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Dell XPS 420 Maintenance

  • Vampire
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6 years 7 months ago #1 by Vampire
Dell XPS 420 Maintenance was created by Vampire
Today I decided to do some maintenance on my XPS 420 :) It has not been cleaned for a few months and the case has no dust filters so it gets dusty pretty fast. We have had it since it was new back in 07' and have put in new hardware along the way as we have needed too.
The specs at the moment are:

CPU: INTEL CORE 2 QUAD Q6600 @3.0ghz
GPU: ASUS GTX 760 2GB
RAM: 8GB DDR2 Kingston HyperX
PSU: Corsair CX430
SSD: Corsair 60GB
HDD: 2x Seagate 500GB


This is how it looked before I started to clean it.





I took of the front panel to see how much dust there was behind it.



It did not look to bad, so I just used a micro fibre towel to remove the little dust that hade accumelated there.
After that I used a vacuum cleaner and the micro fibre towel to remove as much dust as I could from the pc. I did not manage to remove it all because I could not reach in to all the little crevices, but it does certanly look better after the cleaning than before :).




I decided to also remove the CPU heat sink to replace the thermal paste with some Arctic MX2 and to remove any dust from the area around the socket and the heat sink :)




If you have any questions or feedback I am happy to hear it! :)

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6 years 7 months ago - 6 years 7 months ago #2 by Nik
Replied by Nik on topic Dell XPS 420 Maintenance
you could make some cheap dust filters from a pair of old (or cheap new) nylons. just pull them over the intake fan and fasten it with a zip tie.
I recommend to use some where you can see through so that enough air can pass through them. ;)

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Because I can !!!
Last edit: 6 years 7 months ago by Nik.

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6 years 7 months ago #3 by Vampire
Replied by Vampire on topic Dell XPS 420 Maintenance
Good idea! Will try it out and see how it works :)

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6 years 7 months ago #4 by Martin
Replied by Martin on topic Dell XPS 420 Maintenance
Good job, seems we are all cleaning out our machines this week!

What is the little device in the drive bay, 3rd pic down is it a fan controller of some sort?

Martin,
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6 years 7 months ago - 6 years 7 months ago #5 by Vampire
Replied by Vampire on topic Dell XPS 420 Maintenance
Yeah seems like it ;)

Yep that is a fan controller :) It's a Coolermaster Arrogate II that I got from a system that I bought on a local Facebook group :) It has four fan connections and you can connect four thermal probs as well to make the fans ramp up and down as the temps go up and down :)

Originally it was a silver color but I did not like it so I painted it black instead :)
Last edit: 6 years 7 months ago by Vampire.

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6 years 7 months ago #6 by Martin
Replied by Martin on topic Dell XPS 420 Maintenance
ah right, I was just curious if it was something that had came with the machine from the factory as I didn't recognise it, but that makes sense.

Martin,
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6 years 7 months ago #7 by Vampire
Replied by Vampire on topic Dell XPS 420 Maintenance
Would have been cool if it was included from the factory :) I like having control of the fans in my builds at all times that is why I installed it :)

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6 years 7 months ago #8 by Martin
Replied by Martin on topic Dell XPS 420 Maintenance
I agree it frustrates me mainly with oem machines when the system is sitting on the line between speeds and the fan speed is pulsing up and down when you load the machine up. Manual control is my favourite!

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6 years 7 months ago #9 by Nik
Replied by Nik on topic Dell XPS 420 Maintenance
that's one reason for NOT having an oem system. ;)

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6 years 7 months ago #10 by Vampire
Replied by Vampire on topic Dell XPS 420 Maintenance
I think it is fun building in a OEM system because of all the flaws they have, it gives you problems to solve ;)

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6 years 7 months ago #11 by Nik
Replied by Nik on topic Dell XPS 420 Maintenance
upgrading an oem can be very funny (unless you have an old dell...).
taking care of this machines with all their minor (or major) problems is a nice thing to deal with.
but I don't wanna own a "pure" oem machine, that's pretty boring. ;)

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6 years 7 months ago #12 by Vampire
Replied by Vampire on topic Dell XPS 420 Maintenance
Yeah I could never own a stock OEM machine, because it would not be stock for very long ;)

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6 years 7 months ago #13 by Nik
Replied by Nik on topic Dell XPS 420 Maintenance
hell yeah.
maybe 24 hours, but not much longer. ;)

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6 years 7 months ago #14 by Vampire
Replied by Vampire on topic Dell XPS 420 Maintenance
If even that ;)

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6 years 7 months ago #15 by Martin
Replied by Martin on topic Dell XPS 420 Maintenance
I'm still running an OEM machine :blush:

I prefer not to talk about it hehe

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