Mistakes where made - my Dell 3670 build

ElChecho · October 23, 2018

Hello all, l've been a console player since the original nintendo, had a brief stint off pc gaming in the late 90s but mainly a console person. Until recently as the latest gen haven't grabbed me and being inspired by scrapyard wars i decided to go down the pc rabbit hole. As the title sates mistakes where made but it's all about learning.

First my goal was mainly a gaming machine aimed at 1080p 60fps, and multitasking as in i might have several web pages open, youtube, facebook, a pdf and streaming a radio station. Then decide to play a game on top off that.

Anyway a friend of a friends dad had bought a dell 3670 desktop, but hated it as he didn't like windows 10 and reckoned it would randomly freeze (hasn't done it to me). Looking at the specs i thought it would be a good base, especially having a separate gpu already i know it had a pcie slot. And i got it for a good price, less than what the cpu and ram would have cost new.

The specs

Intel i5 8400 cpu

Single 8gb ddr4 2666mhz ram

Nvida Gt1030 gpu

1tb Toshiba hdd

Generic 350w psu

My plan was simple upgrade the psu, swap the 1030 for a 1060, add another 8gb of ram and maybe an ssd. But this pc fought me almost every step.

CPU/Cooling - Noctua NH-L12S + stock intel fan, Artic 90mm + 2x silent 80mm fans.

The cpu cooler upgrade went smoothly untill i went to reinstall the motherboard, as the mounts for the factory cooler are embossed in the case. So out came the grinder. Before removing stands at the what am i doing stage.

After this upgrade on startup i would have to wait for a cpu fan test that it would fail as it didn't recognize the fan. So i bought a noctua cpu fan pin splitter and used the low noise adaptor so the intel is controlled by the mb and the noctua runs at a constant low speed. I then mounted the intel cpu fan onto the case panel with stock vent glued to case and slightly modified. Moved the noctua fan to underneath the cooler creating a push pull set up and fixing the start issue.

As the case has no fans plus only spots for exhaust fans, front panel is solid. And no fan headers on the m/b I went with 2x 80mm artic silent fans for the exhaust running at full speed of a molex. For intake i mounted a 90mm artic fan on the side panel connected to a speed controller that slots into a pci bracket powered buy a mollex. This might be surprising but it's quite and doesn't exceed 60c under full load on both gpu and cpu.

PSU - Corsair tx650m (yes overkill but it was on special for the same price as a bronze rated 550w psu)

Dell being Dell use a 8 pin power plug for the m/b instead of the standard 24pin. This lead to a bit of confusion at first but was lucky there are adaptors available.

Next was the fan intake on the factory psu was on the front, not the top/bottom like all aftermarket psu, so this ment both the psu and gpu fans faced each other with less than an inch gap. So out came the drill to make a vent in the bottom of the case with some generic plastic end caps with grip mat glued to the bottom now the new feet to allow airflow underneath the case. Also had to make a little extra clearance for the power plug socket, but it's in. Also there's the cable management but will just ignore that, i did try but it's a mess.

Ram - 8gb adata 2666mhz

This actually fit and worked fine, was a little uneventful.

GPU - Gigabyte gtx1060 6gb

The first problem i had was finding an oc version of this card small enough to fit and having a very small used market where i live ment i had to buy a new card, and this was one of the more expensive cards.

Once installed and setup it performed poorly, as in doom 2016 would not hold 60fps unless on the lowest settings, medium averaged about 50fps with lows into the 20fps. So basically after a few weeks i found it to be a dell support / diagnosis program limiting the performance, i think because of the extra power draw it would go into a safe mode. Once all dell programs where removed and nvidia drivers reinstalled doom 2016 run on high settings at 60fps and with some tweaking later using the nvida control panel to set maximum performance and v sync to fast i got 60fps on ultra. Until the dell software would start reinstalling itself. There's a hidden in the dell partion on the hard drive.

SSD - Intel 760p 256gb

This was by far the most frustrating part, as first i couldn't get the pc to recognize the ssd. As i didn't know i needed to format it though the system partion program first. Even the user guide said just plug it in. Anyway next i tried unplugging the hdd so i could do clean install on the ssd then wipe the hdd once working. For whatever reason windows could not create the partions needed to install, tried manually creating them but it just wouldn't work. So i thought I'll copy the hdd to ssd except the dell partion, this wouldn't work either as the hdd is larger size, even though it has less than 256gb. So i manually copied the partions needed, booted up with ssd only, it went into windows repair and reinstalled fresh to the ssd, all working good until i shut down and tried to restart and get a "no bootable device message" plug in the hdd computer starts but has 2 versions of windows to select, even after formating the system partion on the hdd. But on the positive no more dell programs reinstalling them selfs. After a lot of messing around my theory is that as the ssd uses the nvme m.2 slot, the motherboard can only boot through the sata slots. So now the hdd is to boot plus has all my games and the ssd has the os.

So to summarise even though i saved a few dollar's, the hassle and 3 month's i ended spending to make this work isn't worth it. As i have a very suttle unique pc but with poor upgrade option. Next time I'm just going to spend the money and do more research on getting a good aftermarket motherboard and case to start with next time.

Cheers for reading, ElChecho

ElChecho · October 23, 2018

Some more pics

SSJBart2003 · December 15, 2021

Hello! I modded my 3670 very similar to yours. Are you still rocking it? I drilled holes underneath for my Corsair psu too (CX750M) I’m still using the 8400 with a Zotac GTX 1070, and 32gb of hyper x fury 2666. I would like to get a i7-9700 but just haven’t yet.

im looking to swap in a new 11th Gen Optiplex motherboard into this case. It’s very close in dimentions. Wish me luck!

thrasher_565 · December 17, 2021

On 12/14/2021 at 8:06 PM, SSJBart2003 said:

Hello! I modded my 3670 very similar to yours. Are you still rocking it? I drilled holes underneath for my Corsair psu too (CX750M) I’m still using the 8400 with a Zotac GTX 1070, and 32gb of hyper x fury 2666. I would like to get a i7-9700 but just haven’t yet.

im looking to swap in a new 11th Gen Optiplex motherboard into this case. It’s very close in dimentions. Wish me luck!

that cpu fan is facing the wrong way...

2xB2B9394 · January 11, 2022

Hello! That’s a good eye, however it is factory installed this way. The heat flows up into the fan shroud and out the side vent I imagine. I removed my shroud so the 2 80mm exhaust fans should be sucking it out the back instead.