e_dogg

I bought a Dell Inspiron for my wife about a year ago since it was such a screaming deal for her needs (~$500 for a 3ghz Pentium D / 2gb ram / 256mb video card / 19" LCD).

Since I bought it, I've added a DVD burner and a 2nd hard drive and both times I've opened the case, I've thought "why doesn't anyone else make a case this amazing?" Many people bash on Dell, but after owning and upgrading one, I think that they're really not a bad system unless you want to overclock.

In order to open the case, you pull a lever on the top, which pops the side out. Once the case is open, the 5.25" drive bay covers have extra screws in stored in them for attaching your DVD burner. For installing 3.5" drives, you simply slip out a little plastic sleeve, place the drive in it, and slide the sleeve back into the case.

There are even clips for cable management and the existing cables are so neatly arranged that there's very little air flow obstruction. This is important since there's only 1 exhaust fan in the back of the case for the entire system but even through the summer we haven't had any heat problems with it.

Anyway, I just thought I'd share just how great these cases are. It would be pretty cool if other companies took some of these cues or even if Dell sold their cases separately.

If I get a chance in the next day or two, I'll post up some pics.

davek

Yes, dell really does do a good job at what it does.

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Wireless

Yeah, I know...
I'll show you a picture of my Dell E510's case.. Simply amazing O_O



Ignore the yellow power molex, & the red sata cable aimed up towards the top.

Neither are plugged into anything.
Just picture it without those

Just realized the date on this post..
but hey
lol

xz3rorom3o

I've had to repair 2 which look very similar to the picture in the above post and I do not think they are "great." They need to do a better design with airflow. ATLEAST have another fan for the exhaust. Then maybe it will be an "okay" case.

h4rdcor3

Any of the newer dell cases are pretty nice, all cables routed flat and allow good air flow and a nice fan/heatsink usually. but get out of that line and into the clamshells, you'll start pulling hairs. Probably the worst case design ever! Swapping out motherboards on those GX260's was a royal pain (the mobo's had bulging/leaky capacitors so i did a ton of them). The small form factors were even worse.

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Krunk_Kracker

Thread revival FTL, lol.


The clamshell cases are even easier than that.....

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SentryOptic

I gotta say, the clamshell designs are ridiculous.

It separates the computer into two seperate parts to work with... some people might consider this "categorizing", but I'd call it "in-the-way".

When opening up a friends dell in order to work on the motherboard (RAM trouble), I kept trying to pull out a stick of RAM and I kept letting go on accident and my hand would fly back and get cut on the hard drive cage worse than an emo on halloween.


Meh. To each his own.

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slytown

Why knock thread revivals? I like 'em.

Dell is a great company. Cheap computers for the average user.

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kpo6969

I have the E521. Added 2 exhaust fans at back of my case and a pci slot fan under my 8800GT. Same layout as E510.
Not the best but made it the best I could.

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[Alsharifi]

yea ive also got a E510...the case it pretty cool,i mean it is a dell...bought it like 2 years ago--Pentium D 2.8 ghz,1 gb ram, and a 17" lcd for like $700.