Cheap tips for turning by £200 Dell into a quiet gaming PC

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adfhg
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Cheap tips for turning by £200 Dell into a quiet gaming PC

Post by adfhg » Sat Nov 26, 2016 5:39 pm

I don't need it to be silent, but did choose to go for i3 over i5 as I wanted it to be quieter but don't really have the funds for both a more demanding PC and the extras needed to then cool it quietly.

I just got this Dell for £200 (reduced from £380): http://www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-3650- ... 50-desktop:

6th Generation Intel® Core™ i3-6100T Processor (3M Cache, 3.20 GHz)
Windows 10 Home (64Bit)
8GB Single Channel DDR3L 1600MHz (8GBX1)
1TB 7200 rpm SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drive

I/O Ports
2 Front - USB 3.0
1 5:1 Multi-Card Reader
1 Audio Combo Jack Rear - Line in/out and Microphone Port
1 VGA
1 HDMI out
4 USB 2.0
1 Network Port
1 DC power

Slots
DIMM Slot
2 UDIMM Slots

I'm planning to put in a 1050 - but I'm not sure what model would be best, or if the TI might be much noisier than the base model. I read the review thread here and it seemed no-one was really sure what was best. Anyone tried them out recently?

I could put in another 8gb of RAM to use both slots, although 16 GBs in total seems overkill. Would this be likely to be worthwhile?

I could try to find a cheap SSD somewhere and then re-install the OS onto this - I'm not sure if the power supply would have a connector for this though?

It would be greatly appreciated if anyone had any advice to share on this. I'm trying to do things as cheaply as possible, but getting the Dell with Windows 10 for a good price as a foundation means I now have some spare money for other things.

CA_Steve
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Re: Cheap tips for turning by £200 Dell into a quiet gaming

Post by CA_Steve » Sat Nov 26, 2016 8:40 pm

Welcome to SPCR.

First up: How are you going to use the PC?
- what apps?
- what games?..and if games, what is your monitor resolution?

2) gfx card: first - you'll want to open up the PC and see what the clearances are (length, is there room/can it handle a double slot gfx card...what's the free height above the card bracket?

3) PSU: It looks like the PSU is rated for 240W...but you ought to read the label and check. If so, it'll handle a 75W gfx card fine. For more than that, look at the spare cables to see what's there. Looks like it's a TFX form factor. See if there are spare cables for SATA power, etc.

4) RAM: Unless your apps say otherwise, you don't need more than 8GB of RAM...however, only populating 1 DIMM slot means you are giving up memory BW.

5) SSD: See what there are for SATA connectors on the motherboard and also if there are SATA power cables free on the PSU. An SSD is great for speeding up boot times/app loading/pushing data. For games, it mostly helps with load times.

6) making it quieter: first - what's making it loud?

quest_for_silence
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Re: Cheap tips for turning by £200 Dell into a quiet gaming

Post by quest_for_silence » Sat Nov 26, 2016 10:49 pm

CA_Steve wrote:Looks like it's a TFX form factor.

Are you sure? AFAIK it is not, it's a proprietary form factor (I know a guy who tried to swap the PSU on a new Inspiron with a Seasonic TFX and failed due to mechanical constraints).

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Re: Cheap tips for turning by £200 Dell into a quiet gaming

Post by CA_Steve » Sun Nov 27, 2016 7:39 am

bummer

adfhg
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Re: Cheap tips for turning by £200 Dell into a quiet gaming

Post by adfhg » Mon Nov 28, 2016 8:51 am

Hi there.

I've included a photo of the PC in case that is useful.

I mainly use it for office stuff/browsing, but was hoping to be able to cheaply get it ready for some games too.

I tend to only pick up games when they're a few years old (Humble Bundle, etc). I'd like to be able to play GTA V at some point, but also, my current PC is ancient and couldn't run Portal 2, so I have a lot of catching up to do.

I'm not going to be going above 1920x1080.

To me, it looked like there was room for a double height card... but struggling to get into the PC reminded me how totally out of my depth I am with even basic things. (With my old PC I changed a power supply, put a new graphic card in, and changed some RAM... but it was easier when cases were twice the size!)

The power supply is labelled as 240, but looks pretty built in to the PC. At least it's not too noisy. I couldn't see any spare cables.

I know 16 GB of RAM would be excessive, but wondered about whether having just one slot of 1600 RAM could slow things down needlessly. Open to any suggestions for what would be best here.

I think that the CPU fan is the noisiest component... although I now feel less than enthused about changing that. It's not to bad, and really I just want to avoid making things worse with my graphics card choice.

Thanks!
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adfhg
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Re: Cheap tips for turning by £200 Dell into a quiet gaming

Post by adfhg » Mon Nov 28, 2016 8:53 am

PS: The power supply is in the metal case at the bottom - my photo is smaller and more cut off than I'd realised. Let me know if another would be useful.

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Re: Cheap tips for turning by £200 Dell into a quiet gaming

Post by CA_Steve » Mon Nov 28, 2016 12:16 pm

No spare PSU cables! So, they never expect anyone to add another storage device? gah.

Ok, you'll need a gfx card that doesn't need an extra power connector. And adding 75W load to the PSU will be ok powerwise.

Pictures won't help here. You'll need to physically measure the PCIe card clearances. Otherwise, you'll spend a lot of time returning otherwise good cards because they didn't fit.

RAM: If money is tight, then stick with the single channel for now. Better off spending the money on the gfx card.

adfhg
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Re: Cheap tips for turning by £200 Dell into a quiet gaming

Post by adfhg » Mon Nov 28, 2016 1:11 pm

CA_Steve wrote:No spare PSU cables! So, they never expect anyone to add another storage device? gah.
I'd just seen some SSD bargains too. Ah well. Can't really complain for £200.

From the top of the PCIe slot there was just over 4cm to the CPU cooler, and about 3cm to the RAM safety clips (would the card fit around them?). Is that okay?

Money's always a bit tight, but if £40 on another bit of RAM would make much difference, it could be worth doing it. I don't know where the bottlenecks would be on a system like this.

Thanks.

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Re: Cheap tips for turning by £200 Dell into a quiet gaming

Post by NeilBlanchard » Mon Nov 28, 2016 1:39 pm

That's gonna' be a challenge.

The case itself and the fans will be what you need to work on, I think, and the CPU cooler. Swapping the case is possibly not doable, because of the front panel switch connectors. The PSU could be proprietary, as well. Dell's sometimes use odd pin arrangements, and you have to use their unit.

adfhg
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Re: Cheap tips for turning by £200 Dell into a quiet gaming

Post by adfhg » Mon Nov 28, 2016 2:08 pm

Actually... don't graphics cards go down from the PCIe slot? (I told you I'm a bit clueless with this stuff... so glad I decided against building my own PC tbh). In that case it looks like there's plenty of room.

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Re: Cheap tips for turning by £200 Dell into a quiet gaming

Post by CA_Steve » Mon Nov 28, 2016 2:33 pm

Let me try this again. :)

Measure the distance from the PCIe bracket down the length of where the card will go to the nearest blockage point determine the max length of the gfx card.

Measure the clearance height from above this same PCIe bracket to the case. A lot of gfx cards are not flush with the top of the bracket.

Yes - gfx cards face away from the cooler. If you have multiple PCIe slots, see if they are marked x16, x8, etc. If not, look in the manual. Chances are, you'll use the slot closest to the CPU. However, if you have more than one x8 or x16 slot, and you later choose to replace the CPU cooler, this might give you more clerance between the two.


Also, for a second storage device, you can buy a SATA power splitter. Here's an example. This assumes you do have an open SATA communications port on your mobo.

adfhg
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Re: Cheap tips for turning by £200 Dell into a quiet gaming

Post by adfhg » Mon Nov 28, 2016 3:16 pm

CA_Steve wrote:Let me try this again. :)
I needed to make it clearer how little I know!

Here's my utterly dumbed down list of details, describing distances as seen in the photo:

Along slot two (the long black slot under the battery that I'm pretty sure is a PCIe slot, and there was only one) there's about 24cm from the expansion port of the case to the black and yellow wires which get a bit in the way, but fell like they can be shift another cm or so.

This slot was not marked with anything other than 'slot 2', but it had 32 numbers along (16 pairs) eg:

C529
C528

C536
C535

From the top of slot 2 there was just over 4cm to the CPU cooler, and about 3cm to the RAM safety clips (that don't stick out far.)

There was almost no documentation with the PC, so I don't really have anything to check here.
CA_Steve wrote:Also, for a second storage device, you can buy a SATA power splitter. Here's an example. This assumes you do have an open SATA communications port on your mobo.
Thanks. It actually looks like the hard-drive and DVD-rom arer getting their power from the motherboard, rather than being plugged directly to the power supply. They both share a cable plugged to a socket labelled SATAP1. I cannot see a spare socket like this one. Then the DVD-ROM has an orange cable to a socket, while the HD has a blue cable to an adjacent socket, and there are two more empty sockets next to these.

Actually... I just found an empty socket marked SATAP2 in the bottom right, next to where the white cables are plugged into the motherboard from the power supply. This is like an Aladdin's cave of marvels!

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Re: Cheap tips for turning by £200 Dell into a quiet gaming

Post by CA_Steve » Mon Nov 28, 2016 4:44 pm

Ok, we're almost there....:)

I think you are getting confused by my saying "above the PCIe bracket to the case". Think about seating the gfx card into the PCIe slot. That's the bottom of the card. So, we need to know how much clearance there is for the TOP of the card. The card is secured to the PC case via the bracket in the case rear. The top of the gfx card may extend further than the top of this bracket....and there's only so much distance from the top of this bracket to the side of your case. This is the distance you need to measure.

Good to know you have a spare sata power connector on the motherboard. Now we have to figure out what Dell in their unholy wisdom decided to use for this connector. I hope you can take a close up picture of the power socket.

The SATA communications cable will be the std connector. Nobody is that fucked up to go non-std for that. So, if and when you buy an SSD, you'll need to buy a SATA cable.

As for documentation, get it from Dell. Try searching "Dell Inspiron 3650 support" and download the manual.

adfhg
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Re: Cheap tips for turning by £200 Dell into a quiet gaming

Post by adfhg » Mon Nov 28, 2016 5:36 pm

CA_Steve wrote:Ok, we're almost there....:)
I think you are getting confused by my saying "above the PCIe bracket to the case". Think about seating the gfx card into the PCIe slot. That's the bottom of the card. So, we need to know how much clearance there is for the TOP of the card. The card is secured to the PC case via the bracket in the case rear. The top of the gfx card may extend further than the top of this bracket....and there's only so much distance from the top of this bracket to the side of your case. This is the distance you need to measure.
So 'above', as in 'if the motherboard was lying flat on the ground'? There's nothing obstructing that socket across the width of the case, so about 12cm?

I have to admit, I didn't think to google a manual.

Tthe DVD-Rom, HD and empty slots are labelled 3,4,5,6 here:

http://www.dell.com/support/manuals/uk/ ... lang=en-us

'2' is also connected to them, while '7' is a spare one.

Reading their rules for opening up your PC makes me feel pretty careless... probably should have googled a manual first.

Thanks for talking me through this. Am not down with the lingo!

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Re: Cheap tips for turning by £200 Dell into a quiet gaming

Post by CA_Steve » Mon Nov 28, 2016 10:11 pm

last try :)
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adfhg
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Re: Cheap tips for turning by £200 Dell into a quiet gaming

Post by adfhg » Tue Nov 29, 2016 8:20 am

Ahhh.... for some reason that hadn't even occurred to me.

There's an extra 2cm of space there. Thanks.

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Re: Cheap tips for turning by £200 Dell into a quiet gaming

Post by NeilBlanchard » Tue Nov 29, 2016 8:40 am

It looks like you can fit a video card that takes up 2 slots. The main limitation with that case is the length of the card from the bracket to the end that is near the front of the case - the hinged part of the case needs space to pivot. To measure this, you should take out two of the slot covers on the back of the case, and with the case closed measure the depth, and then measure it again halfway open.

adfhg
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Re: Cheap tips for turning by £200 Dell into a quiet gaming

Post by adfhg » Tue Nov 29, 2016 10:32 am

NeilBlanchard wrote:It looks like you can fit a video card that takes up 2 slots. The main limitation with that case is the length of the card from the bracket to the end that is near the front of the case - the hinged part of the case needs space to pivot. To measure this, you should take out two of the slot covers on the back of the case, and with the case closed measure the depth, and then measure it again halfway open.
I don't think it makes much difference. Maybe closing the case slightly crunches up those yellow wires, but they still seemed to have give in them and I suspect they'd bend around a video card.

Maybe closing it takes the max length from 24cm to 23cm?

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Re: Cheap tips for turning by £200 Dell into a quiet gaming

Post by CA_Steve » Tue Nov 29, 2016 12:04 pm

Let's call it 23cm (~9.1in) in length and a max height above the bracket of 2cm.

The conundrum is all of the "passive at idle" cards require a 6-pin gfx card power connector from the PSU which you don't have. All of the PCIe board power only cards are the shorter, single fanned units. Of the ones I've seen reviewed (and there haven't been a lot), The Zotac Ti Mini seems to be the quietest. Although there's really not a huge diff in performance between the MSI, EVGA and Zotac.

adfhg
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Re: Cheap tips for turning by £200 Dell into a quiet gaming

Post by adfhg » Tue Nov 29, 2016 12:39 pm

I found this dual fan 1050 TI that only uses PCIe power (I think)... but it doesn't seem to be available in the UK!

ASUS GeForce DUAL GTX 1050Ti
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814126151

As my PC will already be a bit noisy maybe the Zotac Ti Mini will not really make any difference.

At £130 the Zotac mini is not a bad price: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/Nnd ... 10510a-10l

Do you have any view on whether the ports on my board would allow me to add an SSD... or do you think that the difficulty I've had working out my measurements for a graphics card indicate that I should probably leave well alone? (I don't really know how I'd move the OS from the HD I have to a new SSD... I really don't have much PC knowledge).

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Re: Cheap tips for turning by £200 Dell into a quiet gaming

Post by CA_Steve » Tue Nov 29, 2016 4:39 pm

Well, if you've never added a storage device to a PC before, there are certainly a few steps involved. Here are the questions you'd need to answer and some comments:
- You need a SATA power cable. What connector is Dell using on the mobo? If non-std, can you get one from Dell?
- You need a SATA data cable. Should be a standard SATA-SATA cable that you can buy pretty inexpensively. Then again, is Dell doing something funky?
- You need migration software to copy your current drive over to the SSD. A lot of SSDs come with this / have it available - like Samsung and their excellent Magician tool. Crucial MX300 is selling very cheaply these days - but I don't know what they have for tools.
- You might need to be able to get into the BIOS in order to set up drive boot order (so the new SSD can act as the boot drive).

If you feel uncomfortable with any of this, you might see how much a repair shop will charge you for the install.

adfhg
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Re: Cheap tips for turning by £200 Dell into a quiet gaming

Post by adfhg » Tue Nov 29, 2016 6:59 pm

I have a vague memory of causing myself a lot of trouble a decade ago, and deciding on the rule 'don't mess with the BIOS'.

That propriety Dell parts could cause extra problems is just an extra justification for leaving alone I think.

Thanks for all the advice/tips. It sounds like the best thing for me to do is probably just buy one of those 1050 TIs, slot it in, and not worry about the rest.

All the best with your quest for silent PCs!

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Re: Cheap tips for turning by £200 Dell into a quiet gaming

Post by vishcompany » Wed Nov 30, 2016 3:35 am

CA_Steve wrote:... Crucial MX300 is selling very cheaply these days - but I don't know what they have for tools...
I bought an MX300 these days, it comes with a download code for Acronis True Image Software. I did not bother with it, so I can't tell, if it is any good nowadays. I did use it many years ago and it was doing the right things back then.

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