Please help - Hardware Question - Upgrade

Community Forums/General Help/Please help - Hardware Question - Upgrade

nrasool(Posted 2012) [#1]
Hi Everyone, Hope you all okay.

I am really useless in hardware, whether upgrading or good systems around, so I hope you don't think for me asking some advise

I was given a Dell PowerEdge T105, it is a low cost server, spec can be found dell website

It has an Dual Core AMD opteron Proccessor 1216 2.40GHZ with 6 gig of RAM. Because the video card is rubbish as it is a server and has no sound, I think the best thing is to replace the motherboard. I just want advise on what motherboard I can put in, so I can put in a good graphic card to play Witcher 1 and 2 plus the Old Republic.

If anyone can provide any advise on the best type of motherboard for this tower system

Many thanks in advance

Kind Regards


GfK(Posted 2012) [#2]
My guess, being a server would be a BTX motherboard. That being the case, I think you might struggle to get a replacement that does what you want.


GfK(Posted 2012) [#3]
Just done some digging and the general advice is to sell it, and buy an ATX case and motherboard (and to avoid Dell stuff).


xlsior(Posted 2012) [#4]
It's probably cheaper to start from scratch and either buy or built a normal workstation, instead of having to build something around a server-formfactor -- all the parts that are going to fit will be more expensive than just buying standard ATX stuff and slapping it in a tower case.


D4NM4N(Posted 2012) [#5]
Depending on what you need it for, If you are just after a personal server (<5 users) doing light stuff like perhaps file/printer share, svn/git/merc, email and a low traffic webserver (ie. a dev server) then you are in overkill mode there... That -vs- a 'normal' PC running win/linux. (or even an embedded or nas unit running linux which could do the same job. I use a netgear nas duo for these things. It cost 250 quid and has low power consumption and I use it for all of the above).
The power drain alone would be the first off putting thing of having a medium duty server like that....

-and what they^said

Last edited 2012


nrasool(Posted 2012) [#6]
Hi Everyone, Many thanks for your advise on this. I will be on the hunt for a new system and maybe strip the hard drives of this and memory

Nice one :-)


GfK(Posted 2012) [#7]
Go to http://www.cclonline.com matey! I got myself a Gigabyte ATX board, Intel i5-2400 quad core CPU @ 3.1GHz and 8GB Corsair RAM for under £240. I also got a GeForce GT430 1GB graphics card for £40 - I don't play games but after checking out some youtube videos it seems to play most stuff really well.

I rarely go anywhere else for PC parts as I don't often find anywhere cheaper.

Last edited 2012


nrasool(Posted 2012) [#8]
Nice one Gfk, thanks alot mate, that will def help me out here :-)

Kind Regards