CAD software. I don't do any gaming, or video editing, or intense CAD rendering (just basic model-building, send to CAM, etc.)

- need suggestions


Anything else I should be considering? compatibility issues? Windows 7 runs just fine on it. SSD ok on this system?

Thanks!

 

[TexasTea]

I know this is an older thread but others may have the same intentions....

I used a Samsung 840 256Gb SSD as the primary drive and kept the 500GB 7200 as a data drive.
3Tb is the absolute single partition limit for Windows 7 x64 so I would consider a 2Tb if that is your contention. I already have network storage so a big single partition mechanical hard drive was not necessary.

I had a tempermental first run nVidia GTX 670 that had loads of problems in another rig so I replaced it with an AMD HD 7970. The nVidia GTX 670 runs just fine in the Precision 490. Since the 490 has a 750W power supply as native equipment, the two 6 pin requirements were a snap.. It already had one, and I used a pigtail for the second from unused 4pin molex connectors. The nVidia website sniffed out the card without a problem and downloaded the latest drivers.

Like most other people, I bought my Precision 490 on eBay for less than 300 bucks. It already had dual 3Ghz Xeon processors and 16Gb of 400Mhz Dell ram already installed....so no upgrade there.

Once Windows 7 64bit O/S was installed the WEI indicated the weakest link to be the Xeon processors at 7.2 The rest of the system was 7.7 with the GTX 670 scoring a solid 7.9 in both catagories which is no surprise.

This is not bad for a 5 year old system that would have been parted out if not sold.

 

[uNi7VFX]

I know this is an older thread but others may have the same intentions....

I used a Samsung 840 256Gb SSD as the primary drive and kept the 500GB 7200 as a data drive.
3Tb is the absolute single partition limit for Windows 7 x64 so I would consider a 2Tb if that is your contention. I already have network storage so a big single partition mechanical hard drive was not necessary.

I had a tempermental first run nVidia GTX 670 that had loads of problems in another rig so I replaced it with an AMD HD 7970. The nVidia GTX 670 runs just fine in the Precision 490. Since the 490 has a 750W power supply as native equipment, the two 6 pin requirements were a snap.. It already had one, and I used a pigtail for the second from unused 4pin molex connectors. The nVidia website sniffed out the card without a problem and downloaded the latest drivers.

Like most other people, I bought my Precision 490 on eBay for less than 300 bucks. It already had dual 3Ghz Xeon processors and 16Gb of 400Mhz Dell ram already installed....so no upgrade there.

Once Windows 7 64bit O/S was installed the WEI indicated the weakest link to be the Xeon processors at 7.2 The rest of the system was 7.7 with the GTX 670 scoring a solid 7.9 in both catagories which is no surprise.

This is not bad for a 5 year old system that would have been parted out if not sold.

Hello, I also have a Dell Precision 490 and recently bought a HD 6870 which required 2 6-pin power connectors, everything fit perfectly however I couldn't find the 2nd 4-pin connector, would you have any idea where it could be? Or have you modified your workstation? Also, I'm quite the newbie so I have no idea how pigtails work or what they are, my molex to 6-pin doesn't reach the graphics card so I'll probably have to do this 'pigtail', or is their an easier way like an extender?
Please reply, thanks.

 

[Ralph_Ellis]

For Dell Precision 490, I have used a Zotac GT 730 2GB GDDR3 successfully. It went in without a fuss beyond having to pull back on the blue Dell card holding pin attached to the motherboard. Good inexpensive card for this machine.