Dell Drop Kicks Proprietary Parts
Posted 02/26/08 at 01:25:52 PM by Gordon Mah Ung
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Dell, long dinged for using proprietary hardware in its gaming PCs, has seen the light. The company said such annoying traits such as proprietary motherboards and power supplies is now a thing of the past.
The first XPS to shed the proprietary hardware will be the new budget XPS630 gaming machine. Based on the nForce 650 ichipset, Dell claims you can swap the board, PSU out for any other ATX-spec hardware.
The change is a long overdue. In the past, Dell has used designs that looked ATX-like but were actually not. If you tried to swap the power supply in your Pentium III Dimension XPS B 733R years ago, you would have been greeted by charred motherboard as the company actually wired its PSU’s differently than the industry but did not key them differently. For years, PC Power and Cooling has made small side business selling Dell upgrade PSUs. More recently, the company has been called out over BTX support and even using a proprietary power plug in its more recent XPS gaming rigs.
Why the use of proprietary designs? Cynical observers have said the company was just trying to lock customers into buying parts exclusively from Dell. The company has long defended the practice by saying that the variations from spec were because its engineers found the specs to be lacking. But the heat from critics and machines such as Hewlett-Packard’s Blackbird 002 going all ATX apparently have forced Dell to see the light. Company officials said the mantra in Dell engineering is that varying from the spec’s must be avoided at all costs.
The change from proprietary parts won’t be the only new trick for the XPS630 though. Dell has taken a page from Hewlett-Packard and claims the XPS 630 will support either Nvidia’s dual-card SLI or AMD’s dual-card CrossFire cards. How can Dell do this? Maximum PC spoke to AMD graphics officials who said the capability is being offered only to select OEMs who take the responsibility for making sure the drivers fully work with the BIOSes on the motherboards.
So why not just release such a driver to the public to let any nForce-user run CrossFire? The company said it is worried that a certain company could affect the performance of its cards when CrossFire is run on an SLI board so public support just isn’t going to happen. In the case of Dell and HP, AMD feels both have enough influence to keep performance problems from cropping up on their systems. For now, the CrossFire support is only through drivers obtained directly from Dell.
Dell says the XPS 630 will also be the first tier one OEM system to support Nvidia’s Enthusiast System Architecture. In the XPS 630’s case, ESA will let the user control the lights in the system. ESA support for the PSU or other components will not be initially supported.
The $1,300 version of the XPS 630 will ship with a 2.4GHz Core 2 Quad Q6600, GeForce 8800GT and a 750 watt power supply. Dell said the BIOS on the XPS 630 will support overclocking and is upgradeable to both dual and quad-core Intel Penryn CPUs.
Nice one, Dell
Submitted by cojerk on Tue, 03/04/2008 - 2:11am
This is good news but FTA: "More recently, the company has been called out over BTX support"
What exactly is the problem with BTX? Granted the adoption has been poor; but it's hardly proprietary. I think BTX is the key if you want a wicked silent system of any power to speak of using conventional cooling methods.
Submitted by jcdecker on Tue, 03/04/2008 - 9:12am
I agree, the IDEA behind BTX is good.
I own a computer store, and I can assure you that BTX motherboards do burn out. Just the other day one came in. I hopped on NewEgg's web site and search for BTX, and... Hold on! They don't have ANY?!?! This is an Intel standard, so I'll check on their mobos. What? Intel doesn't make them anymore, either? Wow, for such a good idea, it sure doesn't have much industry support. Oh, well.
Anyway, I ended up ordering one from Dell at around a 25% premium from an ASUS or MSI board.
jcdecker
Submitted by dak2002 on Sat, 03/01/2008 - 6:20pm
Dell drops kicks proprietary parts nope. This article is wrong! I work for dell and the 720 was able to swap out the powersupply and mobo also. But the 720h2c you could not. This will be a One time thing and that is all it will be, maybe more in the future but they are not changer there line of products to that. Just because they do it for one machine doesn't mean they will do it for all, keep that in mind when buying a dell. Don't get me wrong they are great machines. Just keeped to the 720 or this new one if you don't like proprietary parts. Anys enjoy.
Submitted by althelas on Fri, 02/29/2008 - 7:33pm
But I didn't know Dell's proprietary parts included things as "standard" as the power supply. Glad I read this article before I decided to try "upgrading" my aging Intel 820 based Dell. Thanks Maximumpc!
Look! A Distraction!
Submitted by D3lt4 on Thu, 02/28/2008 - 3:45pm
Wow, took them a while. Just shows how lame they are.
"Dudeeee you're getting a dell"
Submitted by mortar on Thu, 02/28/2008 - 12:48pm
I have to admit, I didn't know about this. There was a time when Dell, by default, didn't use proprietary parts. In fact, that was one of the reasons I used to recommend Dell to folks. I even used to own a Dell that didn't have such parts.
Well, I'm glad they're not doing it anymore, but like someone else said, I wonder if it's an across-the-board policy.
Submitted by Shalbatana on Wed, 02/27/2008 - 7:20am
Now I can finally recommend Dell to people looking for advice on a new machine. Perhaps I'll even consider them when it's time to upgrade my wife's machine.
Wonder if it will be across the board? Knowing Dell, some models will still be locked in.
Funny thing is... why would "a certain company" care to take the time to mess with SLI speed? They're not in any danger of losing the speed race any time soon.
There's no time like the future.
It's about time and that's
Submitted by Humpfester on Tue, 02/26/2008 - 9:26pm
It's about time and that's all I've got to say about that.
Submitted by HeartBurnKid on Tue, 02/26/2008 - 3:11pm
Looks like a damn good machine for the price... I may have to take advantage of my business partner discount. :)
Submitted by Abstrakt on Tue, 02/26/2008 - 5:09pm
its cool that dell is not using proprietary parts and all.. I'd still rather build my own though : P I do agree that this is very noob friendly in the way that it is overclockable and much more upgradable.
Very good to know that Dell is opening up finally...
Submitted by 8IronBob on Wed, 02/27/2008 - 10:06am
I'm just glad that Dell is finally letting users have that non-exclusive upgradability once and for all. After all, if Dell wants their systems to last a while, it should be the customers' own choice as far as what components they wish to upgrade to, and not Dell's upgrade options. Just hope that we'll see more companies allowing open upgrades like this.
Submitted by soggybomb on Tue, 02/26/2008 - 2:15pm
many people do not look outside the big names for their pcs. i feel bad for a shmuck who buys a PC (with proprietary parts) that uses it, learns more about it, wants to upgrade DIY, and fries his PC. this will make upgrading more accessible and available to the mainstream
Looks like I'll have to get one
Submitted by Number Six on Tue, 02/26/2008 - 1:53pm
To test it out... I hope Dell unlocked the FSB in the BIOS ;-)
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