Perl programmer for hire: download my resume (PDF).
John Bokma MexIT
freelance Perl programmer

Comments: A peek inside a Dell Vostro 200 Slim Tower

18 comments

Tuesday, the 19th of Februari the Dell Vostro 200 Slim Tower I ordered without Windows tax arrived. Back then I had unpacked the brand new computer, and placed it on my desk, but besides opening it and have a look at the inside, I hadn't done anything else with it because I've been too busy with various projects including a small SEO project for a Dutch website. Anyway, for today I had planned to take several photos of the inside of the Dell Vostro 200 Slim Tower.

Read the rest of A peek inside a Dell Vostro 200 Slim Tower.

Comments

hi, you would not belive it if I told you but we have the same system, Dell vostro slim.. and I to odered the same video card ati hd 2400 xt and the came processor.. 2.40 with L2 4mb.. and again the same.. with out windows.. N serise.. hmm.. however i also ordered a media card reader.. and my hard drive is 160 GB:-( i should have taken 320.. mistake.. will be getting a 250 in the weekend.. the system is cool.. just ordered 2 80MM led fans.. as both the fans are near a grill and would look cool at nite.. will send you picture's of that.. :-)

Posted by Sujahat at 18:18 GMT on 12 March 2008

Great photos of the Vostro slim! I just ordered one for myself, going to by a graphics card after I test out the onboard. Can you tell me if an EIDE 40 pin HD will go in as a second drive (is there a 40 pin connector) or does it need to be SATA? Thanks!

Posted by Tom at 16:55 GMT on 27 March 2008

Thanks Tom!

There is no 40 pin connector if I recall correctly. A possible solution might be to buy an IDE to USB bridge board or a SATA to IDE bridge board.

The latter looks promising to me, and it looks like it could be just connected to the IDE hard disk drive without sticking out too much.

Another option might be to put the drive in an external enclosure.

Hope this helps.

Posted by John Bokma at 17:57 GMT on 27 March 2008

We bought 3 of these for church and I'm buying one for home...one quick question...what size are those pci slot openings? They are short. Don't know what size to get when getting a pci card adapter for one of ours at church.

Posted by Suzy at 23:44 GMT on 30 March 2008

Hi,have just got the same model, going to be using it as a media center. Have had problem finding a graphics card narrow enough to fit next to my twin tuner. Do you know if the Ati would fit in with a full length card in the other PCI express slot?

Thanks

Posted by Tim at 12:39 GMT on 1 April 2008

hi John

i also have a vostro 200 silm, and i have a question, did you buy that graphic card extra ? because i buy my brand new, and i don;t have that graphic card

Posted by chong at 02:54 GMT on 21 June 2008

Hi chong,

When I ordered the Dell Vostro 200 slim online I could specify if I wanted the aforementioned graphics card, which I did. I suggest that you try to contact Dell and ask if it's possible to have the card ordered, or (probably cheaper), see if you can order it from a local/online computer shop.

Posted by John Bokma at 01:23 GMT on 26 June 2008

John - I recently installed MS Flight Simulator X. I ran the program after the instalation and the graphics were horrible. Would buying an upgraded graphics card fix this issue?

Posted by Drew at 07:08 GMT on 7 August 2008

@Drew - are you currently using the on-board graphics card?

Posted by John Bokma at 23:21 GMT on 7 August 2008

I myself have the same system. I did however buy mine without an additional video card. I bought a nvidia 8600 GT 512MB Low Profile Card from NewEgg.com: Chaintech GSV86GT 512MB GeForce 8600 GT

Card gets way too hot tho. The fan on it is not sufficient enough to keep it cool under a heavy load. I ended up putting a seperate 60mm cooling fan blowing on it to keep it cool.

I think installing a fan at the bottom of the case (would involve some dremel work) would be good for pulling in some cool air. There just is not much cooling going on in the lower half of the system.

They just came out with a 9600 GT 512MB card, however, it requires an additional power supply unlike the 8600 GT. I am now looking for another power supply that would fit in the slim case. Anyone have any ideas?

I do not play games often, but it is nice to be able to now and then if I so choose.

They next upgrade I plan on is adding another 1GB stick for a total of three, and upgrade the processor to the Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (3.00GHz,6MB L2Cache,1333FSB). Which I believe is the max this board will accept with the latest BIOS update.

I'll keep you guys posted.

Posted by DTMoody at 21:55 GMT on 14 September 2008

I put a radeon 3450 low profile card in mine and it works perfectly. I also found that with the E6750 cpu & 2gbs of RAM it would play .mkv files (using VLC or Win Media Classic) with the on-board graphics alone!

Very impressive.

Shame about the weedy PSU though, to go online with a modem I had to use a powered USB hub. It worked fine with that.

Posted by Gixxerman at 01:09 GMT on 30 September 2008

Hey john, nice PC you got there, i happen to have the same one :D but i have a question regarding the SATA thing, I'm not an expert on computers. So my question is

Do you know the SATA chipset?

I don't know how to figure this out.

Posted by Stevo at 03:49 GMT on 2 December 2008

@Stevo - I am running Ubuntu 8.10 on the Dell Vostro 200 ST:

lspci | grep -i sata
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801IR/IO/IH (ICH9R/DO/DH) 4 port SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.5 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) 2 port SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)

I hope that answers your question.

Posted by John Bokma at 18:34 GMT on 4 December 2008

You can get the 9600GT (low profile) to work on a Vostro 200 Slim...with a 6Pin Converter see the comments here: Galaxy 96GFF6VIFCXX GeForce 9600 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 SLI Supported Low Profile Video Card

Posted by Nate at 06:53 GMT on 6 December 2008

i plan to buy this machine and use it as a NAS at home which means it will have to be up 24x7, do you find the machine noisy with their fans? and the temperature of the MB and CPU under normal load?

Posted by esurfer at 13:00 GMT on 9 December 2008

Wow, this has been the best information so far on upgrading my slim Dell 530s. I just ordered a new graphics card (GeForce 8400GS 256MB DDR@ DMS-59 Dual Monitor Low Profile Solution PCI Express Video Card). This was approved for my computer by Dell, but is DID NOT WORK! The bracket was far too big to fit. I am trying to upgrade to play a new game (Fallout 3) I got for my birthday. There are a few cards on this post that would work for my computer, the ATI on the main page and the GeForce 9600 in the comments. I could not find the ATI for sale that was small and the GeForce was a little more than I wanted to spend.

Does anyone know where I could purchase a card for less than $100 that fits a slim case? That ATI HD 2400 looks good for me, where can I buy a short one of those?

Thanks so much!

Posted by Kyle at 01:43 GMT on 12 December 2008

not that much heating that i have noticed, when the system boots it makes a bit of noise but then it runs fine

Posted by zurik at 17:25 GMT on 17 December 2008

como la desa mo por completa

Posted by Anonymous at 22:30 GMT on 5 March 2011

Post a comment

Note that your comment doesn't show up immediately. I review each comment before I add it to this site.

Check the Follow this page option if you want to receive an email each time a comment is posted to this page, including yours. A link to turn this option off will be included with each email.

Internet adresses will be converted automatically. You can use the following notation to specify anchor text for a link: [url=http://example.com/]example text[/url].