And Dell managed to get on my nerves today...

[Silound]

Originally Posted by Rabidsquirrel

Replace the caps yourself, it's actually quite easy if you have any soldering experience.

I have the experience, but getting the caps is a PITA writ large. I tried to find them, only place I found was some bulk distributor whose website was in an Asian font and only sold the stuff in bulk lots as best I could tell.

Originally Posted by Footbag

Could you re-use the Dell case? I don't know what the Xeon bolt pattern it. You should also check the wattage on the power supply. You may be able to re-use that.
I just built an i7 PC and had a lot of fun doing it. That said, it's usually the same price or cheaper to buy it bundled. Although not having to buy Windows will help and you'll have to take that into consideration.

I thought of that, but unfortunately I can't reuse the PSU, and this is a workstation case with a larger supply mounted under the case. Another PITA.




I ended up finding an Optiplex on eBay with an OBO option. I made an offer for just a barebones system, waiting to hear back. Other than that, I may look into other options.


I was running Linux to run an Apache fileserver and MySQL server to host a small time website and forums as well as some programming development and deployment tools I needed for a project.