My Monstrosity, My Precious, Dell XPS m1330.

[Vakula]

Hi Guys and Gals.

 

For your pain, pleasure and entertainment i'm posting my build that i took to LTX 2019 BYOC with me.

And it's also my ONLY PC at home, every "evening driver", not counting smartphone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OMG What is This?

 

This is originally Dell XPS m1330 from 2008.

It have seen some stuff. It's been places. Different parts were inside it.

 

Right now it has Intel® Core™2 Extreme X9000 (6M Cache, 2.80 GHz) 

Overclocked to 3.4-3.6 GHz depending on the weather.

Zalman CNPS2X + usb fan strapped to the side.

 

8Gb of DDR2 ram.

Samsung SSD 500Gb.

 

GeForce 8400gs inside it

Radeon 7850 outside.

with exp gdc adapter.

 

5ghz AC wi-fi.

 

Short story:

Laptop that i bought in my university years. Some upgrades along the line... 

Moved to another country and had nothing else to take with me. More upgrades....

It runs Overwatch.

 

 

Long story:

Spoiler

It's a Dell XPS m1330 with Core 2 duo 2.1Ghz originally.

I got it when i was in university, it came with infamous Vista. Right away I had to install and set up a bunch of stuff for studying. So after a week it was to late to switch to other OS and i got stuck with vista till graduation Tuned it as much as I could and it actually worked pretty well. 

I carried it to lectures every day for 3 years - it survived.

 

Used it a bit at my first job(web development). Then it was my secondary PC for travels. Played GTA San Andreas etc...

 

This laptops had internal gpu defect so motherboard was replaced by warranty. I did "copper mod" to help it last.

Along the way i installed ssd, upped RAM, replaced wifi with 5ghz and mimo,

upgraded cpu to Core 2 duo T9300 2.5Ghz...

 

When windows 8 came out they had a way to update to it for cheap. So i Updated (not reinstalled) to win 8. And it was fine.  Later updated to win 10 and it also was fine... but later i had to make fresh win 10 install.

 

I used it at my 2nd job at start. Also we had something like English club and we used it to play "Keep talking and nobody explodes" to practice - it worked great for that.

 

Than i moved to US. 

I was not able to take my main desktop so i took the laptop.

Oh, how much "paperwork" i filled on it then...

 

Had to use it at my new workplace for some time. We have this USB TARGUS DisplayLink dock stations. I plugged it in to use mouse and keyboard. But oh my, it picked up two monitors connected to the dock.

 

I wanted to play so i decided to try eGPU. Most expensive part was Exp gdc adapter. GPU i took from my desktop during my last visit home.

Spintires - worked pretty good, even on medium to max settings. #LowSpecGamer

 

I upped RAM to 8gigs - 50$.

Then i found out that i could install Core 2 Extreme X9000 with unlocked multiplayer - eBay 50$. 

Also bought and mounted Zalman CNPS2x + AC Infinity USB fan(for convenience). Overwatch here i come...

 

It easily overclocked from 2.8ghz to 3.2ghz. With upping the voltage it got to 3.4 and during LTX it hit 3.6Ghz stable. 

 

Now it has huge sentimental value to me and i just want to see how much longer can it last...  

 

Hope i didn't bore you too much and thanks for the attention.

 

 

[Vakula]

P.S. As mentioned in LowSpecGame video from LTX 

 

[TheBean]

oh yea. i saw this in some video featuring this. 

this is awesome. 

 

edit: it was in lowspecgamer

14:16 in his video above

Edited August 11, 2019 by Saksham

[Froyo5454]

 How did you mount the cpu heatsink?

 

[Radinus]

Just saw this today on reddit.

Wow, just wow.

Love it.

Perfect mix with homebrew and great technical solution.

 

I don't feel that OP will reply but does anyone know the model of the "dock" ?

[Ash6352]

You still using this laptop 4 years later?