Dell Optiplex GX270 ghetto heatsink mod and recap

[momaka]

Re: Dell Optiplex GX270 ghetto heatsink mod and recap

Well, for those still interested in the original thread (anyone? ), I did some slight modifications to my custom heat sink - mainly switched the fan with a standard 70 mm one that came bundled with that heat sink. Also slightly changed the way the retention mechanism works - now it holds the heat sink by pushing down on that 70 mm fan. Pics coming soon. It all looks a little better though... until you look at the case I installed this motherboard in . But I think that may be material for another thread. There's just too much handiwork to show here .

[JayArr_BC]

Re: Dell Optiplex GX270 ghetto heatsink mod and recap

i'm assuming you have an IR station?

Yes, I guess I should have mentioned that.

[Uranium-235]

Re: Dell Optiplex GX270 ghetto heatsink mod and recap

i'm assuming you have an IR station?

[JayArr_BC]

Re: Dell Optiplex GX270 ghetto heatsink mod and recap

Try this next time you have a turbo fan...

Open the case and push down on the top of the fan, hard, with one hand while turning the PC on with the other. Keep the pressure on the fan and if the pc boots you have a 775 socket problem.

Turbo fan is an easy fix, we've repaired close to 50 of them, you need to reflow the 775 socket, the balls underneath it are cracked. In some cases a reflow doesn't work and we replace the socket with one that has leaded balls, about $3 each. We get 8/10 repaired this way.

JayArr

[pazsion]

Re: Dell Optiplex GX270 ghetto heatsink mod and recap




Please if you are gonna throw out any pc's in the richmond,va area or are willig to send them I'd love to have them particularly old dells as far back as 486's And particularly agp and board with agp and pci-e.

Wiether they work or not. If it's close to me i'll even pay shipping.

[silvergoat]

Re: Dell Optiplex GX270 ghetto heatsink mod and recap

You guys recap and resell boards huh? I didn't know there was money in that, but I really don't have the money to keep stashes of capacitors around and don't have cash to spend on a bunch of spare parts. I just threw out about 10 boards (yea, not much), but if they each could have put $30 in my pocket, that would have been great.

[momaka]

Re: Dell Optiplex GX270 ghetto heatsink mod and recap

The GX280 sink won't fit the GX270. The GX270 can be fitted with any 478 heatsink bracket, it's just a tight fit with the 1800uF 8mm caps....but it will work.

Didn't work with the one I had, so I had to cut the original GX270 bracket a bit. Once that was done, a standard P4 heat sink I had fit perfectly.
And even if a standard bracket did fit, I wouldn't think it's a good idea to have the caps being put under constant pressure on one side. Could probably ruin the seals over time and make the caps dry. Besides, I definitely wouldn't want eletrolyte to spill. That rotten fish smell is very unpleasant .
Also, I forgot to mention, but I also trimmed the MOSFETs' heat sink a bit because it too was exerting some force on the VRM high-side caps. Now it fits like a glove.

What is "turbo fan syndrome" don't think I've seen this. yet...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nS1x54K44WA

[smason]

Re: Dell Optiplex GX270 ghetto heatsink mod and recap

Why are you trashing the 280's? If they still work, they are still very sell-able!! If they have 'turbo fan syndrome', they are dumpster food. I threw about 100 of those damn boards in the trash about a month ago that had that issue.

What is "turbo fan syndrome" don't think I've seen this. yet...

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Optiplex GX270 ghetto heatsink mod and recap

who is "they"? local recycle?

Yup.

[mattch]

Re: Dell Optiplex GX270 ghetto heatsink mod and recap

Yup, they went in the dumpster. Here, they wanted me to PAY THEM to take them. I dont mind recycling, but I'll be damned if I pay them to take the stuff, so dumpster food they became.

who is "they"? local recycle?

i wouldnt mind cleaning out all the zombie-franken-puters i have "collected" over the years

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Optiplex GX270 ghetto heatsink mod and recap

Did you really throw those away? That's about $400 worth of scrap

Where I'm at, they pay $3.30/lb for dead boards... do the math guys.

Yup, they went in the dumpster. Here, they wanted me to PAY THEM to take them. I dont mind recycling, but I'll be damned if I pay them to take the stuff, so dumpster food they became.

[TechShui]

Re: Dell Optiplex GX270 ghetto heatsink mod and recap

The GX280 sink won't fit the GX270. The GX270 can be fitted with any 478 heatsink bracket, it's just a tight fit with the 1800uF 8mm caps....but it will work.

Why are you trashing the 280's? If they still work, they are still very sell-able!! If they have 'turbo fan syndrome', they are dumpster food. I threw about 100 of those damn boards in the trash about a month ago that had that issue.

Did you really throw those away? That's about $400 worth of scrap

Where I'm at, they pay $3.30/lb for dead boards... do the math guys.

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Optiplex GX270 ghetto heatsink mod and recap

I'm happy they are still sellable because I have like 50-100 of them. $50-100 is a good price point?

Thought of just selling the logic boards and windows license on ebay. I can just CL whole machines... Worth it?

You'll sell those all day long for 50 bucks a pop, especially the SFF models. 100 bucks, they'll sell, but slower... If you just want to offload them, 50~75 bucks and gone. The non-USFF, I advertised on a local site for sale, I had about a dozen GX280SFF's with keyboards & mice, but no monitors. Sold the entire lot of them over the weekend for 75 bucks each. They won't hang around long at all. The USFF's, I sell those at a single phone call as fast as I can get them.

[NxB]

Re: Dell Optiplex GX270 ghetto heatsink mod and recap

I'm happy they are still sellable because I have like 50-100 of them. $50-100 is a good price point?

Thought of just selling the logic boards and windows license on ebay. I can just CL whole machines... Worth it?

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Optiplex GX270 ghetto heatsink mod and recap

I seem to never have trouble selling the SFF's. The SX280's I sell at a phone call, same with GX620 and GX745+ USFF's....

[severach]

Re: Dell Optiplex GX270 ghetto heatsink mod and recap

Same problem here. A GX280 is a fine machine but has virtually no resale value. I pretty much gave all mine away when I upgraded to Dell Optiplex 755 so I could stop dealing with peoples' old crappy Pentium 3 limited memory systems. From many of them I got back motherboards worth much more than a complete GX280.

[retiredcaps]

Re: Dell Optiplex GX270 ghetto heatsink mod and recap

Why are you trashing the 280's?

I got them from a friend's workplace. All 4

- have bloated Rubycon MCZs by the CPU
- 3 out of the 4 have OSTs caps everywhere else
- none of them have any DDR2 DRAM
- all 4 power supplies have bad caps and one doesn't work at all
- so far the one heatsink I removed reveals 775 3.0Ghz CPU,

The maximum price I could get for these computers (3.0Ghz, 1GB DRAM, 80GB hard drive) is probably $50 in my local market.

The time and money I need to find/add 1GB DDR2 (probably $10 used), recap motherboard and PSU (probably $15 in new caps/psu), I might make $20 per computer or $80 total.

It is way easier for me to sell the power supplies after recap and CPUs separately. I could probably get $60 for 4 power supplies and $20 for 4 socket 775 CPUs or $80 total.

No home user is going to appreciate that I recapped an entire motherboard with high quality caps so no one will pay for it.

I plan to strip the rest, freecycle others, and recycle leftovers.

If anyone here needs screws, heatsinks, etc for 280s, let me know.

PS. I don't know if they have turbo fan syndrome or not since none of them POST due to the bad caps. However, the one heatsink I did take apart was caked in 6 year old dust.

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Optiplex GX270 ghetto heatsink mod and recap

The GX280 sink won't fit the GX270. The GX270 can be fitted with any 478 heatsink bracket, it's just a tight fit with the 1800uF 8mm caps....but it will work.

Why are you trashing the 280's? If they still work, they are still very sell-able!! If they have 'turbo fan syndrome', they are dumpster food. I threw about 100 of those damn boards in the trash about a month ago that had that issue.

[momaka]

Re: Dell Optiplex GX270 ghetto heatsink mod and recap

I don't really know if the heatsink from the GX280 fits the GX270. I'm guessing shipping from Canada won't be that cheap either. But if it is, I'll consider it. For some reason, I'm always short on heatsinks and RAM .

[retiredcaps]

Re: Dell Optiplex GX270 ghetto heatsink mod and recap

I have 4 dead GX280s that I will probably scrap (after I strip it for parts) so if you want a heatsink and if it fits the GX270, let me know.