Upgrade new Dell XPS

PaddyM7

Hi Lads,



I am a noob at this so any help is appreciated. I am looking at buying the Dell XPS 8300 that is on offer til tomorrow. It’s got i7 processor, 12gb of RAM, 1.5tb hard drive (one 1tb + one 500gb drives), from reading on boards the only thing that is crap is the graphics card. http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=d00x8328&c=ie&l=en&s=dhs&cs=iedhs1&model_id=xps-8300
Its 650ish and seems like a good deal to me as I am not very technical and a complete self build seems very daunting. The questions I have is would I be able to upgrade this pc fairly easily with one or two addons. Particularly I would like to add some USB 3.0 slots, would this just be a matter of slotting in a PCI card? Could you recommend one if so. Also I might upgrade the graphics card and slot in a bluray drive? Is this all fairly straight forward? Lastly, I would love to add in an SSD and move the operating system to this for a faster boot, would this be difficult if Windows preloaded already on the machine. Like I say I am fairly clueless so any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Connavar

By the amount of bits you are thinking of adding it sounds like you would be as good as building it yourself

(Just did my first build over the summer and as long as you take care doing it, it is very easy)

PaddyM7

Thanks for the compliment lol but my skills extend to sloting in card or a drive and restarting the machine. I think the SSD install will probably be beyond me, just wondering if it was more straightforward than I thought. TBH I looked into pricing some components and the Dell, apart for the graphic cards, seems close to selfbuild prices with a margin added in for the connvience of someone else building it!

Monotype

That's a lot of upgrades!
As you said, you can just add USB 3 ports easily enough with a card. Keep in mind, of course, that this will just add two or four (usually) USB 3 ports to the back and the ones that you already have will stay as USB 2. It also assumes that there's a free slot.

Blu ray drive should be straightforward enough Just keep in mind that there are some restrictions that you need compliant graphics cards, monitor and software to play blu ray discs with the digital rights management of the blu ray association. Most are compliant these days, but you should check this out to make sure.

Graphics cards on their own are usually easy enough to upgrade. However, the power supply unit in there will only be capable of so much, and with a low end card in there to start with, it probably doesn't have much room for upgrades.

SSD. This one would be a lot more troublesome. Windows is best installed directly to a new SSD. The license with the Dells only allows for one install and reinstalls are done with restore discs. You could clone the existing install but it would require some tweaking to get it right.

To be honest, with that many upgrades the dell isn't such a good deal and I think you'd be better building your own as you can get exactly what you want. It's not that difficult as long as you give yourself time reading instructions and have some patience.

PaddyM7

Thank Monotpye, I really appreicate the help

ShadowHearth

that dell deal is like plague here

they did a sneaky thing, where they prety much give a system with no GPU. so when you got that system and add 200-300eu for a GPU that would suit that system, the price goes up to 850-900eu.

OP, if you will build yourself a pc with 900eu, you will have a system, which will be upgradable and will include all those upgrades you want to do separately.

just dont be afraid to build one. Its very easy these days. lots of step by step guides online and all of the components are plug and play ( well prety much :d )

fill in the from that we have here:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=74542374

and lads might give you better idea what can you get for same money.

Serephucus

^ That. Fill out the form Shadow linked there, and one of us will spec something up for you, see how it compares.

Connavar

If you are ok putting in a gpu and possibly a cpu cooler, you could always use the build service that hardwareversand provide

Tea_Bag

i havent been following the other thread, but my money is on a ~400W PSU in there. mostly useless for any of the more powerful modern cards. you'll upgrade the PSU and GPU, and still be left with a dud dell.