Intro: The Dell Optiplex GX280 is one of the most recent Dell computers designed for the corporate environment - it's got all the latest features, such as DDR2, SATA drives (just the HD), PCI Express etc.
They've even added new air vents along the right hand side (shown above)
and a new exhaust fan / copper piped heatsink design (shown above) to cope with the heat the new Pentium 4 processors generate. They've got a clever looking metal clip that holds the pin-less processor in place under the heatsink. (See next post for pics)
The fans in the system are heat controlled so they speed up when the system gets hotter - the majority of the time the computer is very quiet, as you would expect for a corporate system.
You can quickly get access to the insides of the case by pressing the two side buttons and lifting the case up - security consious people will be please to know that this can be padlocked shut.
The top of the case has 4 "innie" dimples that mean it's very easy to stack the computers on top of each other as the feet on the bottom of the case fit perfectly into these dimples.
Inside the case, attached to the top half of the case are the drives - Slimline/laptop CD/DVD drive, slimline/laptop style floppy disk drive, and the SATA hard drive - these all quickly clip release due to dell's drive runners.
Above: DDR2 Memory
Quick facts: (based on the SFF version)
It's a pentium 4 system, (Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 560 - 2.8ghz ht - 3.6ghz ht)
It uses an SATA hard drive,
It doesn't have any PS2 ports - so keyboard / mouse must be USB.
It's got 6 USB ports on the back and 2 on the front.
However it still has a parallel printer port (useful for older printers/dongles?) and a serial port (useful for older label printers/older palms etc)
It uses Dual Channel DDR2 - this has the notch/slot in a different place on the memory stick compared to normal DDR ram, plus it has more pins. (There are 2 memory slots in the SFF and 4 in the other chassis dells)
It has a PCI-Express, and a normal PCI slot - no AGP.
It's got an ' Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 900'
and integrated 10/100/1000 lan
It has a new updated bios compared to the traditional dell bios.
Back of the computer:
Some specifics / problems:
You may need to set 'SATA Operation' to 'combination' in the bios in order to get Ghost to work.
It doesn't have any spare power connectors - so you can't put in another hard drive to ghost disk to disk (there's no space anyway)
You can't buy it with Windows 2000 already on it - only Windows XP
Dell's site:
http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/pr...dt1&l=en&s=bsd