these old dell clamshells are my favorite :) Used similar optiplex computers throughout school. now very few of these, if any are left at my local highschool, some of the last of those to leave suffered from bad caps :(. I just had to replace some of the caps on my dimension 4500. Older computers are my favorite. :)
After almost 10 years of service my Compaq Presario died on me in February 2015. Living on a fixed income I couldn't afford to buy a new computer. I checked out Goodwill and I was shocked at the prices they're charging for old PCs. They want $229 plus tax for these 6 and 7 year old computers with Windows Vista on them. When I told a friend about situation he gave me one of these Dell GX 280 computers in mint condition. It's one of the lower form desktops but it works great. I'm using it now.
capacitors were the culprit of those PCs of the era, the motherboards in those PCs with Pentium 4s would go belly up due to bad capacitors, a recap job would bring them back to life.
@@pentiummmx2294 I'm not as technically savvy as you are but I've heard the same thing from other people regarding capacitors and Pentium 4 processing desktops. I just gave away my last desktop yesterday. Ever since this covid crap started I've been keeping my cellphone with me at all times. I'm sure I'll get another desktop in the not too distant future. ⌨🖥🖨🔌
I have modified the mini tower dimensions, that's the Dell 2400 model, the Shorter towers are easier to modify and I've installed later era (dell 790 and 3020) motherboards into them and they're run perfectly, they're bonafide sleepers: they're have a window's XP badge but can run windows 10 no problem. The larger GX270 dells weigh a ton and they open up in that crazy hinge pivoting manner, and it's like they're not meant to be tinkered with, but I'm going to ripout the internals of one that I found today at the junkyard, and try to make a project of it.
The optiplex computers in that line were designed to be able to lay on a 19" rack tray or stack on each other. The dimensions had the foot that stuck out so they didn't stack very well.
The "pigtail" you were talking about is a DMS-59 connector. It's designed to have one port output two DVI or two VGA connectors. It's unusual to see a DMS-59 video card in a full sized system, Dell usually only put those in their slim systems with half-height slots.
Just bought a GX280 off eBay for £5. Bought it just for the nostalgic value. I was in a workshop after school 15/16 years ago that had tons of these clamshell dells. Worked on them all the time. Might put Linux on it and mess around with it :)
I usually find if Win XP does not see anything over 137gb it needs a service pack upgrade, unless it's bios limited. I've done my share of case mods on those Dell clamshells for PS replacements..
I have had an Optiplex GX280 with a 3800 Pentium 4 and 2GB DDR RAM I had a NVidia GeForce 9800 installed in it using a AGP to PCIE converter and it ran Need for speed most wanted and Need for speed carbon perfectly even on high graphics settings.
Hello Nice Video. I found 2 at the Salvation Army Both work great has Win XP. I was wondering what you would recommend for a wireless card. Thanks Jerry
I like the high powered USB wireless adapters made by Alpha. www.ebay.com/itm/Alfa-AWUS036NHR-v2-version-2-Wireless-N-USB-WiFi-adapter-Realtek-RTL8188RU-chip-/111156167829?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19e16c8495
I would install Lubuntu x86 on it. It would make it so much faster and safer, since there are only a few known viruses for Linux distros anyway. You can install other useful things on Lubuntu as well like Skype, VLC media player, browsers like Chrome, Firefox etc. and lots of other useful programs.
The full height bersion of the GX280 was my first gaming PC. It had a P4 @3GHz, two HDD's (40+80GB) two optical drives, 4GB of DDR2-800 and a Leadtek 6600GT.
Nice video but a bit of advice if you wouldn't mind. I'm looking for a graphics card upgrade for a GX280 full tower like in the video. I've just (finally!) upgraded to Win7 and my video capabilities are basic at best right now. I'm not trying to do hardcore gaming at all but just want a video card that can run DirectX and some older games. Any suggestions for video cards that will fit here that don't require a power supply upgrade? Or should I just do both as well? I've got 4 gigs of RAM on the board so that part isn't a concern for me. Thanks in advance.
There were three case styles: mini tower (the one shown here), desktop, and small form factor. The desktop models had a standard size optical and floppy drive, whereas the SFF had laptop-sized drives (but the hard drive was still a desktop size.)
I need to know exactly how to take the side panel off to change my battery. Everytime I boot it up it beeps after the boot screen and have to press f1 to continue. If not done rite will it really lock up my pc??
Hey man i'm looking to swap out the motherboard with a more standard 775 motherboard and put it into a newer atx case as well. do you think this would be doable? I'm not sure if i'm gonna use it for super retro gaming, PFSense, HTPC, Media Server / NAS, Honeypot, or whatever but my main concerns are just would it work if i moved the newer motherboard into a new cheap $20 atx case? thanks! love your videos!
As uxwbill said, these computers just looked GOOFY. I've never really liked their appearance, and they were lacking in longevity performance wise but they were good workhorses.
+Bingocat In 2016?!?!?! That's a bit crazy, although if they're just using them for very light tasks such as playing music or a low-traffic web server, then it's a bit more 'normal'.
I dunno, I find this era of Dells to be the dullest and least interesting machines around but respect for the detailed video. I guess it's because I associate them with low-end office usage and unimaginative domestic users. Also the silly proprietariness (not a word) of the construction is annoying, although it's obviously been made extremely easy to service from a Dell point of view. But, really, there's no enjoyment in turning one of these into some kind of sleeper when so much modification would be required. Also the BIOS is a hugely limiting factor. When you compare these computers to the Apple equivalents of the time (the Power Mac G4) they have zero charisma, and the 'clamshell' design first came in with the Power Macintosh 8600 in 1998. The only thing positive I could say about these is the screw-free servicing. The Dell monitors of the time were also quite nice.
I had a dell with a similar case design, and those CD Drive slots are absolutely horrible traps for dirt and dust. I also have a compaq that oddly mirrors this, the power supply has sata power connectors, but the board has no traces of sata controllers on it, and i have scoured google for hours and cannot find any board for it that has sata on it
my GX270 has died from bad capacitors, i need to replace them. many are bulging or leaking. it has a P4 2.8 GHz, 2GB RAM, 160GB WD Caviar HDD, LG DVD/RW drive, nVidia Geforce FX 5500 256MB AGP graphics card, Sound Blaster Audigy sound card, Windows XP Pro SP3. It has the original CRT monitor, SK-8110 keyboard, and Intellimouse 1.3 black PS2 mouse.
appleontheapex I prefer to stick to 10.6 as I have found later versions to have removed my beloved HDD Regenerator. Only occasionally does 10.6 have an issue with a SATA hard drive ( thanks to some OEM bios not allowing to change to IDE or Compatible)
The MX 440 AGP was barely a step up over the PCI version. It was trash. Always wanted a GeForce 3 Ti or 4 Ti build though. Athlon XP era was also kind of neat. Never owned one.
Have 3 of these for our school club, good computers (always liked the clam-shell design) but I do have to agree a little with uxwbill, they are quite ugly compared to the dimension models :D
They are not as good looking definitely. I strongly think the Dimension case is quite a bit more stylish. The Precisions of this time share more in common with the OptiPlex in terms of looks than the Dimension. I guess the "business" market prefers dull and boring :) My favorite Dell case would be the XPS 625. Second to that would be the XPS 600 with the backlit Dell shield on the front
WaybackTECH I agree, recent obtained an XPS Gen 5 from a family member and love the pure "00s gaming style" from it, some other cases I like are the Dimension 5100 and E510 styles even though they are BTX.
WaybackTECH Nice job making your computer videos. The reason I left the comment was becuase you said didn't know the point of adding a LED light on the motherboard besides indicating that power is being supplied to the motherboard at about 22:50.
zzyzxRDFwy15 Yes, taking into account that Dell has already added Diagnostic LED's to the back panel. The only thing the LED on the motherboard indicates is if it is getting power from the PSU and is on constantly, not just when the system is powered on. Assuming of course the PSU is not completely fried and is putting out enough voltage to satisfy the requirements of the LED to come on, which I think is powered by the 5V standby, It is not a judge of the condition of the PSU, The power button LED usually indicates a fault in the PSU by flashing orange when the button is pressed. Not a perfect measure of a PSU condition but works ok for the most part. Some of the newer Dell's have an LED on the board that is orange when the system is shut off, then turns green when it is powered on. Some just stay orange all the time. A bit inconsistant between models. Many motherboards have at least 1 LED to indicate it is receiving power now days. It is handy. In the case of Dell, or any OEM, I think it is meant as a way to let you know "hey you still have the power cord plugged in" when you open the case. Probably just something Foxconn adds to every board they make. I even have a 486 ALR Evo 4 who's motherboard has a LED to indicate the motherboard is on, which was made by Micronics which later got bought by Diamond Multimedia, but that only comes on when the PSU is switched on, as it is just an AT power supply with no clue what standby or soft power is :)
zzyzxRDFwy15 A friend of mine just gave me one of these Dell GX 280 computers about a month ago and I notice the light on the mother board is always on. Does that mean there is something wrong? It seems to work fine. I'm using it right now.
I think these have to be the ugliest computers ever made. Especially when you open that flap with the USB ports pointed awkwardly underneath. What happened with the design in there? The clamshell is an over-engineered and clumsy mechanism to work with. When you get it open, you need 3 times as much desk space to work with it. I don't see an advantage. I'm sure they must have invested a million man hours into that design, but it sucks ass and shouldn't have been mass produced. I admit that I'm unfairly biased because every example of these clamshell Dells that I've used have been beaten up examples from thrift stores. I think those examples do demonstrate the reality of how these things end up "working" though. The best Dell case I've used was from a really basic Dimension 3000, which also came from a thrift store. It has a nice and simple side panel that pops off with one hand, and it's totally MicroATX compatible inside. Such a better design, and probably cheaper to manufacture as well. I remember reading a quirk with using Prescotts on the GX270. Like most mPGA478 motherboards, the faster Prescotts can't be safely powered because nobody anticipated how power hungry the chips would turn out to be. So if you install a CPU that's faster than some upper limit (I think maybe 3.0GHz), then the BIOS will automatically underclock it. There might be some intelligence that checks the core stepping and gives some allowance for the reduced power consumption of later chips, but I'm not sure about that. Dell used Panasonic, Rubycon, and Nichicon capacitors on these boards. Everybody has multiple sources for common components like that, so they aren't at the mercy of one supplier. I recapped a couple of mine with polymers in the Vcore section, because they stand the heat better and I had a bunch of them handy anyways. Once you replace the capacitors, it's a great motherboard. I compared it against a gamer overclocker oriented MSI 875P Neo-Something. This conservative, business oriented i865 based Dell board is *faster* than the MSI 875P based super duper l337 gamer board. It's also perfectly stable. In order to make the MSI board even get close to the performance of the GX270, you have to put it in it's "Turbo" mode which is unstable. Dell soundly beats MSI's "gamer" offering on a business model with a slower chipset. Embarrassing. Due to that result, I used a GX270 as my secondary/office computer for a couple years. It had a mismatched, recapped, SFF version of the motherboard in a full clamshell case, Preshott HT CPU, SFF CPU fan that didn't really line up to the case openings, upgraded PSU whose plug didn't quite line up either, late ATI AGP card to offload H.264 video decoding, upgraded hard drive from spare parts, and the wreck of a case couldn't even close because I couldn't get all the wires tucked out of the way. That's okay because if I did close it, I'd never be able to open it again because the latch was fubared. It was a total jalopy hotrod build. It did everything I needed, ran awesome, guzzled power, heated my legs, and looked like hell. I nicknamed it "Eleanor" (that wreck of a ~1970 Ford Mustang in the movie "Gone in 60 Seconds").
If your still running these machines in 2020, I feel sorry (but not sorry) for you!! They are outdated, slow, and a security risk; now that Windows 10 is the only good operating system by Microsoft. You would be better off getting a Dell Optiplex 3010 with Core I3 and 4gb of ram off Ebay. I have bought 5 of the 3010's for $10.00 each, running Windows 10 Professional, picked up a 250gb or 500gb Western Digital Blue ssd's from Walmart for 45 and 65 dollars respectively. The 3010 is screaming fast compared to these old Dell Dinosaurs!! Part what little is good in the GX series, and scrap them out, and do yourself a favor!! All machines that pre-date 2010 of mine have been parted out, and scrapped for metal. I felt somewhat bad for doing so, but jesus; I just want a system that works for me, and not me working for it!! LOL.
I'm so happy to see the face of my old computer again
these old dell clamshells are my favorite :) Used similar optiplex computers throughout school. now very few of these, if any are left at my local highschool, some of the last of those to leave suffered from bad caps :(. I just had to replace some of the caps on my dimension 4500. Older computers are my favorite. :)
I just found a GX270 this morning near a trash can with a sticky note written "damaged not good". I picked up and took it home. I will open it soon.
joe carr how to open it
@@vvn8608there is button on top press hard and it will open like car door 😅
After almost 10 years of service my Compaq Presario died on me in February 2015. Living on a fixed income I couldn't afford to buy a new computer. I checked out Goodwill and I was shocked at the prices they're charging for old PCs. They want $229 plus tax for these 6 and 7 year old computers with Windows Vista on them. When I told a friend about situation he gave me one of these Dell GX 280 computers in mint condition. It's one of the lower form desktops but it works great. I'm using it now.
capacitors were the culprit of those PCs of the era, the motherboards in those PCs with Pentium 4s would go belly up due to bad capacitors, a recap job would bring them back to life.
@@pentiummmx2294 I'm not as technically savvy as you are but I've heard the same thing from other people regarding capacitors and Pentium 4 processing desktops. I just gave away my last desktop yesterday. Ever since this covid crap started I've been keeping my cellphone with me at all times. I'm sure I'll get another desktop in the not too distant future. ⌨🖥🖨🔌
The log area was probably cleared in the Dell factory after testing. Z and / are the paddle buttons for Space Cadet 3D Pinball.
Ah Z and / ! I knew it was down there somewhere :)
I have modified the mini tower dimensions, that's the Dell 2400 model, the Shorter towers are easier to modify and I've installed later era (dell 790 and 3020) motherboards into them and they're run perfectly, they're bonafide sleepers: they're have a window's XP badge but can run windows 10 no problem.
The larger GX270 dells weigh a ton and they open up in that crazy hinge pivoting manner, and it's like they're not meant to be tinkered with, but I'm going to ripout the internals of one that I found today at the junkyard, and try to make a project of it.
30:53 Nice wallpaper.
I just picked up a 270 for $10. My childhood computer and totally worth it
The optiplex computers in that line were designed to be able to lay on a 19" rack tray or stack on each other. The dimensions had the foot that stuck out so they didn't stack very well.
The "pigtail" you were talking about is a DMS-59 connector. It's designed to have one port output two DVI or two VGA connectors. It's unusual to see a DMS-59 video card in a full sized system, Dell usually only put those in their slim systems with half-height slots.
Just bought a GX280 off eBay for £5. Bought it just for the nostalgic value. I was in a workshop after school 15/16 years ago that had tons of these clamshell dells. Worked on them all the time. Might put Linux on it and mess around with it :)
I usually find if Win XP does not see anything over 137gb it needs a service pack upgrade, unless it's bios limited.
I've done my share of case mods on those Dell clamshells for PS replacements..
This was the first pc I ever owned! (I had the sff version)
I have had an Optiplex GX280 with a 3800 Pentium 4 and 2GB DDR RAM I had a NVidia GeForce 9800 installed in it using a AGP to PCIE converter and it ran Need for speed most wanted and Need for speed carbon perfectly even on high graphics settings.
SATA was used when you ordered it from Dell with 120GB HDD.
80 and 40 gig ones had IDE.
Not always. I came across a stock Dimension 4700 with a 40GB SATA hard drive.
Hello Nice Video. I found 2 at the Salvation Army Both work great has
Win XP. I was wondering what you would recommend for a wireless card.
Thanks Jerry
I like the high powered USB wireless adapters made by Alpha. www.ebay.com/itm/Alfa-AWUS036NHR-v2-version-2-Wireless-N-USB-WiFi-adapter-Realtek-RTL8188RU-chip-/111156167829?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19e16c8495
I would install Lubuntu x86 on it. It would make it so much faster and safer, since there are only a few known viruses for Linux distros anyway. You can install other useful things on Lubuntu as well like Skype, VLC media player, browsers like Chrome, Firefox etc. and lots of other useful programs.
The full height bersion of the GX280 was my first gaming PC. It had a P4 @3GHz, two HDD's (40+80GB) two optical drives, 4GB of DDR2-800 and a Leadtek 6600GT.
Nice video but a bit of advice if you wouldn't mind. I'm looking for a graphics card upgrade for a GX280 full tower like in the video. I've just (finally!) upgraded to Win7 and my video capabilities are basic at best right now. I'm not trying to do hardcore gaming at all but just want a video card that can run DirectX and some older games. Any suggestions for video cards that will fit here that don't require a power supply upgrade? Or should I just do both as well? I've got 4 gigs of RAM on the board so that part isn't a concern for me. Thanks in advance.
There's more than one kind of GX270? Mine had the desktop layout and was narrower than this one.
There were three case styles: mini tower (the one shown here), desktop, and small form factor. The desktop models had a standard size optical and floppy drive, whereas the SFF had laptop-sized drives (but the hard drive was still a desktop size.)
I need to know exactly how to take the side panel off to change my battery. Everytime I boot it up it beeps after the boot screen and have to press f1 to continue. If not done rite will it really lock up my pc??
Hey man i'm looking to swap out the motherboard with a more standard 775 motherboard and put it into a newer atx case as well. do you think this would be doable? I'm not sure if i'm gonna use it for super retro gaming, PFSense, HTPC, Media Server / NAS, Honeypot, or whatever but my main concerns are just would it work if i moved the newer motherboard into a new cheap $20 atx case? thanks! love your videos!
im planning on doing a sleeper build in one of these clamshell cases
Izimujack you cant, its proprietary
As uxwbill said, these computers just looked GOOFY. I've never really liked their appearance, and they were lacking in longevity performance wise but they were good workhorses.
Nice video mate 👍
those things also are not wire holders they are for the drive expansion clips
How you open the thing
I have a GX280 and it is missing so many internal parts. really messes with what I want to try to do with it.
Where do you get these types of Of Computers these Days
I Like Both Dells, LuigiBronyGTAV, If You Are Watching This, Which One Is Better?, The Dell OptiPlex GX270 Or The Dell OptiPlex GX280.
My college and work place still uses some of these computers :/
+Bingocat In 2016?!?!?! That's a bit crazy, although if they're just using them for very light tasks such as playing music or a low-traffic web server, then it's a bit more 'normal'.
That's a lot of cache you've got there! 15:11
Your right LOL that IS a lot :) I didn't realize I said that and apparently no one else has either
+WaybackTECH haha
I dunno, I find this era of Dells to be the dullest and least interesting machines around but respect for the detailed video. I guess it's because I associate them with low-end office usage and unimaginative domestic users. Also the silly proprietariness (not a word) of the construction is annoying, although it's obviously been made extremely easy to service from a Dell point of view. But, really, there's no enjoyment in turning one of these into some kind of sleeper when so much modification would be required. Also the BIOS is a hugely limiting factor.
When you compare these computers to the Apple equivalents of the time (the Power Mac G4) they have zero charisma, and the 'clamshell' design first came in with the Power Macintosh 8600 in 1998. The only thing positive I could say about these is the screw-free servicing. The Dell monitors of the time were also quite nice.
Does the fan on the gx280 blow air through the hearsink or push the hot air out the back?
All early 2000s Dell models (except the 4700) had the fans arranged to blow the hot air out the back.
Noah Covert thanks
I found a gx270 on facebook for $25, he even offered to throw in a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Worth it?
I had a dell with a similar case design, and those CD Drive slots are absolutely horrible traps for dirt and dust.
I also have a compaq that oddly mirrors this, the power supply has sata power connectors, but the board has no traces of sata controllers on it, and i have scoured google for hours and cannot find any board for it that has sata on it
My first pc that i got in 2009 in january when i was in 7th class played so many games🙄
i have the same computer but the speaker is missing
my GX270 has died from bad capacitors, i need to replace them. many are bulging or leaking. it has a P4 2.8 GHz, 2GB RAM, 160GB WD Caviar HDD, LG DVD/RW drive, nVidia Geforce FX 5500 256MB AGP graphics card, Sound Blaster Audigy sound card, Windows XP Pro SP3. It has the original CRT monitor, SK-8110 keyboard, and Intellimouse 1.3 black PS2 mouse.
What version of Hiren's are you running? All of my discs are 15.2 and the layout of things on the desktop and program list is different
appleontheapex I prefer to stick to 10.6 as I have found later versions to have removed my beloved HDD Regenerator.
Only occasionally does 10.6 have an issue with a SATA hard drive ( thanks to some OEM bios not allowing to change to IDE or Compatible)
newer dells aren't built like they used to be built
they aren't built anymore they are mass produced
Charles thekinglov they've always been mass produced. Duh
How can i remove the motherboard
I had one that looked like that, with a Pentium 4.
The MX 440 AGP was barely a step up over the PCI version. It was trash. Always wanted a GeForce 3 Ti or 4 Ti build though. Athlon XP era was also kind of neat. Never owned one.
Have 3 of these for our school club, good computers (always liked the clam-shell design) but I do have to agree a little with uxwbill, they are quite ugly compared to the dimension models :D
They are not as good looking definitely. I strongly think the Dimension case is quite a bit more stylish. The Precisions of this time share more in common with the OptiPlex in terms of looks than the Dimension. I guess the "business" market prefers dull and boring :) My favorite Dell case would be the XPS 625. Second to that would be the XPS 600 with the backlit Dell shield on the front
WaybackTECH
I agree, recent obtained an XPS Gen 5 from a family member and love the pure "00s gaming style" from it, some other cases I like are the Dimension 5100 and E510 styles even though they are BTX.
The light on the motherboard is to show diagnostic codes. It's important when you are troubleshooting the computer.
Yup. A handy thing Dell used on their motherboards for many years.
WaybackTECH
Nice job making your computer videos. The reason I left the comment was becuase you said didn't know the point of adding a LED light on the motherboard besides indicating that power is being supplied to the motherboard at about 22:50.
zzyzxRDFwy15 Yes, taking into account that Dell has already added Diagnostic LED's to the back panel. The only thing the LED on the motherboard indicates is if it is getting power from the PSU and is on constantly, not just when the system is powered on. Assuming of course the PSU is not completely fried and is putting out enough voltage to satisfy the requirements of the LED to come on, which I think is powered by the 5V standby, It is not a judge of the condition of the PSU, The power button LED usually indicates a fault in the PSU by flashing orange when the button is pressed. Not a perfect measure of a PSU condition but works ok for the most part. Some of the newer Dell's have an LED on the board that is orange when the system is shut off, then turns green when it is powered on. Some just stay orange all the time. A bit inconsistant between models.
Many motherboards have at least 1 LED to indicate it is receiving power now days. It is handy. In the case of Dell, or any OEM, I think it is meant as a way to let you know "hey you still have the power cord plugged in" when you open the case. Probably just something Foxconn adds to every board they make. I even have a 486 ALR Evo 4 who's motherboard has a LED to indicate the motherboard is on, which was made by Micronics which later got bought by Diamond Multimedia, but that only comes on when the PSU is switched on, as it is just an AT power supply with no clue what standby or soft power is :)
zzyzxRDFwy15 A friend of mine just gave me one of these Dell GX 280 computers about a month ago and I notice the light on the mother board is always on. Does that mean there is something wrong? It seems to work fine. I'm using it right now.
I think it's suppose to be on. As long as it's not blinking trouble codes the motherboard is working properly.
I have a Dell GX280 at home
I have 2- gx 260, a 270 and 280
i like this video
Thank you!
but i cant connect internet on it
u need an network card or a wifi card
I had a gx270 with a SATA drive
xfx nvidia geforce 6600 gt agp vs radeon x700
U need to update ur harins boot disk
"early 2003"
I WAS BORN IN EARLY 2003 YAYAYAYAYAY
+TheBlueLeopard heh so was I
I think these have to be the ugliest computers ever made. Especially when you open that flap with the USB ports pointed awkwardly underneath. What happened with the design in there?
The clamshell is an over-engineered and clumsy mechanism to work with. When you get it open, you need 3 times as much desk space to work with it. I don't see an advantage.
I'm sure they must have invested a million man hours into that design, but it sucks ass and shouldn't have been mass produced.
I admit that I'm unfairly biased because every example of these clamshell Dells that I've used have been beaten up examples from thrift stores. I think those examples do demonstrate the reality of how these things end up "working" though.
The best Dell case I've used was from a really basic Dimension 3000, which also came from a thrift store. It has a nice and simple side panel that pops off with one hand, and it's totally MicroATX compatible inside. Such a better design, and probably cheaper to manufacture as well.
I remember reading a quirk with using Prescotts on the GX270. Like most mPGA478 motherboards, the faster Prescotts can't be safely powered because nobody anticipated how power hungry the chips would turn out to be. So if you install a CPU that's faster than some upper limit (I think maybe 3.0GHz), then the BIOS will automatically underclock it. There might be some intelligence that checks the core stepping and gives some allowance for the reduced power consumption of later chips, but I'm not sure about that.
Dell used Panasonic, Rubycon, and Nichicon capacitors on these boards. Everybody has multiple sources for common components like that, so they aren't at the mercy of one supplier.
I recapped a couple of mine with polymers in the Vcore section, because they stand the heat better and I had a bunch of them handy anyways.
Once you replace the capacitors, it's a great motherboard. I compared it against a gamer overclocker oriented MSI 875P Neo-Something. This conservative, business oriented i865 based Dell board is *faster* than the MSI 875P based super duper l337 gamer board. It's also perfectly stable. In order to make the MSI board even get close to the performance of the GX270, you have to put it in it's "Turbo" mode which is unstable. Dell soundly beats MSI's "gamer" offering on a business model with a slower chipset. Embarrassing.
Due to that result, I used a GX270 as my secondary/office computer for a couple years. It had a mismatched, recapped, SFF version of the motherboard in a full clamshell case, Preshott HT CPU, SFF CPU fan that didn't really line up to the case openings, upgraded PSU whose plug didn't quite line up either, late ATI AGP card to offload H.264 video decoding, upgraded hard drive from spare parts, and the wreck of a case couldn't even close because I couldn't get all the wires tucked out of the way. That's okay because if I did close it, I'd never be able to open it again because the latch was fubared.
It was a total jalopy hotrod build. It did everything I needed, ran awesome, guzzled power, heated my legs, and looked like hell. I nicknamed it "Eleanor" (that wreck of a ~1970 Ford Mustang in the movie "Gone in 60 Seconds").
desktop clam shell open design sucked! just a simple side panel cover works best
If your still running these machines in 2020, I feel sorry (but not sorry) for you!! They are outdated, slow, and a security risk; now that Windows 10 is the only good operating system by Microsoft. You would be better off getting a Dell Optiplex 3010 with Core I3 and 4gb of ram off Ebay. I have bought 5 of the 3010's for $10.00 each, running Windows 10 Professional, picked up a 250gb or 500gb Western Digital Blue ssd's from Walmart for 45 and 65 dollars respectively. The 3010 is screaming fast compared to these old Dell Dinosaurs!! Part what little is good in the GX series, and scrap them out, and do yourself a favor!! All machines that pre-date 2010 of mine have been parted out, and scrapped for metal. I felt somewhat bad for doing so, but jesus; I just want a system that works for me, and not me working for it!! LOL.
That wasn't the point of the video...
Worst CPU is this I also had same cpu