Forgot to mention

I forgot to mention, I used an adapter to plug the second hard drive in using the slimline power provided by the Optiplex PSU.  Just unplug the SATA/power from the optical drive, plug it into this adapter, and plug the other end into your hard drive as usual.  That way, all cables are in use inside the case, nothing's left hanging ;) 


Here's what it looks like:

Slimline 13 pin SATA Male to 22 Pin SATA Female Cable Adapter

Up and running

I only ran into one issue with this install.  I was unable to boot from the slim DVD drive while connected to the internal USB.  I had to disconnect the second hard drive and re-attach the DVD drive to sata1, install, then re-attach the second hard drive once I was done.  All 3 drives are up and running now in Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit!  Video card installed no problem, drivers are up date as of yesterday's release from AMD.


Here's my WEI score.  Because of the SSD, my bottleneck right now is the CPU.  Without a higher end CPU, this is pretty much as fast as this machine can get at this time.  Not bad, little Optiplex! =)

RAM upgrade

Nothing too exciting here, upgraded from 4GB to 8GB.  Strangely enough, Windows see all 8GB, although only 2.96GB are usable.  When I had 4GB in there, I think it said 3.25GB were available.  Strange.  In any case, Windows 7 64bit is coming soon so all that RAM will be usable soon enough! 

Optical drive arrangement

The Optiplex 760 comes with a slimline optical drive that looks like this:

My plan is to have this working as well as 2 hard drives.  The Optiplex 760 only comes with 2 SATA ports, one of which is occupied by this drive.  However, I discovered that there is an internal USB connector on the motherboard of this model, seen as point 11 below:

I bought a slimline SATA to USB adapter, and along with another USB adapter I had sitting around from a project long-abandoned, I hooked them up and connected them to the motherboard:

Fired up the machine and...it didn't work.  I re-seated the plug and it booted but then I didn't have a picture on my monitor when I got into Windows.  I thought it might still be loose, so I re-seated both ends again, and voila, booted up fine and the optical drive is now recognized as a removable CD drive.  Cool!

Processor upgrade

Ok, first thing is to change out this processor as I'm still waiting for a couple of parts.  2 screws and the entire heatsink apparatus lifts off the motherboard.  No problem.  I cleaned off the 8400 with some isopropyl alcohol (70%) and dropped it in the socket.  Next, I spread on some Arctic Cooling MX-2 thermal compound that I just bought.  Nice.  Popped the heatsink back in, fired up the machine, and...it works!  I wasn't too sure if this processor would work as the machine it was in was treated REALLY roughly.  Good stuff.  The processor runs at 31°C idle according to CoreTemp.  If that is indeed the actual temperature, then I'm definitely satisfied with it.


Processor upgrade successful!

Dell Optiplex 760 Upgrade Project!

I have a Dell Optiplex 760 SFF (small form factor) on my hands, so I'm going to try to attempt to make this thing as fast as possible.  I always liked this model/form factor from Dell.  I needed a project to work on, so here we go...

Here's what's planned:

• CPU: upgrade from Intel Core 2 Duo 7300 2.66 GHz to Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3GHz.  Processor salvaged from a dead machine, not sure if it's even working.  Fingers crossed.
• RAM: upgrade from 4GB DDR2 800MHz to 8GB DDR2 800MHz (max for this system).
• OS: upgrade from no OS to Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
• HDD: upgrade from 160GB 7200RPM WD HDD to 1x64GB Crucial m4 SSD + 1x500GB Western Digital 2.5" HDD (will try to dual mount both in the standard Dell 3.5" HDD caddy using a Scythe Twin Mounter or a SILVERSTONE SDP08 3.5 to 2 X 2.5-Inch Bay Converter.  The goal is to have 2 hard drives as well as the optical drive all functioning.  Should be a pretty cool trick since this machine only has 1 SATA connector and 1 slimline SATA connector for the optical drive. =)
• GRAPHICS: upgrade from Integrated Intel to AMD/Sapphire Radeon HD6670