Ridlyn said:The only time you ever would need to buy from dell is if your buying a relativiely cheap computer like $500 or less. Usually anything above that they start to rip you off.
Not all Dell parts are propiatary, for the one i have, it's ONLY the CPU and mobo. They both have to be together for it to work. That's it. My friends dimension 4500 or soemthing like that. He swapped OUT everything when he learned how to do this stuff.
New Case Some cheap case
New RAM 1gb corsiar value select
New Video Card geforce 6600
New HDD 120gb IDE
Although he didnt spent much he made a computer that cant even play cod 1 into a pc that can play cod 2 with med graphics.
Even I did some upgrading to my dell(bought it before i knew you could build them). Put 2gb of ram in it, another hdd, modded the side to put a fan on, put in a pci slot fan, mx440 to a geforce 6800 w/ vf700-cu, im thinking of buying a 7800gs, new case and psu.
i believe their PSUs are also proprietary, and the case (but then again all prebuilding companies cases are, lol)