Dell Precision 650 found in the trash...

Drenlin

Drenlin

Active Member
So a friend of mine's stepdad found this thing at the dump, where he works. Dual Socket 604 Xeons(gallatin, 3.06GHz, 533 FSB), DDR RAM, and according to dell AGP 8X Pro110.

He wants to use it for mild gaming...MMO's mostly. Maybe a couple of older RPG's. I figure we can toss ~$120 into it and have it up and running. Will it work?

(currently, he has a Compaq with an old 2.6 gig Celeron, 64MB integrated graphics, and a dead RAM slot...this has to be better, right?)

Here's dell's page on its service tag:
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a362/mutant_corn/one-time posts/dp650.jpg

And an ad for it:
http://www.itema-pg.com/Promo/2008/DELL Noteboook 22-7/ws650_spec.pdf
 
pretty much anything will run a mmo that should be enough but may i ask wat u need to throw the 120 $ in for?
 
Well it was in the trash, so we assume something doesn't work, and it's missing a processor. Worst-case scenario, it needs a new mobo and a couple of processors. (they're dirt cheap)

We also may need some more RAM...it has 4 slots but all we have is 256MB sticks.

The rest was for a better video card, if this one doesn't work. And possibly a reinforced steel table to hold the thing...it's effing heavy.

So it'll do ok then? It seems logical that it would but I'd never used a xeon before...safer to ask, you know?

Thanks! :)
 
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It's not like it was rolling around in trash, guys....it's perfectly clean. This wasn't at the landfill, it was at the depot, and hadn't been processed...it never touched all those mysterious juices. His stepdad has actually pulled quite a few perfectly good computers out of there...It's amazing what people will throw out.

Neither of us has the money to buy a new system, btw, and we'll likely only have to put ~$50 or so into it for new processors. Much more economical, IMO. This is his system anyway...I'm just helping to get it running.
 
Drenlin said:
Well it was in the trash, so we assume something doesn't work, and it's missing a processor. Worst-case scenario, it needs a new mobo and a couple of processors. (they're dirt cheap)

We also may need some more RAM...it has 4 slots but all we have is 256MB sticks.
Click to expand...

Where's the gain here? Needs a new mobo, RAM, and a processor(s).?

Does it have hard drives? Power supply?

I would find out how much all that's going to cost, and compare that to a budget gaming rig with an AM3 Dual core, and subtract the stuff you can use from the garbage picked unit.
 
Bodaggit23 said:
Where's the gain here? Needs a new mobo, RAM, and a processor(s).?

Does it have hard drives? Power supply?

I would find out how much all that's going to cost, and compare that to a budget gaming rig with an AM3 Dual core, and subtract the stuff you can use from the garbage picked unit.
Click to expand...

Yeah, man, there is no way you will be able to only spend like 50 bucks to get a dump-computer working!

I'd be shocked!

Seriously, go on BestBuy website and filter the desktops from 250-500 bucks, there are a bunch of very decent computers in the list..surely you can afford 300-400 bucks for a brand-new computer, which will have warranty plus keyboard and mouse!

Not worth spending any money on the unknown (a.k.a. a dumpster computer)
 
It does have a PSU and drives, yes. And two processors + a mobo is maybe $100...but I doubt it'll even take that. He doesn't have the cash to be building a new system.

Ex:
Processors
Mobo

See? We'll try processors first (the 3.2 is actually an upgrade), and if that doesn't work, mobo. The PSU is good as far as we can tell (measured with a DMM), and all the rest is here as well.
 
Drenlin said:
It does have a PSU and drives, yes. And two processors + a mobo is maybe $100...but I doubt it'll even take that. He doesn't have the cash to be building a new system.

Ex:
Processors
Mobo

See? We'll try processors first (the 3.2 is actually an upgrade), and if that doesn't work, mobo. The PSU is good as far as we can tell (measured with a DMM), and all the rest is here as well.
Click to expand...

Cool man, let us know how it all goes!!!!!
 
lol ;)

I was kind of skeptical at first when I saw those prices, TBH, but I guess it makes sense...those are pentium 4 era CPU's. Good for people on a terrible budget though. It supports hyper-threading, so it's like a wannabe quad core machine for well under $100. XD

I'll update this when something happens I guess...I don't know when he's planning to get parts for it. At this point all we can do is attempt to boot it with just the one processor, when he finally brings it back home. I doubt it'll work...I just want to see what it does, and maybe figure out why it was trashed. For all we know they could have just dumped it because it was old and not worth much. *fingers crossed*

edit: just out of curiosity, why the heck are these old workstations so darned cheap anyway? It seems like most of them could just about keep up with today's bog standard computers, and probably play most games on decent settings. I don't get it. :confused:
 
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