The Frankendell!

[Sat1600]

 So I had an old Dell e521 collecting dust for a couple of years. I had already upgraded it as far as it would go. It had a Athlon x2 6400+, 4gb of ddr2, an antec green 450w power supply and a hd 6770.

 

So i was perusing Letgo  and came across a motherboard for an optiplex 380 with 4gb of ddr3 (2×2) for $10. I had a xeon x5460 and a 771 to 775 adapter that i bought on ebay a while ago for a project that never happened. So I figured what the hell.

 

I did the mod and used a huge heatsink from an old optiplex that fit into the Dell BTX contraption. I had to cut away at the rear i/o as it didn't fit exactly right and covered some of the usb ports. 

 

So then I realised that the front i/o for the e521 doesn't fit into the the port on the 380 motherboard. Luckily I had an optiplex 755 laying around at work that hasn't worked in a long time. Perfect match.

 

So with parts from 4 different dells, an antec power supply,  an hd 6770 and a moded x5460 i had a working Frankendell.

 

The bios recognized the xeon right away but I flashed a custom bios with microcodes anyway.

 

I hope that the kids can play overwatch on this when I'm using my main computer. 

[ProjectBox153]

Wow, I'd dust that out. Otherwise, it's neat. I love Dells (look at my signature, that's not all), and the OptiPlex line is by far my favorite along with the Latitudes and Dimensions. The OptiPlex 3xx and 7xx were the best looking and performing models in my opinion. 

[aries757]

nice!

[Sat1600]

2 minutes ago, Jamiec1130 said:

Wow, I'd dust that out. Otherwise, it's neat. I love Dells (look at my signature, that's not all), and the OptiPlex line is by far my favorite along with the Latitudes and Dimensions. The OptiPlex 3xx and 7xx were the best looking and performing models in my opinion. 

Thanks