Same Power Supply for XPS 8500 as Studio XPS 8000?

Hello!  so the answer is yes and no.  For the Power Supply Unit, the 8000 seems to have come with a 350W PSU and I couldn't find information on the 8500 but i'm thinking it may have been 430?  If you dont have many extras in your current computer you can as long as the PSU pinout that connects to the motherboard is the same.  Dell did use a proprietary PSU pinout on some of their machines in the past.  What I would do is unplug the PSU from the 8000 and look at the color wires on the motherboard connection (20 pins I think), and see if they match the color combination on the 8500.  If they match, technically you should be good to go.  

Memory wise, the 8000 ran DDR 3 memory at 1066Mhz or 1333Mhz and the 8500 ran DDR 3 up to 1600Mhz.  The memory would fit in the slots, however if your 8000 series memory is slower then your current memory in the 8500 then the computer will default the memory speed to the slowest set of memory sticks.  

Impact Computer, for one, sells Dell PSU for both the XPS 8500 (460W)  and the Studio XPS 8000 (350W). Neither is listed as being cross-compatible with the other model. And they have different part numbers.

So draw your own conclusions...

Hi, thanks so much for your reply. Ok, I'll try that.  If that fails, I suppose reordering through Dell is the course to take?

Aside from that extra 8 GB RAM sitting around doing nothing I also have 2 TB and 1 TB of internal hard disk drives that will be available if the power supply upgrade fails.

If I were to put those resources to use, then Dell XPS 8900 series are the way to go?  If I were to order a new computer (and I just might have to given my needs), I would like to get Windows 10 and possibly touch screen.  But I suppose a touchscreen monitor would suffice like Dell - 21.5" LED HD Touch-Screen Monitor. 

I don't want to let those hard disk drive space and RAM chips sitting in my computer junkyard gathering dust.  Thanks.

I think you're right. I checked out the power supply for Studio XPS 8000 and it's 350 W and only compatible with its own kind.  The one for XPS 8500 is 460 W.  I guess this means I would need to buy a new one. 

Is that Impact site legit? My web browser tells me that "the security certificate was not issued by a trusted certificate authority."

Actually, I tried that (upgrade to Win 10) and that's how this came about. I tried the Win 10 upgrade option and was hit with "System Thread Exception Not Handled" errors. This BSOD basically locked me out. So I had to restore Windows 8.1.  I was told that this error is due to the incompatibility with drivers.  From Dell forums, there are people who succeeded in upgrading to Win 10 and some who didn't.  Those who succeeded recommended you have the latest drivers loaded.

so that's what I did when I went back to Win 8.1.  But when I rebooted, the monitor wouldn't recognize and go into Power Save mode. Once, it started by itself after I left it alone for a while like after 15 minutes.  Some grunting noise from the back, which told me it is probably the power supply.

So here's the question:  could updating the latest drivers from Dell precipitated a problem with my power supply?  Some of the updates I loaded included things like (Dell XPS 8500 / Vostro 470 System BIO).  I think it's incredibly coincidental that the power supply problem happened just after I loaded the latest drivers for XPS 8500. 

Actually, I tried that (upgrade to Win 10) and that's how this came about. I tried the Win 10 upgrade option and was hit with "System Thread Exception Not Handled" errors. This BSOD basically locked me out. So I had to restore Windows 8.1.  I was told that this error is due to the incompatibility with drivers.  From Dell forums, there are people who succeeded in upgrading to Win 10 and some who didn't.  Those who succeeded recommended you have the latest drivers loaded.

so that's what I did when I went back to Win 8.1.  But when I rebooted, the monitor wouldn't recognize and go into Power Save mode. Once, it started by itself after I left it alone for a while like after 15 minutes.  Some grunting noise from the back, which told me it is probably the power supply.

So here's the question:  could updating the latest drivers from Dell precipitated a problem with my power supply?  Some of the updates I loaded included things like (Dell XPS 8500 / Vostro 470 System BIO).  I think it's incredibly coincidental that the power supply problem happened just after I loaded the latest drivers for XPS 8500.  I'll post on this on a separate thread.

Okay, I just got the new PSU, installed it, connected all the wires.  The computer turns on but the start/power button is orange.  It stays orange and the monitor goes into Power Save mode?

Now what?  Perhaps the wires not connected properly or is the issue with the motherboard?

Bummer...

Hard to say if it's motherboard,  PSU or something else.

Double check that you connected the PSU connector(s) correctly to the board.

Try clearing BIOS by removing motherboard battery and pressing/holding power button for ~30 sec.

You may need to strip it down to bare essentials by disconnecting all drives except boot hard drive, removing all PCI cards, all RAM modules except for the one in slot 1 (but reseat that one in its slot) etc. Then reset BIOS again by pulling the battery and pressing/holding power button.

Then try to boot after connecting monitor to one of the on-board video ports.