Proprietary Dell - the saga continues

WE'VE HAD A FAIR BIT of correspondence about the fact that if you buy a Dell box it's not easily upgradable, and it turns out this has been the situation for quite a few years now.

See Dell machines not standard Pcs

Not that you'd figure this out fast if you were a new punter and didn't know about it.

We also heard that Gateway has been known to indulge in the proprietary practice too - we know not everyone wants to mess around with power supply units and with replacing motherboards, but expect quite a few people do.

One reader has sent us a ding-dong-dell he had with the corporation and the exchange is well worth reading.

LBJwrites:

Dear Mike,

The non-standard nature of Dell PCs extends to approx the time of the Pentium II and presumably the dawn of ATX, I had a 66MHz FSB 333MHz PII in February 1998.

My attempts to replace the PSU were somewhat thwarted by the non-standard PSU connections on the motherboard. I was about to replace both the motherboard and PSU when I discovered that I couldn't use the case with a standard ATX board as the hard drive lights and power/reset button connects are non-standard, although it is possible to re-wire the cables.

In 1999, I searched the Dell US forums and found that in some cases the PCI slots on standard boards wouldn't line up with the case holes!

At that I complained to Dell UK and USA by forum posting and email for claiming to sell me an ATX standard PC that was not, the official reply was that Dell advices the purchase of a new case, PSU, etc for users wishing to upgrade/build PCs. Some of my original emails that I've managed to dredge up:

Topic: Power supply/cables (1 of 2), Read 15 times
Conf: Upgrade - Hardware
From: ......
Date: Tuesday, April 27, 1999 02:51 PM

Please can you provide schematics and an explanation of JBF2, HD LED and POWER/3.3v couplings and pins on a AL440LX OEM motherboard supplied with the Dell XPSD_ system.

As these do not correspond to standard ATX motherboard connections/ports found on third party/intel boards. An understanding is important for those of us who wish to upgrade our systems whilst keeping a Dell case and PSU.

If you will not do this, will you sell parts/motherboards that are compatible with the Dell power supply/cable setup?

Topic: Power supply/cables (2 of 2), Read 8 times
Conf: Upgrade - Hardware
From: Tommy King [ DELL ]
Date: Friday, April 30, 1999 12:43 PM

I will not have that information on the pin-outs. This is why we advise people when they are building a new system to purchase a new case and power supply. We build our cases and power supplies for our system boards.

Since then I have advised any colleagues against buying Dell unless they are unlikely to need more power or processor upgrades. Subsequently, I used a Powerleap adapter with a Celeron 466 for more oomph during 2000, now I use AMD!

CHAD PAGE writes:

This story's kind of old news - it applies to the Dell Dimension XPS and 4100 lines. The newer products, unfortunatly, were designed by the Optiplex team and no longer use Intel-made motherboards. News is they placed a huge order with Hong Hai (Foxconn) last year which made Foxconn the largest motherboard company overnight. The P4-series Dimensions will not fit a standard motherboard. And Optiplexs have always been a different kettle of fish, but at least less fishy than they used to be.

www.centrix-intl.com sells on their OEM page an adapter cable too, for the P2/P3 Dimensions.

DAVE FARQUHAR says:

Hi Mike, I'm a freelance author, with one book published by O'Reilly to my credit and a few appearances in Computer Shopper UK.

I visited the Scott Mueller link you referenced at http://www.theinquirer.net/15040206.htm, and just to alert you, I'm not certain that Scott Mueller's dates on the Dell systems are correct. In late 1998, I attempted to upgrade a Dell P133-based system with an AOpen AX59Pro motherboard, in order to get around the nasty memory limitations in Intel's 430VX chipset. I knew the motherboard worked because I pulled it out of another working system. The board didn't work in the Dell. Then, when I reinstalled it in the system I pulled it from, it didn't work there either.

Fortunately I didn't kill the power supply so I was able to get the system up and running again by replacing the factory board.

This leads me to believe that Dell has engaged in the practice of nonstandard wiring since 1996.

My recommendation to my readers has always been to replace the power supply when replacing a motherboard in a Dell, since standard ATX power supplies easily bolt into the Dell cases. Any brand-name power supply purchased at retail (Sparkle, Antec, Enermax, etc.) is likely to be of higher quality than the stock Dell power supply anyway, but that's an additional upgrade expense people may not consider.

I suspect the reason this hasn't been more widely known is that Dell mostly sells to corporations and has only recently gone after the consumer market in aggressive fashion, and corporations rarely replace motherboards. The labor involved in making the swap, then reinstalling the operating system and applications, costs too much. There's less labor involved in replacing the system, and then you have a system covered under warranty.

Incidentally, while Gateway does use the standard ATX pinout, many Gateway cases use an odd-shaped power supply. So while an aftermarket power supply will function electrically, it'll take some cutting and drilling on the case to allow you to bolt it in. Most people will prefer to just buy a new case if the power supply in their Gateway dies--and the power supply is usually the first component to go in a Gateway, in my experience.