Dell Optiplex GX1

[Quadraman]

This is the second one of these I have. I really like the shape of the case, which is the only reason I bother picking them up. The tech inside these is pretty old. PII and PIII but they can upgraded to a reasonable level.

Here is a picture of one

http://www.accurateit.com/images/items/PC_DELL_GX1.JPG

 

[Unknown_K]

Can a gx1 case work with a gx110 motherboard? I snagged a gx110 p3-866 motherboard, start reset buttons+cable, power supply, and riser board last year but since its not ATX I havn't been able to mount it in anything (verified it works tabletop).

The case was trashed when I went to pick the parts up, and I thaught it had an AGP slot which is why I wanted it.

 

[bigD]

That's what I had on my desk while I worked at Dell.

 

[Quadraman]

I don't know how swappable the motherboards but I'm not sure the GX 110 would work. All the PCI and ISA slots are on a riser card in the GX1 and the slot openings on the back are horizontal rather than vertical. That might make a difference if the GX 110 has vertical slot openings.

The GX1 is nice though because you can use a slocket adapter to bring the CPU up to 1.4ghz using a socket 370 Celeron or PIII and you can install 768MB RAM and use a reasonably recent PCI video card. You get 5 expansion slots but two of those can be either PCI or ISA, not both. In other words the riser card has 7 slots, 5 PCI and 2 ISA but only 5 can be active at the same time as the 2 ISA slots share the bus with the last two PCI slots. You can install a DVD burner in them and a card for PCI 2.0 and Firewire and faster ethernet than the built in 10/100 or a Wi-Fi card. They are also very sturdy and you can rest a good sized monitor on top of them without breaking anything. They are also very easy to access with two buttons on either side that you press in to lift the cover off. The whole design is almost as nice as the Powermac 7500.

 

[Cory5412]

I've got a GX110 and a GX1p hanging out at home, and I really like them -- the GX110 (PIII/933, 512mb/20+20, cdrw) out performed my G4 PowerBook on SETI, and the form factor is pretty great.

My next surplus PC will probably be one of the more rounded midnight gray systems, like the GX150 or one of the 2x0 series.

 

[SiliconValleyPirate]

My next surplus PC will probably be one of the more rounded midnight gray systems, like the GX150 or one of the 2x0 series.

Be wary of the Optiplex GX2x0 series, I believe I was told they were the ones that have a known widespread issue with blowing caps a-la SE/30-itis. Same problem, the caps were too low quality/spec for the job.

 

[Cory5412]

Only the 270, and only some of those. Ideally I'd like to get one of the ATX 280s, just to have that modern system in that old enclosure. There's a bunch of 150s and 240s at surplus, along with one or two 260s.

 

[MacMan]

I cannibalised a number of those in a skip a couple of years ago for the memory and hard disks. The place where I was working back then had tons of them and the tower versions, but gradually they upgraded to the black 2x0 models. The ones they tossed out though were good as many had been upgraded with 256MB PC100 DIMMs.

 

[SiliconValleyPirate]

Only the 270, and only some of those.

Ahh right, noted, and I said it was a widespread problem, not 100% coverage

 

[Christopher]

My old school still has these things.