Hi All, after fishing around the web for questions regarding beefing up my XPS 8300 I came up pretty empty--lots of questions out there with few definitive answers regarding the mobo and case. Will the case fit a non-OEM PSU? Which GTX 10 series will fit? What processors does it support? Will it fit a non-OEM cooler, and if so, which one? I have successfully answered these questions with a few pics below. First, the new specs
same case (XPS 8300 midtower)
same mobo (0Y2MRG; mini-atx)
same mechanical drive (for storage)
Kingston 1 TB SSD (new main drive for OS and programs--cloned my existing system, Win 7)
i7 2600 (most powerful processor supported by this mobo--used chip from Ebay, Costa Rica manufacture; mobo does not support K series)
DDR3 16 gig (4x4)
EVGA GTX 1060 SC (6 gig; single fan design)
Corsair CX 650M (Bronze 80; semi-modular--needed an extra power cable for the GTX)
CoolerMaster Masterair Pro 3 (fits with about 2mm to spare ;-)
Arctic F14 PWM 140mm fan
Arctic F9 PWM 92mm fan
PWM fan splitter cable
From hindsight I would have gone with a 550 PSU, and checked temps before purchasing the extra fans and splitter to save some $. The only real "mod" was cutting an opening for the 140mm fan in the front of the steel chassis (behind the plastic face-plate)--used a dremel. Not sure if the extra case-fan was really necessary, but the whole system runs cool-as-a-cucumber at full throttle after several hours (gpu and/or cpu). I can let it render overnight (Arnold) without worrying about cpu thermal throttle. The beefier cpu cooler was necessary, as the i7 (which replaced an i5 2300) otherwise ran REALLY hot when rendering with the Intel cooler.
The mobo has standard holes for mounting aftermarket coolers, but has a proprietary back-plate that must be removed, as it blocks the holes with threaded mounts for the Intel cpu fan (the following two front and back pics are for the XPS 8500, but is the same situation for the 8300 mobo):
As can be seen, the cpu bracket must also be removed in order to remove the back-plate. Once the three screws are removed from the cpu mount the back-plate is easily removed (no adhesive on the mobo). The black outline is a non-conductive membrane that is easily peeled away from the back-plate. I reused the membrane for the cpu bracket and the new CoolerMaster back-plate (see pics below), but tossed the OEM back-plate. Happily I happened to have a few small nuts on hand to reattach the cpu bracket. The hardware for the new cooler was sufficient for the rest of the install (all remaining pics are of my system):
It looks like the CoolMaster is sitting on top of the GTX, but there is plenty of room between them. The fan splitter is plugged into the cpu PMW header (the only one on the board), which are controlled via MSI Afterburner (so also gpu).
After rendering with the gpu for a few hours, and then the cpu, temps averaged about 67c for the gpu, and 65c for the cpu (closed case). The fan profile fluctuated between 50-60% speed. After adding the additional 92mm fan to the cooler (not pictured) temps dropped about 10c, even after a five hour stress test with all eight threads maxed at 100%, and the fans stayed at 50%. Cool and quiet! I know, the extra fan was not necessary, but hey, I had it on hand--might as well put it to good use ;-).
Hopefully this helps someone who wants to upgrade their Dell 8300. It looks like the same principles apply to the XPS 8500 too. From now on I will certainly be building my own desktops, but this system will now handle a lot for quite a while.
