Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

Just a little footnote....I found a pair of X5470's (3.33GHz 1333FSB) quadcore Xeons on the CPU bin....I honestly don't remember where they came from, but they're the fastest 5400-series Xeon @ 1333FSB.... Perfect finishing touch for maxing this critter out. Nothing except the GPU could possibly be upgraded....and no plans for that.....





The exhaust air out of the case really doesn't feel any warmer.

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

This build is officially finished....the USB cables were fabbed and the laptop optical power adapter came in. I didn't bother taking any pics of this....it's pretty basic stuff.

FWIW, I actually paid attention to the alien's eyes today while it was booting (which takes ~4 seconds after POST to login screen)....the eyes blink red very nicely!! Damn, I'm good!! I actually did try to photograph the blinky eyes, but I just was never fast enough with the shutter to capture it. I guess I could make a video with my phone....but meh...

I do have one more of these boards left, but zero plans for it....I'll shelf it until I come up with another really unique case for it....but it may never come off the shelf. Of the 4 of these I built, this one was definitely the most difficult, yet yielded the best overall result. This one was fabrication at every turn, inspite of very little modding needed to fit the goofy board. Its look is definitely an 'acquired taste', that's for sure, but I have to admit it was a challenging yet fun build. Too bad custom system building is really a thing of the past, I never lost my love for it.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

The ones with bright blue lights are probably the most irritating, IMO.

Blue LEDs, were a Bush-era classic, even more so with those blue-LED-fans!
I remember those Antec blue-LED fans seeming popular.

[lti]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

I really don't understand why so many modern cases have so much room in the front. It seems mostly a waste of space. I particularly despise those corny popular RGB 3-fan designs with a ton of space in the front. Sure some could use PART of it for a water cooling radiator... but not all of it by any means. It seems as if most cases today, especially gaming ones, take a lot of space just for visual/gimmick/boasting purposes, and not so much as a utility/necessity.

Most of those "gamer" cases look the same to me. There are either the cases with three RGB fans on the front (smashed against a piece of glass with no real air intake) or the cases with the solid front panel (a bunch of NZXT S340 or H500 knockoffs).

[momaka]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

I added the 40mm fan on the northbridge chip. I also replaced the CPU fans with some nicer PWM's to quiet it down....it was rather annoyingly loud before.

Nice. Chipsets with good cooling - seems to be a rare sight anymore... and probably since the socket 462/370 era.

Yes, PWM fans are a must. When the CPU throttles down/idles, you don't really need the windforce of a hurricane going through the heatsink to keep things cool... though I find that nowadays too many boards throttle down the fans way too aggressively, and as a result, the VRMs near the CPU and the chipset, if passively cooled, can get really really hot. I also find that many OEM systems wait too long and don't speed up the fans enough at high load to keep noise down... but that usually ends up getting the CPU(s) to run at elevated temperatures often close to their maximum.

I suppose that is one of the few things I do like about modern motherboards is that they offer customizable fan profiles.

Added an 'ADATA' 480gb SSD.....it was new in original packaging for $48 shipped....I never thought I'd see the day they're getting this cheap!!

I know, right!
I got an SSD for my work laptop last summer: $20 for a 120 GB... and it was WORTH EVERY PENNY! The boot times are simply unbeatable by a mechanical, despite this being a cheapo cache-less SSD. The performance did slow down a bit after a year of use, probably due to old data in the cells getting weak and taking longer to read. But from what I hear, this is usually correctable by backing up the HDD, wiping it, then restoring the data again so that it is freshly-written again.

The only things left are a power adapter so I can connect power to the goofy laptop optical

Yup, that's a modern desktop for ya these days. Ain't nobody got time/space for "full-size" 5.25 opticals anymore. Heck, almost all modern cases lack 5.25" bays altogether... and on that note, I really don't understand why so many modern cases have so much room in the front. It seems mostly a waste of space. I particularly despise those corny popular RGB 3-fan designs with a ton of space in the front. Sure some could use PART of it for a water cooling radiator... but not all of it by any means. It seems as if most cases today, especially gaming ones, take a lot of space just for visual/gimmick/boasting purposes, and not so much as a utility/necessity.

With that said, I really like how that system turned above - there is no wasted space anywhere and the system looks good with those RBG LEDs, but is not excessive or flamboyant like many "gaming" RGB PC cases.

The eyes are also in series, no current limiter, just feeding off the HDD activity connector on the motherboard. They don't illuminate as bright off the motherboard connector as shown in the test pics, but they're very noticeable.

That's no issue. The motherboard usually provides current-limiting anyways. Also, it'd be annoying if the HDD LEDs were too bright, because then the blinking could drive you nuts in a dark room. I've seen that with some cheapo cases that used really bright LEDs and had to install a series resistor or change the LED to make the case look more sane in a dark room. The ones with bright blue lights are probably the most irritating, IMO.

I found a slightly larger cast iron utility sink at a junk shop not long ago. It will replace this one.

I like your style.
Most people would just go to Lowes or Home Depot again and get another cheap sink. Instead you go for something old and well-built and refurbish it so it lasts a lot longer (and keeps junk out of landfills!)

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

A couple more touches....

I added the 40mm fan on the northbridge chip. I also replaced the CPU fans with some nicer PWM's to quiet it down....it was rather annoyingly loud before.



Added an 'ADATA' 480gb SSD.....it was new in original packaging for $48 shipped....I never thought I'd see the day they're getting this cheap!!



Installed Win10 and here we are!


The only things left are a power adapter so I can connect power to the goofy laptop optical that this uses and an adapter cable to get the last 2 remaining USB ports working on the front panel...I had to do some modification to make that work......

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

With that said, the approximate Vf is only important to know when wiring multiple LEDs in series, because then the total combined Vf is the sum of the LEDs' Vf. So for example with a 12V source, you can usually wire no more than 3 white, blue, purple, pink, or UV LEDs in series (with a current-limiting series resistor, of course.)

Yup, that was the issue. The side panels were 3x in series off the +12v rail, so this had to be figured out. Same with the 'color changers'; 2x in series. Original design for the color changers was 4, and I had it calculated, but 12v wasn't enough to fire them correctly in a series. I then played around with some series/parallel configs just to realize I couldn't fit 4 of them into the Alien's head....so it got cut to two....and it still came out well. The eyes are also in series, no current limiter, just feeding off the HDD activity connector on the motherboard. They don't illuminate as bright off the motherboard connector as shown in the test pics, but they're very noticeable.

Strange thing about the recipient of this machine....some familiy kookiness has half the family (myself included) not speaking to this particular sister....so Ill probably end up with this one in my 'fleet'...

When the SSD and the rest of the finishing touches arrive, I'll grab some benchmarks.

Your utility sink is starting to crack.
Otherwise, looks dirty like mine.
But then again, if a utility sink is clean and spotless, then you're probably not doing enough work.

It;s a cheap plastic one from Lowes....it's ~10yrs old and was not treated kindly....comouter cases, car parts, and all kinds of things have been in that...and the obnoxious chemicals that clean them. I found a slightly larger cast iron utility sink at a junk shop not long ago. It will replace this one.

[momaka]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

Anyway, to those that wasted their time and bandwidth following this dorky build, I hope it lived up to expectation.

Hell yeah!

I'm no fan of black cases and trendy RGB LED lightning, but this build did actually turn out into a rather classy rig. So my hat off to you.

Also, whoever gets this PC better know how much time and work you put into it and treat it with respect.

Now for the head....these are those goofy revolving/variable color LED's. I couldn't determine with any degree of certainty what their Vf (forward voltage) was, so I kind of winged it. The TV LED tester, which seems to somehow detect it was running them up as high as 5v. The mA draw fluctuates with the color change....so long story short, I calculated the Vf based on 4.5v instead of 5v....which created a lesser current draw via higher OHM resistor....

The Vf is not that important. It's how much current you push through the LEDs that determines how bright they are. Generally, 1 mA through any recently-made LED will usually light it up pretty well. You can determine the Vf experimentally with a 12V power supply and a 1-KOhm resistor. Just wire the LED and resistor in series, then connect to the 12V source and measure the voltage across the LED. White, blue, purple, pink, and UV LEDs tend to have a typical Vf of 3 to 3.6V. IIRC, yellow, orange, and green are around 2.5V, and red is around 1.7V... approximately.

With that said, the approximate Vf is only important to know when wiring multiple LEDs in series, because then the total combined Vf is the sum of the LEDs' Vf. So for example with a 12V source, you can usually wire no more than 3 white, blue, purple, pink, or UV LEDs in series (with a current-limiting series resistor, of course.)

I bilked a 120mm PWM 40mm thick fan from a junk optiplex 330. Once re-pinning it for a standard 4-pin motheroard plug, I tested it....and whoa! It moves some serious air at full speed. You wouldn't want to stick your finger in it at this speed either!!

Yeah, Dell doesn't skimp on the fans in their PCs, especially the older stuff. The older Precision workstations tend to have serious "finger choppers" in them. It's just that Dell never really makes them ramp up too much is why they sound quiet and tame.

Deleting the WIFI antenna brackets from the top, as there's no way I could figure to have an internal wifi adapter that would be able to utilize them....

If those antennas come with the standard plugs that are compatible with laptop WiFi cards and similar, you can re-use them on OEM motherboards that come with mini PCI-E wireless cards installed. That's what I did on my HP Pavilion p7-1534 / p7-1233w / MS-7778 build, except I did it with spare antennas from a PS3 console. It works great, though and I get good WiFi reception anywhere in the house.

I finished the LED engineering today, final testing done on my old electronics class home made breadboard....which I haven't used since electronics class, senior year...I had to venture up into the attic to find it. I graduated in 1993. It still had pieces of a VICA project in it that won a contest for our team.

Nice, lol.
Always good to have a breadboard around. I still use mine that I got for uni labs. Probably more useful than at least half the non-engineering classes I took there.

Cleaning.
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1598996165

Your utility sink is starting to crack.
Otherwise, looks dirty like mine.
But then again, if a utility sink is clean and spotless, then you're probably not doing enough work.

Top fan installed. Kind of tricky how that goes in there....its installed from the inside of the case, not the top like common sense would suggest...so if the motherboard is installed with heatsinks on it (even the original board), there's no way you'd get this past it....you'd either have to remove the sink completely and hope nothing else interfered or remove the motherboard.

Yeah, a lot of OEM systems are designed to be built and dis-assembled quickly and easily (if you follow the right assembly steps, that is) for most components. But certain parts can't be removed in any arbitrary order. I still like the way most Dells and HP desktops are built, though... save for the plastic front panels on some of the Dell "home" desktops (the XPS 8700 case, for example, has more pieces than a car engine.)

...and that will conclude this post (I hit the 30 attachment limit)...

At least you didn't hit the 10k char. limit.
That one regularly gets me on my junky repairs.

I ordered a 40mm fan for the northbridge chip, which gets miserably hot....but after realizing how much air passes through this case, its likely not needed.

Nah, it's better to have it there and not need it... and from my experiments, even with a big fan pointing towards the motherboard, sometimes the chipsets can still run quite hot. So a smaller fan close by the heatsink usually works a lot better with keeping it cool.

Anyways.... awesome build, once again.

Would love to see the benchmarks once is complete - particularly would be very interested to see how these s771 Xeons score in Cinebench against other and more modern CPUs. I guesstimate they might just be on par with a 2nd or 3rd gen i7... or perhaps even a 4th or 5th gen? That should tell you if the GTX970 is overkill for the system or not. (probably isn't.)

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

Final lighting test before installing the PSU, powered from my bench supply.







This is the best GPU I have on hand....EVGA GTX970 4gb.



PSU motherboard cabling ran. I removed the 3.5" caddy and won't return it. It would fit with the wiring, but it would be really crammed. The holder wasn't modified at all, the caddy could be returned at any time. It has 2x 2.5" HDD caddies on the bottom of the case, that'll be plenty.



GPU connectd to power, and I ran a SATA power cable down to the bottom for HDD's and just left it loose for now. I don't have any SSD's free right now.



Wiring cable cover in front of the PSU reinstalled. I also glued a cover plate over the audio output jack blanks on the IO shield...this motherboard didn't have onboard audio, so the holes annoyed me.



Taken up front to the PC bench and fired!!!





Booted from Hiren's.....





That's basically it for now. There's still a few finishing touches to put on. I ordered a 40mm fan for the northbridge chip, which gets miserably hot....but after realizing how much air passes through this case, its likely not needed. I also need to pick up a SSD. No way I'll poison this one with a slow spinner....and then of course install the OS.....but for all intents & purposes, this build is complete.

My personal thoughts with the conclusion of this one are a bit mixed. For my personal taste, this one was definitely "off the beaten path" for my usual stuff...I'm not a big "overkill a case with LED's" kind of guy....but this build was begging for it. I wasted a lot of time on it, a lot more than I should have....but the bright side was it really gave me a much-needed brushup on a few of the most basic electronics principles, things I haven't had to put into practice since I was in school for this. The second was more related to the X7DCA motherboard. This was the 4th build I've done based on this board, all of which are documented in this thread. While this build certainly isn't the sleeper build that the thread title implies like the others are, this was the best uATX case I've come across to fit one of these boards in. It's the only case that allowed the bottom 32-bit PCI slot to be utilized internally AND externally!! Any other case wouldn't permit it to be used either way.

Anyway, to those that wasted their time and bandwidth following this dorky build, I hope it lived up to expectation.

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

I hope nobody is on a slow connection with this post!!

Finalizing all the LED crap. 2 LED's, one for each eye. The eyes and the head are internally isolated from eachother. The eyes will flash with HDD activity.



Now for the head....these are those goofy revolving/variable color LED's. I couldn't determine with any degree of certainty what their Vf (forward voltage) was, so I kind of winged it. The TV LED tester, which seems to somehow detect it was running them up as high as 5v. The mA draw fluctuates with the color change....so long story short, I calculated the Vf based on 4.5v instead of 5v....which created a lesser current draw via higher OHM resistor.... Anyway:



Things just pinned in place for testing purposes.





Now for the top fan with that cage that's ~3" thick... I bilked a 120mm PWM 40mm thick fan from a junk optiplex 330. Once re-pinning it for a standard 4-pin motheroard plug, I tested it....and whoa! It moves some serious air at full speed. You wouldn't want to stick your finger in it at this speed either!!





Deleting the WIFI antenna brackets from the top, as there's no way I could figure to have an internal wifi adapter that would be able to utilize them....and getting the rest disassembled for cleaning.



Final breadboard testing for the revolving color LED's...



Fan & fan cage cleaned...and fan permanently mounted using the rubber Dell standoffs (they fit perfect). This will keep any vibrations down and keep things quiet.





Cleaning.





Everything dried out. Front PWM fan donated from some junk HP system. The max thickness of the front fan is 20mm.





Top fan installed. Kind of tricky how that goes in there....its installed from the inside of the case, not the top like common sense would suggest...so if the motherboard is installed with heatsinks on it (even the original board), there's no way you'd get this past it....you'd either have to remove the sink completely and hope nothing else interfered or remove the motherboard.





Final test bed of the board (this was done yesterday, from the post above). Firmware updated and all hardware tested.



Added the RAM cooler....Unlike FBDIMM's, these are just reg/ECC....they don't run crazy hot....but I had the cooler, what the hell.



Bazinga!


Motherboard reinstalled.


Now for the permanent 'flickering eyes' HDD activity mod.... Drilled out the the PCB where the eyes would be, for 3mm LED's. I also attached the power button wires as well.



Testing:


Test success, and glued into place.


More BAZINGA!!


Now for the permanent install of the revolving color LED's. The clearances are very tight, as right behind this panel is the USB & front panel housing. Thankfully, there seemed to be just the perfect clearance for 2x 5mm LED's right in the base of the diffuser. I originally wanted to do 4 LED's for this, 2 on top and 2 on the bottom. Unfortunately, the top ones were not going to clear without completely FUBAR'ing the diffuser to squash them in there. I didn't want to chance destroying the entire panel, so I just backed it off to two projecting upward from the bottom. It worked great!



Test lighting.







All the lighting wiring tied together for the side panels and the top. I used a 4-pin ATX +12v motherboard connector, since this motherboard doesn't utilize the 4-pin.....it uses the 24 pin and the 8 pin....leaving the 4-pin free, and since it's part of the PSU (not a modular component), great way to keep excess cabling down.



...and that will conclude this post (I hit the 30 attachment limit)...

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

Gee, and you'all call me cheap... joking.

If it works, it works.

LOL.....but yea....

I finished the LED engineering today, final testing done on my old electronics class home made breadboard....which I haven't used since electronics class, senior year...I had to venture up into the attic to find it. I graduated in 1993. It still had pieces of a VICA project in it that won a contest for our team. This whole build was a huge refresher course of Ohm's Law and 'Electronics 101' stuff. I also modded the top panel for the LED's, everything worked and lit up.

Anyway....I got everything washed & dried....and a lot of the reassembly done today....but I forgot to dump the camera before quitting time....

FWIW, in the nearly 30 years I've built systems, this one has to be the most cockamamie and obnoxiously peculiar builds I've ever done!

[ratdude747]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

I actually thought of that too....but I don't have any to test with (without robbing another build). The case has 2x 120mm fans, one in back and one on top. The rear one will draw air in, and the top one will exhaust. I'll see what temps are like under loads....if I can get out of needlessly spending another $50 on this build, I'm happy....if I could even find a pair of 2U copper Dynatrons for that...they're pricey and getting harder to find for LGA771. The saving grace is that this little cram-packed toaster box does move a lot of air. Apparently, some of the Aurora R7's originally had a water cooling setup (radiator was mounted in the cage for the top 120mm fan)....I'm not sure if this one did, all the cooling was stripped out and I didn't think to ask. The top fan cage is there, but the fan is missing...and google shows this cage with and without the radiator, either model used the same cage, its ~3" thick.

Gee, and you'all call me cheap... joking.

If it works, it works.

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

Post from the test bedded board booted off Hiren's. Firmware updated and hardware verified good.

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

I'd think 2U side blowers would be a better fit since you seems to have a "blow-though" case with good ventilation on the front, but not from the "top" of the cooler.

I actually thought of that too....but I don't have any to test with (without robbing another build). The case has 2x 120mm fans, one in back and one on top. The rear one will draw air in, and the top one will exhaust. I'll see what temps are like under loads....if I can get out of needlessly spending another $50 on this build, I'm happy....if I could even find a pair of 2U copper Dynatrons for that...they're pricey and getting harder to find for LGA771. The saving grace is that this little cram-packed toaster box does move a lot of air. Apparently, some of the Aurora R7's originally had a water cooling setup (radiator was mounted in the cage for the top 120mm fan)....I'm not sure if this one did, all the cooling was stripped out and I didn't think to ask. The top fan cage is there, but the fan is missing...and google shows this cage with and without the radiator, either model used the same cage, its ~3" thick.

[ratdude747]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

I'd think 2U side blowers would be a better fit since you seems to have a "blow-though" case with good ventilation on the front, but not from the "top" of the cooler. The only reason I used top blowers in my X7DCA (the eMachine) is because the "front" of the cooler was butted into the bottom of a hard drive drive... hard drives don't make good fan grilles.

[momaka]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

Right now they're E5450's (low power 3GHz 1333fsb quads)...it's all I have on hand.

That's not bad at all.
8 cores @ 3 GHz, despite being older CPUs, should still provide a ton of number-crunching power. For gaming, I imagine it should handle most games up to 2017-2018 alright.

That was just to test fit, as I mentioned. The 'real' GPU will be a GTX970.

Oh yeah, I understood. I was just pointing that the test fit card could have been the "real" deal too, depending on what you plan to do with the rig.

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

Gee, I can't even make a joke out of that anymore. You beat me to the punch line every time.

Curious what CPU's you're putting in it. (Quad's I presume? )

Right now they're E5450's (low power 3GHz 1333fsb quads)...it's all I have on hand.

Depending on the games and/or workload this rig will be need for, the GTX 460 might or might not be enough.

That was just to test fit, as I mentioned. The 'real' GPU will be a GTX970.

[momaka]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

Just for Momaka; properly deburred and edges cleaned!!
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1598471601

Gee, I can't even make a joke out of that anymore. You beat me to the punch line every time.

It's looking awesome so far.

Curious what CPU's you're putting in it. (Quad's I presume? )

Depending on the games and/or workload this rig will be need for, the GTX 460 might or might not be enough.

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

Based on my experiences, some Dynatron 2U coolers will work fine. Or did you already try such?

I hadn't tried yet....but I just did (I found the 2U's I had). One of them had a broken fan blade...so I had to snatch a same size fan (70mm X 16mm) from some old P4 cooler.....but a 20mm thick fan would have cleared.

It's kind of hard to see in these pics, but it cleared by a good 10mm.





Top view:


Mounted the other one up:








Test fitting a GPU. This isn't the GPU that's going in this, it's just the closest one handy.... I also test fitted a full length GPU (GTX 285), it also clears...close, but clears.



Butt view:


PSU cable management might be interesting around those CPU heatsinks....but the worst portion of fabrication is over with this one.

[ratdude747]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

Next is CPU heatsink/fan fitment......I have a set of beefy copper monstrosities here somewhere, height clearances with the PSU cage will be the kryptonite. If they don't fit, I'll have to see if I can find some 1U Dynatron sinks for it that I'm positive will clear.....but until then....

Based on my experiences, some Dynatron 2U coolers will work fine. Or did you already try such?