Replacing Tower Case to expand need help (4700 Dimension)!!!

The 4700 is an ATX Mid-tower form factor case(chassis), upgrading depends on what you want to expand too. Obviously, if your going to need more space for the added hardware you'll need to upgrade to the ATX full size chassis. There are many vendors who market adequate case upgrades for a fair price depending on what your looking for. My personal favorite is the InWin line of cases. They're sturdily crafted and reasonably priced. (60-$75)

 

http://www.in-win.us/products_case_series.php?cat_id=1&series_id=11&model_id=48#here

 

That one is pretty nice. I think I read it could hold 3 HDD? and 5 DVD Drivers? I like that it come with power supply. now I do is swap the guts from my dell case to this one?

You'll also need to buy a new motherboard (Dell uses a rather unique way to attach motherboards to the chassis and a very proprietary way to connect the cable from the front of the chassis (powerbutton, powerled, USB, audio connections) to the motherboard.

If you can't find a board that accepts the same processor and memory that you're currently running, you'll need to buy a new processor and memory too. If you're doing this I'd upgrade to a modern board that supports Core2 processors, but this means you'll need:
- a case
- a powersupply
- a motherboard
- a processor
- memory
- a Windows license (the Dell one is tied to the Dell system/motherboard)

By the time you pay for all this, you may be better off just buying a new system (non-Dell as I don't think Dell offers any systems with room for 5 optical drives (they do have some systems with room for 3 harddrives) and selling your old one to someone else.

I don't know if you could swap the "guts" of the 4700 over to the InWin S605 case...If your intention is to upgrade the hardware, why would you want to do a straight swap of the hardware? If the motherboard in your 4700 is the same as the motherboard in my 4700? Then, with 2 SATA hard drives and 2 IDE CD/DVD drives installed you've maxed out your available ports and will need to upgrade the MOBO in order to facilitate any additional internal drives you may wish to add.

Actually...the S605 case can support up to 3 CD/DVD drives and 4 hard drives, standard. The PSU that comes stock is only rated for 300/350W output. So, if your intention is to add more hardware you'll need to upgrade the output of that, as well.

 

Yea I was thinking The same thing. But I just installed a PCI card that gave me 4 extra SATA ports which brings me up to 6 in total. and a open IDE port. so I have the ports to exband but I don't have the space or slots? Now my concern is the power and over heating issue. Ill have to upgrade all of that right?

 

SO all in all I'm better off just building from scartch? Now thats when i'm gonna spend big bucks which I don't want to right. I'm not ready yet. I would like to in the future. Just want a new case. BUT if it can't be done then Ill save up and start from sartch.

Having both the Dell 4700 case and the InWin S605 case, I can see that right off the bat you are going to need to make some modifications to the motherboard's mount holes on the S605 in order to get the Dell motherboard installed. Everything else would tend to revolve around that! Waiting and saving your money to build what you want may be the more prudent option, here...

Yea I think so. I'm leaning towards that option the more I think about it. My Dell 4700 I had it for about 4-5 years now. Still works as if it was brand new. This is my first computer ever. So I started off knowing absolutely nothing about computers. I believe I used my 4700 to it's full potential. It's time to move on.

MAN! I wish I can really do something for the time being. Oh well. I guess Ill be on here in a couple of months asking what things I should get for my new set up. For the mean while Ill be doing my own research. Then ask for some opinions.

 

Thanks for the help. I appreciated everyone's input. 

Good Hunting!