I have a Dell Dimension

I had a detailed look at the build of this PC and unfortunately , I cannot recommend any motherboard as non will fit. What Dell does is they create their own cases and motherboards to fit only that Dell product to prohibit you from doing replacements other than through Dell. Thus , they do not conform to the ATX or MINI ATX standard sizes. This makes it incredibly difficult because no major manufacturer (barring Dell) will spend that much money to develop a part that will fit only one type of PC.

Depending on what you need to upgrade I would suggest the following.

If you need a new motherboard , cpu or a PCI-E graphics card(ie , major upgrades) I would suggest you cut your losses and buy a ATX case. You will be able to transfer the Hard drives , Cd-rom , Power supply and depending on what type of motherboard you want to replace it with , the Ram. I would personally splurge on getting at lease PCI-E with ddr800 ram and a CPU socket to match a core 2 chip of your choice. But this would mean basically buying a new PC which is what I would do. It does not help you to spend a heap of money on doing a "minor" upgrade and it doesn't really extend the usable lifetime of the pc by that much. Rather save up and buy a new PC when you can afford it.

If you only need a bigger hard drive , more memory or better cpu (which I don't suppose is your situation) I would keep the current motherboard and rather just buy compatible parts for that motherboard as this will fit fine. You might still then have problems with the BIOS as I know Dell also disables some features to prevent some kinds of upgrades. So , I do not recommend this.

When you buy a new PC , make sure that the case is ATX or MINI ATX as 98% of parts will fit these cases.

Feel free to contact me if you need more advice or information.

Kind Regards
Stephan
Stephan

Hi,

This might be a problem. People in the past and still now discussing to switch the Motherboard which is not a Good Deal. There is a logical reason. No doubt, if you wish you could try to use some other Motherboard but there would be some problems. It's not easy to get a substitute specially with Dell and Acer. Second, the GPU - This is a major issue. You would see conflicts if you would switch to some other motherboard.

Let me know, if need further assistance.

Hope i helped you.

Thanks for using ' Fixya ' and have a nice day!!

Check on dell cpu cabinet you find some screw position there.
Just put that bord into it then fix it.
Let me know if you need more assistance.
Thanks.