Dell 5150 Dual Core 2.8GHz inc 19" LCD Monitor & Free Printer £429 (merged)

hobo28

Hi all

I'm after the 24" LCD monitor and it works out a LOT cheaper if I buy this system with the LCD then sell the base unit seperately. Does anyone by any chance just want the base unit and we can work out an mutually equitable split? Please PM me if you do.

Thanks

[EDIT] Thanks all for the PM's.

emuemu

sent u a pm hobo :j

JIT_3

hobo28

PM sent.

valiant

darkovo wrote:

So plugs into the PCI-Express connection and gives extra outputs I presume.

Any idea how much these cards are? Or should I just get an ATI or nVidia card with DVI out etc instead (can get a decent card for gaming and TV for £100 ish).

Has anyone an answer to the above question? I can't find any ADD2 cards with S-Video/Composite out sockets. They all seem to have just one DVI socket. It's like it seems to be possible to make one of these cards but no manufacturer has produced one yet.

Also be aware that in my Googling I came across a reference to a possible restriction on the ADD2 cards with DVI sockets. It seems there is a possibility that they don't support DVI to VGA converters. So if you buy one of these make sure you have a DVI capable monitor to use it with.


Valiant

borgs

valiant wrote:

Has anyone an answer to the above question? I can't find any ADD2 cards with S-Video/Composite out sockets. They all seem to have just one DVI socket. It's like it seems to be possible to make one of these cards but no manufacturer has produced one yet.

Also be aware that in my Googling I came across a reference to a possible restriction on the ADD2 cards with DVI sockets. It seems there is a possibility that they don't support DVI to VGA converters. So if you buy one of these make sure you have a DVI capable monitor to use it with.


Valiant

I've been looking but haven't found any with more than one DVI-D socket yet.

I'm mainly after a multi-monitor setup myself but wanted to test the PC as a possible media center connected to a CRT widescreen.

tunesurfer

Borgs if your not after the very best graphics you could use one of the cards from a gx280 optiplex. I think they do dual monitors - try a google for x300 or x600 graphics. Remember you need the pci-e and I dont know if yours is a low profile card or not in your machines I had the same prob when I bought my gx and needed two outputs. I just put in a 16x 256 low profile - does all i ask of it.

Horlock

Anyone got any advice on what to do about a noisy one of these. Mine makes a racket - I know that dells are normally quiet - so it is definately a fault - when I opened it up I thought I saw a loose screw which is possibly viabrating but after trying to remove it it disappeared (somewhere inside possibly under the motherboard) but the noise continues.

I don't know if it's easy to get the motherboard out or am I better contacting Dell and asking them to fix it?

hobo28

Horlock wrote:

Anyone got any advice on what to do about a noisy one of these. Mine makes a racket - I know that dells are normally quiet - so it is definately a fault - when I opened it up I thought I saw a loose screw which is possibly viabrating but after trying to remove it it disappeared (somewhere inside possibly under the motherboard) but the noise continues.

I don't know if it's easy to get the motherboard out or am I better contacting Dell and asking them to fix it?

You should be able to find out what it is making the noise by just unplugging the power lead from each device one at a time and powering it on. So for example, unplug the power lead from the DVD drive, turn on....is it still making racket? If so, replace and try something else.

You can even unplug the CPU heatsink/fan to test that. I'd only recommend doing it for a couple of seconds though as it will heat up fast and never remove the heatsink.

Depends on how confident you are but PC hardware isn't rocket science.

Horlock

It's definately vibration based - probably the heatsink - so I might give un plugging it a go - but it does sound dodgy.

I just gave the case a shake and it rattles like crazy I think that the person who put it together must have just dropped a screw or two inside - does anyone know if there is a way to take the Left hand side off LHS. I can take the RHS off - but you shouldn't need to get the LHS off because everything is visible from RHS - everything bar the vibrating something. Obviously I don't know that the problem lies therein - but my current guess is that the problem is that there are loose screws inside which vibrate against the LHS when teh case is upright.

Mark38

Hi.

I also had a vibration problem though Im unsure if its caused by the same thing as yours.

These PC's are usually almost inaudible, but after a few weeks my PC gave off a slight irrating vibrating sound which I presumed was metal - but in my instance the noise is caused by cheap thin plastic inserts that house the optical drives (DVD RW + seperate CD RW + Floppy) and the front of the PC tower.

I found a simple light tap of the housing cured the prob for a good while but it kept coming back, so, scratching my head of how I could wedge something somewhere descreetly to fix the problem, I decided on 2 x 1 pence coins ontop of 1 X 2 pence coin pushed under the bottom of the front [centre] of the case - this causes the front of the PC to rise slightly (BTW - its completely unnoticeable to the human eye & you cant see the coins if you push the coins back far enough (i used a credit card to push them back)

The long and the short of it is that it works for me

HTH,

M.