Post your system.......

[mnciks11]

Re: Post your system.......

Dell Latitude E6430

16Gb ram of which it a maximum ram
500Gb hdd
Nvdia Graphics
i7 cpu
old but i love it guys
with keyboard backlight and finger print scanner

[Dan81]

Re: Post your system.......

Hope you're NOT using the stock Intel push-pin design either. I despise how much those things warp motherboards. Not sure why Intel loves to warp the crap out of everything with their stock heatsinks. Not that AMD doesn't too. Some of the s939, AM2, AM3, FM2, and AM4 heatsinks are almost as aggressive.

That's about the only thing I have that works without additional work. I do have an AVC cooler from a HP dx2200 but no mounting plate to attach it to - screws are much thicker than the ones on most of the mounting plates I have (2).

My 775 stock coolers are usually the big copper insert ones. The thinner crap usually either gets sent on a low power dual core Celeron or 115X boards. (I can pull a few of the plastic tabs to fit the 115x mounting holes)

[momaka]

Re: Post your system.......

Eh, as tacky as the case may seem, it's pretty sturdy. IIRC it's made from thick galvanized steel.

I think they vary in quality, depending on price really. We have a case similar to that one (if not the same) in our company's storage room, and it appears... eh... OK... -ish. Has a thick layer of dust on it. Not sure how long it has been sitting there, but close to a decade probably isn't too far off. Told our inventory guy to let me know if/when they decide to scrap it. I've managed to save some cool stuff from our dumpster, though not much computer-related hardware.

As for the cooler, I'm.currently using the stock Intel cooler ( the big one, not the smaller cooler made for 45nm CPUs)

The "big one" (with the Copper insert) along with the "full-height" OEM ones is all I use on my Core 2 Duo CPUs and some of the newer C2Qs. The thin stock Intel heatsinks really are a joke. Probably couldn't do more than 50W TDP, if even that much.

Hope you're NOT using the stock Intel push-pin design either. I despise how much those things warp motherboards. Not sure why Intel loves to warp the crap out of everything with their stock heatsinks. Not that AMD doesn't too. Some of the s939, AM2, AM3, FM2, and AM4 heatsinks are almost as aggressive.

[Dan81]

Re: Post your system.......

Eh, as tacky as the case may seem, it's pretty sturdy. IIRC it's made from thick galvanized steel.

As for the cooler, I'm.currently using the stock Intel cooler ( the big one, not the smaller cooler made for 45nm CPUs) but will plan on replacing it ASAP aling with the GTX750 (which will be replaced with a R9 270x if I can still find it)

[momaka]

Re: Post your system.......

^ I'm guessing that's where the Q9400 will be going?
Would be interesting to see what kind of OC you'll get on stock voltage. I imagine most likely should be able to do +20%, provided you have a good cooler.

Case: Delux MG760 (silver)

Oh man, I remember those tacky "BMW" cases. Was the ricer deluxe of the time. But I think they are kind of cool now, just because they are somewhat rare. Also, I'll take anything over the boring black boxes we get nowadays.

BTW, I also have another system in the brewing... but it's still a work in progress. Not as "unique" as the ones I previously posted, but a lot more powerful CPU-wise.

[Dan81]

Re: Post your system.......

Finally settled on a build I'm going to do:

MB: Gigabyte EP45T-DS3R
PSU: FSP Bluestorm II 500W
GPU: Geforce GTX750Ti 2GB GDDR5
HDD: 2x2TB, 1x500GB, 1x320GB
RAM: 1x4GB, 3x2GB - 10GB total
ODD: Samsung SH-224DB SATA (silver)
OS: Windows 10 Enterprise 1809 & Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64
Case: Delux MG760 (silver)

[Dan81]

Re: HP Pavilion p7-1534... a.k.a. the APU "experiment": performance

A10 APU cheap? Where???
All I am seeing online is minimum of $30 for those, if not more. For $30 more, I'd get a modern low-end quad core Ryzen chip that stoops the heck out of any of these APUs.


Well, yes, if you look at it that way, even with 1 core disabled, my A4-5300 will still probably perform many times better than the Pentium 4 Prescott in my current main rig.
But I guess what I find disappointing with these APUs is that they have a high frequency and modern instruction set, making one think they perform much better than any old generation chip. Yet, they don't. The fact that a C2D that is 5 years older than this APU and still beats it is the disappointing part.

Sadly, this is even true in the laptop section. A Dell Vostro 1015 (T6670, 4GB RAM DDR2, 500GB) beats the living hell out of a Acer Aspire 5250 (AMD E-450 APU, 2GB DDR3, 250GB) CPU wise. I wish I could find a good battery for the Vostro 1015 that isn't expensive (locally, that is) as the laptop is really good than the Aspire 5250.

[BigTroll]

Re: HP Pavilion p7-1534... a.k.a. the APU "experiment": performance

A10 APU cheap? Where???
All I am seeing online is minimum of $30 for those, if not more. For $30 more, I'd get a modern low-end quad core Ryzen chip that stoops the heck out of any of these APUs.


Well, yes, if you look at it that way, even with 1 core disabled, my A4-5300 will still probably perform many times better than the Pentium 4 Prescott in my current main rig.
But I guess what I find disappointing with these APUs is that they have a high frequency and modern instruction set, making one think they perform much better than any old generation chip. Yet, they don't. The fact that a C2D that is 5 years older than this APU and still beats it is the disappointing part.

I looked and i paid $35 for it back in october 2018, but since I got the computer for free that was worth it to me. speaking of that I have a ryzen 2200g I need to sell, but they are alot of chip for the money. I haven't benched the A10 but I would think on cpu z the single and multithread would beat a core 2 quad I will have to check it.

[momaka]

Re: HP Pavilion p7-1534... a.k.a. the APU "experiment": performance

... and I bought a cheap A10 5700...

A10 APU cheap? Where???
All I am seeing online is minimum of $30 for those, if not more. For $30 more, I'd get a modern low-end quad core Ryzen chip that stoops the heck out of any of these APUs.

Speaking of APUs, I do have a ASRock A55M-HVS board here that has a A4-3300. Imagine how good it is considering it's the same performance of a Celeron E3400. At least it makes for a good small Linux machine

Well, yes, if you look at it that way, even with 1 core disabled, my A4-5300 will still probably perform many times better than the Pentium 4 Prescott in my current main rig.
But I guess what I find disappointing with these APUs is that they have a high frequency and modern instruction set, making one think they perform much better than any old generation chip. Yet, they don't. The fact that a C2D that is 5 years older than this APU and still beats it is the disappointing part.

[Dan81]

Re: HP Pavilion p7-1534... a.k.a. the APU "experiment": performance

In terms of performance, the A4-5300 APU is pretty weak, despite having some more modern instruction sets. A Core 2 Duo @ 3 GHz easily beats this 3.6 GHz APU (actually, only 3.4 GHz in the HP mobo, as turbo-boost doesn't work.) I suspect the bigger L2 cache on the C2D is the reason why. Meanwhile, the Radeon HD7480d IGP is not too bad, especially when paired with faster RAM. But with only 4 ROPs and 8 TMUs, it's still rather weak for 2013 standards. It will run games from ~2012 and earlier “OK” at lower resolutions (720p or lower). But for anything more, it is not enough. I was brave enough to even try Fortnite on this PC (in case I wanted to give my nephews something to mess on) and… NOooo Even such a “low-spec” modern game is too much for that APU. In fact, even with a somewhat more decent video card, the CPU portion of the APU was still badly chocking.

That said, overall this is just another PC I put together to mess with. Mostly been using it now in the summer when it's hot, as it doesn't generate much heat and will play many older games that I like. For what it's worth, I even considered this cool-running PC as my next “main rig”. However, the lack of PS/2 connectors are the show stopper here, as I'm not willing to let go of my 20-year-old PS/2 Logitech mouse and keyboard just yet – not from main PC duty, anyways, where I do the majority of work and typing (including long posts like these for badcaps.net.) Yes, there are USB to PS/2 converters, and I even have a few cheap ones. The problem with the cheap ones is that the keyboard still drops out every once in a while and mouse doesn't always get detected on boot.

Other than that, I actually like this PC so far.

Speaking of APUs, I do have a ASRock A55M-HVS board here that has a A4-3300. Imagine how good it is considering it's the same performance of a Celeron E3400. At least it makes for a good small Linux machine, although one of the RAM slots isn't working at all (2-3 broken pins in the slot) but that doesn't affect it too much.

[BigTroll]

Re: Post your system.......

mmm sounds similar to a ThinkCentre M78 I saved from scrap, it started life as a dual core a6 5400B and I bought a cheap A10 5700, put in 8gb ram and 1tb spinner, seems to run light gaming pretty good but the A10 has the best of the IGP's of that generation AMD. they still run windows 10 and 7 great and are more then enough for any internet or office task.

[momaka]

HP Pavilion p7-1534... a.k.a. the APU "experiment": performance

In terms of performance, the A4-5300 APU is pretty weak, despite having some more modern instruction sets. A Core 2 Duo @ 3 GHz easily beats this 3.6 GHz APU (actually, only 3.4 GHz in the HP mobo, as turbo-boost doesn’t work.) I suspect the bigger L2 cache on the C2D is the reason why. Meanwhile, the Radeon HD7480d IGP is not too bad, especially when paired with faster RAM. But with only 4 ROPs and 8 TMUs, it’s still rather weak for 2013 standards. It will run games from ~2012 and earlier “OK” at lower resolutions (720p or lower). But for anything more, it is not enough. I was brave enough to even try Fortnite on this PC (in case I wanted to give my nephews something to mess on) and… NOooo Even such a “low-spec” modern game is too much for that APU. In fact, even with a somewhat more decent video card, the CPU portion of the APU was still badly chocking.

That said, overall this is just another PC I put together to mess with. Mostly been using it now in the summer when it’s hot, as it doesn’t generate much heat and will play many older games that I like. For what it’s worth, I even considered this cool-running PC as my next “main rig”. However, the lack of PS/2 connectors are the show stopper here, as I’m not willing to let go of my 20-year-old PS/2 Logitech mouse and keyboard just yet – not from main PC duty, anyways, where I do the majority of work and typing (including long posts like these for badcaps.net.) Yes, there are USB to PS/2 converters, and I even have a few cheap ones. The problem with the cheap ones is that the keyboard still drops out every once in a while and mouse doesn't always get detected on boot.

Other than that, I actually like this PC so far.

[momaka]

HP Pavilion p7-1534... a.k.a. the APU "experiment"

Here is a PC I put together somewhat quickly not too long ago: HP Pavilion p7-1534 motherboard stuffed in a p7-1233w case with the cheapest APU. I call it the “APU experiment”, though calling it the “scrap HP APU build” wouldn't be entirely wrong (hey, it even features a “Scrapper Lite” IGP – how appropriate! )

Specs….
CPU (or APU, if you will ): AMD A4-5300 with onboard Radeon HD 7480d
Motherboard: HP JasmineR [MSI MS-7778 v1.0] from HP Pavilion p7-1534
RAM: 8 GB (1x 8GB) Samsung PC3-12800 DDR3, 1.50V
Video Card: see APU above ^ … with 512 MB of shared memory @ 800 MHz
CPU cooler: OEM Intel socket 775 heatsink with 80 mm 3-pin fan (Sunnon 1.44W)
HDD: 80 GB Western Digital WD800JD, SATA (for now.)
PSU: 250W Bestec ATX-250-12Z (“mostly” recapped )
Optical: DVD-RW (forgot which brand and model), SATA – came with the case
Case: HP Pavilion p7-1233W
OS: Windows 7 starter x64 (for now.)

Some pictures…
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1566519612
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1566519612
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1566519612
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1566519612

CPU-Z:


The motherboard, as shown in CPU-Z (i.e. chipsets and whatnot)


And GPU-Z specs of the Radeon HD7480d “Scrapper Lite” IGP:


A “little” history...
... of how/why this PC came together.
(You better know when I say “little”, prepare to read a book )

So, awhile back, I got many scrap PCs from a local PC repair shop. The case for the PC above was one of the many from that lot. It was empty with nothing inside it.

Around the same time, I also won an auction with scrap RAM (mostly DDR2) from an eBay seller. The RAM all turned out to be working and came out at less than $1 per GB, IIRC. Happy with the good deal I got, I found the same seller had several auctions for scrap CPUs. In one of them, there was an AMD A8-6600k and some high-end -looking Intel LGA11xx CPU (turns out it was not, but that's another story ). Thinking I might get a good deal again, I bid and won that CPU auction.

The A8-6600k APU from the auction looked OK – just had a ton of bent pins, like the rest of the CPUs (mostly Pentium 4's that were all working.) I straightened the pins out and started looking for an FM2 motherboard (on eBay again, because… where else? ) Found the HP Jasmine / MS-7778 motherboard above for a very decent price for an FM2 mobo (under $20 with shipping, IIRC.)

As always, I research things before I buy. The MS-7778 v1.0 motherboard is supposed to be a “JasmineR” model. There is also a blue-colored PCB of this motherboard, the MS-7778 v0.8, or simply “Jasmine”. What's the difference? (I will withhold making Aladdin jokes here ) JasmineR supports 5k, 6k, and 7k series of APUs (like the A8-6600k I have), whereas the regular Jasmine does not and only supports 5k series APUs.

Thus, everything looked like it was going to work out well – in fact, very well, as that HP motherboard was a perfect fit for the case. The A8 APU would also match the “AMD A8 Vision” logo on the case. It's like, it was all meant to be … until it wasn't . Testing the motherboard with the APU got me nowhere: no freezing screen, no POST, no POST codes, not even any beeping (except when RAM was removed – got “no RAM” beeps then.) For a while, I thought the motherboard was bad, because the package it came in was severely smashed and had tire marks on it (not sure if USPS or who, but someone… or rather some vehicle, did step on that package on one side.) Moreover, it seemed unlikely that a socketed CPU/APU would be bad.

After a few months, I decided to throw more money into this project (or curiosity pit, really. ) I thought about buying another motherboard first, because I found some conflicting information online regarding certain JasmineR motherboards not being compatible with 6k and 7k APUs. But after more thinking (… I want to say my head exploded ), a cheaper and easier route seemed to be getting another APU, as ATX/m-ATX FM2 motherboards were not that easy to find (still aren't) and fairly expensive for what they are. This time, however, I was set on getting a known compatible APU. Not wanting to spend too much either, I went for the cheapest APU: the A4-5300. Got one on sale for $10 shipped (guess from where again? )

With the A4-5300, that MS-7778 motherboard booted right up with a proud HP logo! Digging in the BIOS revealed it came out of a Pavilion p7-1534 PC. On that note, this is where things get confusing, because according to the HP website, the p7-1534 comes with a blue-colored Jasmine [MS-7778 v0.8] PCB. So how is it that my green-colored MS-7778 v1.0 PCB is a regular Jasmine and not a JasmineR??? Did HP run short on v0.8 motherboards and then started flashing v1.0 PCBs?

Whatever the case, that A4 APU did the trick and worked just fine (more on that later in the post.) As for the A8-6600k APU… surprisingly, that thing is dead! How do I know? Well, with a bit of luck and patience, I found and bought another FM2 motherboard for cheap – a Gigabyte GA-F2A68HM-H. This one IS known to be compatible with the 6k and 7k series of APUs. When I tested the A8-6600k in it, the motherboard wouldn't even power up. Almost made me think I had gotten a dud motherboard (again.) To confirm, I stuck the A4-5300 in the Gigabyte mobo. Sure enough, the new Gigabyte mobo also work and booted fine. So I went back to the 6600k to double-check and… NOPE! No boot, again. Repeated the same procedure on the MS-7778, and every time, the A8-6600k didn't work. So the A8 APU really IS dead! Go figure. Perhaps that Radeon IGP is the culprit? This is the first time I bump into a dead socketed CPU, BTW. It's a shame, because the IGP in the A8 and A10 APUs are actually not terrible for entry-level gaming and graphics.

So, that's how the parts above came about for this PC. There's not much else to it. Of course, as with all my builds, I did do a bit of ghetto-mod work here and there (well, when did I ever -not- do that? ) The built-in wireless module, for example, didn't come with antennas. So what I did: took some WiFi antennas out of my “PS3 junk box” and stuck those on there. You can see one of them is mounted on the back of the PC to one of the PSU screws. The other one is just hanging inside the case on the ATX wires. There's no cover for this case, so that's why I left the antenna there. Can't get more ghetto than that! But the antennas work well and I get good WiFi.

Another item I couldn't help to not mod: the cooling:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...5&d=1566518698
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...4&d=1566518698
And link to thread of those pictures can be found here.

For those who don't want to click the link and read there… in short, I adapted a socket 775 heatsink (that had busted mounting screw posts) to fit on this motherboard, which seems to be using a mounting pattern similar (if not the same) to LGA115x.

Besides the socket 775 heatsink “hacks”, I also did some “work” on the fan wiring. Namely, I removed the original 80 mm 4-pin PWM fan from the CPU cooler, because the BIOS throttles it down way too much – I could see the blades barely turning over. This made even such low-power APU as the A4-5300 run hot, along with the surrounding motherboard components in the CPU VRM.

Obviously, that wasn't cutting it for my cooling “standards”. So what did I do? – I placed an 80 mm 3-pin fan on the heatsink and connected it to the motherboard's -rear- fan connector, which has speed regulation (and uses a 3-pin connector), but turns the fan faster. Meanwhile, to keep the motherboard happy in terms of seeing an RPM reading for the CPU fan, I connected the case's rear fan to the CPU fan header. Of course, since the CPU fan header is a 4-pin (meaning, it supplies full 12V on the fan Vcc pin all the time), this would have made the rear case fan run at 100%, which would be very loud. To eliminate that issue, I pulled the rear fan's Vcc wire and connected it directly to 5V. It runs a lot slower, but still pushes plenty of air. Not that it matters when there is no case cover (yet! – I'm working on one… and it likely will be ghetto too.)
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1566519612

Last but not least, I added a 40 mm fan to the chipset heatsink. The chipset doesn't really run that hot. But in a very warm room, such as mine, it can get uncomfortable to touch. So the 40 mm fan takes care of that. Moreover, it doesn't add any noise, because I have it running at 5V. It barely moves any air at that voltage, but it's more than enough to keep the chipset cool.

So the result with all that cooler modding: cool-running APU that tops at 52°C @ max load with a room temperature of ~28°C (~83°F). Good enough for me now.

[dmill89]

Re: Post your system.......

Third. Who at Dell decided that a system that houses an 47 W TDP CPU and, atleast, 50W TDP GPU should be cooled by a tiny radiator with a fan that has no direct air flow over it. Without any modifications the i7 4800MQ throttles like there's no tomorrow, its nuts!

Particularly annoying when the Precision line with similar CPUs/GPUs had plenty of cooling, here's my M4800:




I guess Dell figured that most Latitides would have dual-core CPUs and IGP so "why bother designing a cooling solution for the relatively small percentage with quad-core CPUs and discrete graphics".

[Elitebook]

Re: Post your system.......

While I've owned many systems one has definitively earned its place as my least favorite. Its one and only Dell Latitude E6540.

I bought it second hand back in 2017, it was in a mint condition. Everything works, all the documentation is present and doing some tests revealed that everything's running just fine. It was a system with an i7 4800MQ, Radeon HD 8790M, 8GB ram and 256 GB SSD. As a cherry on top it has a fairly good FHD TN panel with good contrast.
I bought it for college for the intentions of using it for what its made for: doing productive things like programming and running simulation software instead of, you know, gaming . However things didn't turn out that way.

Lets start off with things that have gone wrong with it, shall we?
It powered on from sleep and kept working for an approximately two hours inside of carrying bag. The wrath of the overheating E6540 killed the keyboard... Should I have turned it off instead of let it go to sleep, yes. But from all of the laptops that I've had my hands on, not a single one powered on from sleep without deliberately doing so (ie moving a mouse to power it on).
Second, it has killed a replacement battery. I still wonder how.
Third. Who at Dell decided that a system that houses an 47 W TDP CPU and, atleast, 50W TDP GPU should be cooled by a tiny radiator with a fan that has no direct air flow over it. Without any modifications the i7 4800MQ throttles like there's no tomorrow, its nuts!
Fourth. 3 of 4 USB port don't like to power anything more power thirsty than a mouse dongle. There's a revision 2.0 motherboard floating around EBay which should fix that issue..

Honestly my biggest mistake is that over the past two years I poured money to fix the thing since I can't admit that I purchased a lemon of a laptop.

After all of those shenanigans that I've dealt with its now a dependable laptop that just works. So there's a happy ending for it.

[Dan81]

Re: Post your system.......

... Oh yeah, I remember that box. It was quite popular in gaming PC mags back in the mid-2000's. How is the quality of that case? Good? Bad? Somewhere in between? The front cover on the bottom looks like / imitates some of the older Antec and HP NetServer cases. Which color version of that case did you get. The yellow one is certainly tacky, IMO. I'd still take it over any boring black box these days.

Since I can't edit my older post, here:

Mine is the black version. I don't really like the yellow one (looks like a banana lol) and this one came from a prebuilt that had an socket 939 Gigabyte board with nForce 3 chipset. I removed most of the old stuff (Radeon 9250, Maxtor 80GB IDE HDD, Delux PSU, a LG DVDRW and about 1GB of RAM, all running XP SP3.

By the front cover style, I'd actually say Thermaltake. Antec's designs were much simpler than Thermaltake's.

Nice motherboard!
If only you had a C2Q CPU in that - I bet you could OC it quite a bit. (Not that you can't do that with the current E6750 )

With a better GPU, you could even play some of the AAA titles from 2015-2016 at medium to high settings. I just tried Dirt Rally on my C2Q rig above, and I was getting 40-60 FPS stable @ 1280x960 and high settings. Even GTA V ran decently well on standard settings.

I managed to score a very cheap Kentsfield based Q6600, G0 stepping, model SLACR. Ironically, it came from a Fujitsu-Siemens motherboard, and a crappy ECS at that - G31T-M2. Ot came in a big pack I got locally, which also included a VIA694X based microATX Pentium 3 board, the EPOX EP-3VCM. I used it to considerably "upgrade " a IBM Netvista 6578, and it looks really nice now, running Windows ME with tweaks and fixes. Gotta install nVidia GPu drivers tho as the install was done with a Radeon 7500 that would occasionally artefact here and there while on desktop. Replaced it with a MSI FX5200 (could've went overkill and either use a FX5600 or my Hercules Radeon 9700 Pro (yes, I got one of these!) but have to reinstall the GPU drivers.


Anyways, I have another build in my plan. I want it to be a near 1:1 copy of my main i3 machine, but with a few twists. One thing I'm going to tell you - its PSu is going to be one of the best I've worked on - FSP BlueStorm II 500W model FSP500-60GLN. Unlike some units here, mine came with a 420uF 400V (or was it 450?) Capxon primary and it hasn't ever bulged. Couldn't say the same about the secondary and 5vSB, on which I had to replace caps, not to mention some of the spots were near impossible to reach. I used Sanyo WF for the 2200uF 6.3v Crapxons, Panasonic FL 1000uF 16v for the 12v rails (half of what caps were in there were 1000uF 16v) as well as two LTECs extracted from a dud 400W Delta that was a Fujitsu Siemens OEM and had a different ATX coloring, namely a 2200uF 6.3v for the 5vSB, and a big and bulky 3300uF 16v LTEC for the main 12v rail (12v1) which I managed to cram.

I also replaced a dead 2.2uF Capxon with a Yang Chun and a 100uF 25v Capxon with a 100uF 25v Nichicon HD in the 5vSB section, just to be safe.

[Dan81]

Re: Post your system.......

Yeah, I did install a Q6600 G0 in it now.

[momaka]

Re: Post your system.......

Just built a nice 775 machine:

COLORSit G8015C-E72 case

... Oh yeah, I remember that box. It was quite popular in gaming PC mags back in the mid-2000's. How is the quality of that case? Good? Bad? Somewhere in between? The front cover on the bottom looks like / imitates some of the older Antec and HP NetServer cases. Which color version of that case did you get. The yellow one is certainly tacky, IMO. I'd still take it over any boring black box these days.

ASUS P5QD Turbo mobo

Nice motherboard!
If only you had a C2Q CPU in that - I bet you could OC it quite a bit. (Not that you can't do that with the current E6750 )

With a better GPU, you could even play some of the AAA titles from 2015-2016 at medium to high settings. I just tried Dirt Rally on my C2Q rig above, and I was getting 40-60 FPS stable @ 1280x960 and high settings. Even GTA V ran decently well on standard settings.

I recently upgraded my main laptop to a Dell Precision M4800...

Now that is a very solid laptop. The Dell Precision and Latitude line of laptops are still my favorite... and probably the only laptops I'd ever care to own.

My current job gave some of us techs rugged Dell laptops of some sort (don't remember model or line.) But they ran out by the time they got to me. And they were bulky and heavy, so I couldn't care less for not getting one. This worked out well, because I saw an older used Dell Latitude E6xxx that belonged to a former tech in the company. It was pretty beat up and quite grimy. Dying HDD too (tarnished contacts on the PCB). But it looked promising, so I asked if I could use it. When I got the green light, I fixed the HDD, then cloned it to a cheap Inland 120 GB SDD, and been using it for the last 3 months without an issue. It has a i7 quad core and 8 GB of RAM. Also runs Windows 7 instead of 10, which is the main reason I picked it. With that and the SSD I put in it, it really goes fast. Symantec/Norton AV still manage do slow it down quite a bit. But overall, it boots very fast. Has nice titanium body shell too. And I found a 9-cell Li-ion battery for it from another Dell laptop as the original 6-cell in this laptop had only about 40 minutes of runtime, if even that. The 9-cell will do 2-3 hours, which is plenty for me throughout the day while on the road. They have a few more of these at work. Might ask them eventually if they'd even let me buy one off for personal use. Dell Latitude and Precision are awesome!

[Dan81]

Re: Post your system.......

Just built a nice 775 machine:

COLORSit G8015C-E72 case
Thermaltake TR2-420NP 420W PSU (recapped)
ASUS P5QD Turbo mobo
Leadtek Geforce 8400GS 1GB
5x HDDs (320GB main drive, 2x160GB RAID1, 500GB data and 300GB IDE data as well)
4GB DDR2-800 RAM
HL-DT-ST GSA-4167B DVDRW
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 2.66GHz LGA775
Windows 8.1 Pro x64
SoundBlaster Audigy 2 SE SB0570
ASUS 802.11bgn WLAN PCI card

[dmill89]

Re: Post your system.......

I recently upgraded my main laptop to a Dell Precision M4800 after my M4600 unfortunately suffered a broken hinge (my fault a ~4ft. drop on a concrete floor and landed right on the corner ), the hinges can be replaced and I ordered a set so I'll probably fix it at some point (it is a real pain and basically requires complete disassembly) but was already considering an upgrade and this gave me an excuse.

So for a little over $350 I got this:

Specs:
CPU: Intel Core-I7 4910MQ
GPU: Nvidia Quadro K2100M
RAM: 16GB DDR3
SSD: 256GB Samsung 840 Pro
ODD: Matsushita UJ272 Blu-Ray burner
Screen: 15.6" LED backlit IPS 1920X1080
OS: Windows 10 Pro (unfortunately, but with 7 coming to EOL there aren't many options, Dell originally sold these with Win 7 as an option so I could down-grade and not have any trouble getting drivers, but since I use this machine on the internet a lot it probably makes sense to have a supported OS, and I've got plenty of other PCs with 7 on them)