Pimp-my-Dell

[BinaryDemon]

While I await for some parts to bet delivered for my 1st mod project - The Horror-ible PC, I have decided to start another called 'Pimp-my-Dell'.

I had an old Dell Optiplex GX1 (P3-450, 64megs, ATI RAGE PRO 4meg, 16GB HD) sitting around and decided to make it be all it can be- both hardware-wise and externally.

I figured if there is 1 color that screams bling-bling it has to be GOLD.

Pre-Painting:

Coat1:

I was surprised that covering all the surfaces of those parts with just 1 coat took the entire can. Off to the store I go for more gold paint.

To round out the hardware upgrades I purchased an ATI Radeon 7000 PCI, and plan to purchase additional ram and a Slot1->Socket 370 Powerleap upgrade kit- that will support upto a Celeron 1.4 ghz. Ill probably need a new HD too if I want to install XP on it. It currently is running WinME.

So what else does it need- some fake jewels? or a disco ball?

[BinaryDemon]

Originally Posted by chaksq

Throw some rims on that ****.

Or a better option would be to buy some of those fake $ sign bling and paint it to match. and put them on the case somewhere.

I think my school used to have some of those old Dells. Where do you get that socket adaptor kit? I have a couple of old socket-7s needing some upgrades.

I think I'll be getting the slot1->370pin adapter off ebay.

It's probably not a cost effective upgrade- it would be cheaper just to buy a new motherboard and cpu. Although I doubt a standard atx motherboard would fit this dell case correctly.

I like the idea of $ bling decorations. I'll think about that and see if I can make it work.

[BinaryDemon]

Some pictures of reassembling to test if everything still fits and works.

The top is a little splotchy- dark and light spots- not completely uniform. The case fits much tighter, but everything still works.

[BinaryDemon]

Hmm I like the star design idea.

Here's what I was thinking-
- DELL spelled out in rhinestone letters on front or side.
- An automotive hood ornament for the top. I was thinking something expensive like lambo, or porshe but even the hood ornaments are expensive. So I will probably settle for Catillac because they appear to be cheap and prolific on ebay.

Why spell out Dell? Why advertise Dell when the whole idea modding is to make it your own? If you're going to spell out something why not make it your own, something like a cool name for the mod.[/quote]

I want to keep it Dell to pay homage to its roots. Sorta like its still the same system just 'pimped out'. I can understand why most of the modders here would remove any brand naming from their mods, but for this keeping it fits my theme.

[BinaryDemon]

In keeping with the car ideas, I decided to add an exhaust system. I also bought a large case fan to blow air out of the exhaust, but I havent tested it yet. It might create some sort of annoying noise blowing thru those pipes.

Still waiting on some of the Cadillac stuff I ordered for it.

Here's the latest look-

and

I think it needs a spoiler now...

[BinaryDemon]

My apologies for not keeping up with this worklog. Well there are other projects I would rather put my time into so I am calling it Complete. Done. Fin. There is more I had hoped to do - like Red LED Tail Lights. I moved the DELL rhinestone letters to the top, since they were not mounted well on the side.

Initially I had hoped to run Windows Vista on this old clunker, and eventually did get Vista running dispite bios ACPI incompatibilities but performance was pretty horrible. So I switched to Ubuntu 7.04, which runs pretty well.

Final Specs are:

Hardware:
Cpu: Intel Celeron 1.4 ghz Powerleap 370->Slot1 Adapter
Motherboard: Dell GX1
Memory: 512 Mb PC133
Video: ATI Radeon 7000 32 megs PCI
Hard drives: 80 Gb ( Ubuntu 7.04 installed )
Optical drives: 16x LG DVD/RW + Spare CDROM
Network: Onboard 10/100 Ethernet
Ports: Serial, Parallel Printer, 5 USB v2.0 (1 internal)
Audio: Diamond XtremeSound 5.1
Power Supply: ATX 200W Power Supply

Software:
Operating System: Ubuntu 7.04 with most recent patches applied.
Office Software: OpenOffice 2.2
DVD Playback: VLC

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