Dell Dimension E521 full upgrade

Turn your piece o' crap dell into a fairly good gaming computer! Who would have though?
All you need is a brain, two hands, a screw driver and some cash for parts, or fast feet to steal the parts just kidding, don't steal... Pirate software instead ;)
Before I upgraded, it struggled playing bad games, now it plays anything! (even the dreaded GTA4)
Leave a comment if you want any more info or another instruction vid :)

(BTW, the motherboard on the E521 supports up to 4GB, 1GB per slot, I was too cheap to buy 4GB's)

Stay tuned, I'll have a tutorial on how to run Mac OS X 10.5.2 leopard on your E521 soon!

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• Dell
• Gaming
• Computer
• E521
• Dimension
• Upgrade
• Modding
• Nvidia
• Geforce
• Install

[scottiZepidemic]

i don't need to upgrade my cpu?

[thejoshman117]

@scottiZepidemic you can if you want... this video is pretty old now and I honestly don't personally think an E521 is worth upgrading anymore.

[SevereIDAHO]

Cool video man, I was wondering if you installed a new Power supply to work with the videocard? Last time I went to Best Buy the guy was saying I need a new Power supply but I didnt have the money so I just went without a new video card.  Seeing your video has made me feel optimistic about my system again. haha.

[thejoshman117]

@SevereIDAHO haha, I work at best buy too :P what kind of card were you looking at? and for the love of god do not buy a power supply from best buy. I don't know about where you live but where I am we only have Dynex and Rocketfish PSUs. Go to a good computer store and get yourself a coolermaster or any other good brand. Most of the time there is almost no price difference. But ya, if the card requires more than 305W you may need a new PSU.

[yomomma93635]

ok this is my situation. i just got a dell dimension xps t500. old ass clunker that my uncle gave me. who ever had it loaded windows xp professional to it and a secondary 20 gig hard disk. it needs more ram but the max ram my computer holds is 768 Megs. i know i need to basically gut this thing out and change everything but what should i choose? i know i need a new motherboard/soundcard/videocar­d/processor setup but what should i get. im an entry level computer dude with no REAL knowledge.

[thejoshman117]

@yomomma93635 If your going to be replacing all those parts I would just either buy a new computer or build one. Building a new one will open up many more possibilities in terms of what parts you can use. Do a bit of research if your worried your not knowledgeable enough , anybody can build computer these days.

[thejoshman117]

@Jasmir1988 Wow man, your a fucking cockbag. This video was made almost two years ago. Not only was It supposed to be an extreme budget mod but I was still just getting into computers so I didn't exactly know a shitload about them. Just made a small video to help a few people out and seeing how many comments I've responded to and the fact that it's been viewed over 10,000 times I'd say I have. Never said it was a supercomputer. I hate pointless internet attackers. Post your shit elsewhere.

[rymax99]

still an ok system in 2011

[motorbikesrule125]

Can I tell u something do u no the bit u toke out the two screws well u don't have to do that if u look u will see the black clip just push it and it pops out with the metal bit most dimension ar like that

[erik120719]

i still have a e521 with 4gb RAM and a ATI Radeon HD 4830 ( rates 7.2 in 7 x64 ultimate) , it has the 3800+ dual core and i can play just about anything at max settings...i frequent all the Crysis games.

[AltirisX]

wow your a pretty stupid to tell us that it doesnt matter which way to put the ram in, theres only one way.

[OMGYourMother]

This was my first comp in 07. :)

[explodyhead]

Do you recall the voltage of the ram?

[haqzuk]

the big black box in the centre is blocking the 2cm at the end of the HD5670?? what should i do?? can i cut a bit off the case

[qasim0004]

After you install the video card which slot do you plug the DVI cable to? (i have two slots one from my motherboard and one from my video card)

[darthbandon10]

@Nissi210 Radeon HD4550 or Geforce 8400GS, they have better HD\bluray video acceleration features. Anything more is overkill.

[darthbandon10]

@blayx You're out of luck, the E521 uses BTX layout which reverses the position of expansion slots preventing you from using dual-slot graphics cards.

In any case, the CPUs it can take would bottleneck that card like crazy, anything more than a 7900GT\X1800XT is pointless really...

[rwmtiger]

you know that black thing in 2:20 i hate to tell you think./ there a button that unlock that black thing -.- that will let you add and remove card. you did not need to remove"black thing that is call a card lock...