Help a stranded Shadow Chaser out

[Dichotomy]

we have Dells at the office.  Every single one of them has spit the bit within the first year of operation.  I have a Compaq same comp for six years.  Never a single hardware problem.

That said I'm not saying one manufacturer is better than the other.  I've just had unhappy experiences with Dell.  Last time someone said they needed me to 'fix' their Dell I went out to the shop, grabbed a sledgehammer, and walked in their office.

'what are you doing with that?'
'I'm here to permanently 'fix' this POS'

[CAP1]

my friend runs dells in her store. she still swears by them, rather than at them, even though they're constant problems for her.

[Dichotomy]

management or should I say the owners son is a cheapskate

getting new equipment out of him is next to impossible.  Although I could manage to short some jumpers 

[gyrene81]

paper clip in an active socket works wonders...no residue  

be grateful you dont have any packard bell or radio shack units around... 

[Dichotomy]

back to the subject at hand

I have a power cord and a lot of cat 5 cable.. if that helps

[Chilli]

   Thanks fellas, I am really feelin the luv    Until I pin down the PSU unit, I guess it is still a maybe on the Dell Dimension 5100 tower. I was wondering about power requirements and what the OEM unit offered. 

TC, it seems that once I figure out the PSU, I may well need to switch the Vid card, from the low end nvidia 210 for an ATI as suggested.  Would you be interested in a swap or at least partial credit if need be? 

Also, I may be interested in the sound card. 

You can PM me, because the more I speak the more I show my ignorance of all things gaming system worthy.  I used to guesstimate based on the manufacturer and model number along with memory.  Now, I haven't a clue what is an upgrade.  Basically, anything PCIe is an upgrade for me.  And at this very moment anything w/ more than 32 mb of memory is 

By this weekend hopefully will have a better idea if I am able to use the Dell Tower or need another tower and build from scratch.  In any case (no pun) below are things that right now I am not privy to.

• PSU
• Hard Disk Drive
• CD Rom
• Cooling Fan

[gyrene81]

stock psu on that dell 5100 was a 350watt...oem poop

hard disk was sata (3.0 gb) so you will need sata power connectors on the psu...it will work with any gen sata drive.

cd/dvd drive could be eide or sata...you're choice if you're going to replace...sata cd/dvd burners are cheap now...under $30

cpu heatsink/cooling fan...it's a socket 775 and you can get a decent one with high cfm and moderate noise...around $10 to $45 depending.