Am I able to reuse this case?

Hello all,
I recently got my hands on this old Dell XPS 720 system. It must have been killer in its day, but now not as much (except it has a 1000W PS!).
My question is: am I able to rip out the guts and upgrade the system? Has anyone tried doing this?

Thanks.

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What a beauty!

Motherboard/PSU mounting standards have remained static for decades.

PSUs haven’t changed much either with the exception of some new connectors but you can easily get adapters if you’re missing 1 or 2 pins.

Go for it. Looks like a great project.

(edit: wrong for this case, see next post)

Not without some modifications it looks like. Dell uses or used a lot of proprietary cases. According to this forum post it isn’t factory ready for an ATX mobo. It used a BTX mobo.

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Thank haroldcrews & Ulfnic.
This is more involved than I was hoping it would be.

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I don’t know about this particular Dell but they tend to use non ATX power supplies as well. Some don’t have a 24 pin connector instead providing 12v only to the motherboard and letting the motherboard power the peripherals such as sata devices.

Even if you do all of the modifications and make things fit, that beast with 1000W PS and all of those fans would be a power hog. I don’t know where you are located but here in the US my guess, from experience, is that would cost ~$1 a day to run.

It would be a shame to not use that case!

Oh, you HAVE to use this case. I am willing to bet you would be able to make this work and if you need to make some modifications, I am willing to be you could 3D print some standoffs to make it work. This is super cool and would look great in beige. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Ok so this takes me back. But @haroldcrews is correct that Dell even though they did make some very cool design choices (using plastic levers instead of screws, captive screws and bit thumb wheel to turn) did keep a lot of things custom. Like the mother boards and io shield and expansion slots/daughter cards.

However, if you want to just use the case, and you are not afraid of using a dremel drill and soldering iron I don’t see why you couldn’t ‘make’ a mini-itx board fit. The PSU will have to have custom mounting and cables. But if you just want the aesthetics of the case then gut it and design a new inside for it. If you have a 3D printer, you should be able to design any pieces you need to hold things as close to the original design as you can.

Good luck. Feel free to share your ideas here too.

Chat about this case DLN Xtend:

Indeed, it is a totally awesome case. Beige and black would make it even better. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Hello All.
Wow, Thank you for the interest in the case.
I’ll try to get some more pictures posted. I’ll dismantle parts of it, pull the pieces out, and see if I can give a side by side with standard parts to show the differences.
I’ve got an open chassis ATX frame on order that I hope will fit the dimensions of the inside of the case, and let me mount a regular motherboard. It should hopefully be here within the next month.

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Mini Update:
My son is all keen on ripping the guts out and cutting the case to fit, so hopefully we can find a time to do that together.
The open case arrived early.
Processing: Open ATX Case.jpg…

So I’m going to test mount an older ATX motherboard and video card on it to see if anything even fits right.

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I am certainly hoping you make it work to meet all your expectations.

Processing: 20211105_192353.jpg…
Processing: 20211105_192359.jpg…
Processing: 20211105_192424.jpg…
Processing: 20211105_192440.jpg…
Processing: 20211105_192454.jpg…

Are these pictures working for anybody?

No and looking at the markup it’s:

[Processing: 20211105_192353.jpg...]()
[Processing: 20211105_192359.jpg...]()
[Processing: 20211105_192424.jpg...]()
[Processing: 20211105_192440.jpg...]()
[Processing: 20211105_192454.jpg...]()

What would be the steps to reproduce the problem? Picture size could be an issue and you may need to do them 1 at a time.

Looking forward to those pictures. :slight_smile:

I didn’t think I was doing anything special.
I have tried to add the pictures from both Firefox & Edge.
I have done the simple drag & drop on to the Reply box, and I have clicked on the upload button and selected the pictures.
I have done this with the raw pictures and with ones that I have edited to cut down their size to about 1/5th.
The originals are around 3MB, while the edits are around 520KB.
They all just sit there Processing.

Is there a size limit? I don’t remember having that problem with the first pictures I posted.

I’ll be live streaming the teardown with my son shortly. (Twitch)
I’ll make an odysee account and post the recording there later as well.

That’s cool, you should post here when you go live.

Max image size is set to 4,096kB although nginx may have a different restriction. I’ve had success with Firefox, librewolf and ungoogled-chromium in the past. If you save it as an 80% quality 1080p JPEG it should be pretty small.

This one’s 356Kb:

Well, I’m still trying to nail down the quality vs size for the pictures. (I don’t know how the original pictures with full size uploaded with no problems)
But my son and I did the first 2 live streams.

I can’t seem to upload the 2nd one (as I have not yet grasped the fundamentals of the deposit system. I’ll have to read up)

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