Turn your XPS 8700 into a solid mid-range gaming rig.

Okay, so I am more accustomed picking out all the parts and putting my rig together from scratch.  That was the plan this time as well.  But, I saw a really good sale on the XPS 8700 and found an additional coupon for $50 off.  I am also a Dell Advantage member, so I received free two day shipping.  I ordered my PC on a Monday and had it on my doorstep Thursday.  That is pretty dang fast.

I purchased the XPS 8700 with the Core i7 4770 processor (not planning to overclock, so that is fine), 8 gb RAM, 1tb hdd and the GTX 645 or 635...don't really remember the video card, as it was junk and I was planning to upgrade anyway.  Oh, it also came with Windows 8.  Total cost was somewhere around $680, out the door.

At the same time, I went ahead and ordered a new Corsair 600w PSU and a MSI GTX 760 video card (2gb / OC version).  The card is the Twin Frozr Gaming edition.  It only requires up to 500w PSU, but I wanted just a bit more...just in case.  I really wouldn't go any more than 600w, unless you are getting a more powerful video card than the GTX 760.  Beware, the MSI GTX 760 was a tight fit, but it went in with no modifications.  Check your video card dimensions, because the XPS 8700 case is a tight fit.

Okay, so Thursday night gets here and my new XPS 8700 is here...and so are my new PSU and Video Card.  First thing I did was power on the pc before making any upgrades...wanted to be sure it worked beforehand.  All good....no issues.  Turned the pc off and began the process of upgrading things.

First, I disconnected all power cables and then removed the PSU.  This was relatively simple.  It was a bit different than removing a PSU from a custom rig, but it was fine.  Just take your time with everything.  Some mistakes cannot be easily fixed.  Anyway, PSU was removed with no issue.

Second, I installed the new Corsair PSU.  No problem getting it in and mounted.  Again, a bit of a tight fit, but if you take your time, it goes in fine.

Next, I installed the new MSI GTX 760 video card.  Like I said before, it is a tight fit.  You have to go into the case at a bit of an angle, but it will go in without any problems.  One more note, you will need to route the SATA cables under the card, as the cables are just long enough to reach the DVD drive and hdd.

Last, I connected all the power cables from the PSU to each applicable connection (CPU, Motherboard, DVD, HDD and Video Card).  ** Make sure you get a PSU that has the necessary connections for the newer video cards.  Mine required a 6 pin and an 8 pin.  I would say to just do your homework before you have everything sitting in front of you.  When you ready to assemble and anxious to get it up and running, that is a bad time to realize you're missing something.

So, at this point, I had everything in place.  All cables routed nice and neat.  I closed the case and connected my monitor, keyboard and mouse.  I press the power button......beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.  Instead of seeing it boot, I got a series of beeps.  UGH!!  Not what I was expecting.  Luckily, I have no shortage of spare pc's in the house, so I went to Google and started searching.  After an hour of research, I was pretty sure I had the answer.

These newer pc's have a UEFI motherboard.  In other words, they use a UEFI rather than the older, more familiar bios I am used to.  And even newer is a feature called Secure Boot.  I am not going to go into all the specifics on what Secure Boot is, but what I found was that a lot of people have had issues when they have upgraded their video cards with one of the newer, more advanced cards.  Some of the newer cards do not have their own bios that is compatible with this Secure Boot feature.

So, to get past this issue, first I had to pull the video card out and put the stock card back in.  I was able to boot the system once I did this.  I hit F2 to enter the bios (yes, I will continue to call it bios).  Go to the Boot menu.  Disable Secure Boot.  Save and exit.  Power down the pc and repeat the process of putting the new video card in.

Once I disabled Secure Boot in the bios, I was able to put in the new video card and boot with no problem.  All is good.

Now to the next challenge.  No offense to Dell, but I do not like all the that comes on a pc when you get it preconfigured from a reseller.  And, I just so happened to have an MSDN version of Windows 8.1, which was not even out for resale yet.  I set the pc to boot from DVD (again in the bios), put the DVD in and restarted the pc.  The Windows 8.1 setup started up, from the DVD.  Setup was fast and simple....not going into details here. Windows 8.1 setup was complete and I was ready.

Everything was going fine until I noticed that, when I switch to Desktop view in 8.1, there is a watermark in the bottom right-hand corner that reads something like "Secure Boot isn't configured properly....."  Nothing catastrophic, but not something I want to see all the time.

Okay, did some more research....this time on the MSI website, in their forums.  Turns out, there are well-respected developers on their forum that are taking ongoing requests for Video BIOS  (vbios) updates for UEFI.  I do not know all the technical details, but basically this means they will give you an updated vbios that enables your video card for UEFI and Secure Boot.  You just provide your current vbios, serial number and model.  I did this and had a new vbios 2 days later.  To do this, you need a utility called nvflash.  NOTE - this can be a dangerous process if you don't know what you are doing.  You can brick your video card.  However, there are plenty of resources online that give instruction.  It was very simple to do.  So, I flashed the video card with the new rom and voila, I had a UEFI compliant video card.  Rebooted the pc, went into the bios, re-enabled Secure Boot and started up Windows 8.1.  No more messages.

One more thing...I had 16 gigabytes of DDR3 1600 memory in another pc.  I swapped it for the 8 gigabytes that came with the XPS 8700.  So here are my final specs, or at least the important specs....Core i7 4770 / 16gb DDR3 / GTX 760.

First thing I did was to install Origin and download the Battlefield 4 Beta.  Outside their normal Beta bugs and whatnot, the game ran great on High settings.  No lag whatsoever.  Unfortunately, the Beta ended two days after I got all this up and running.  So I went ahead and downloaded Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty Black Ops II, which I already owned.  Both are running great on High settings.

Total cost was about $900 and change.  Not too bad for a decent gaming rig.  I could have gone the route of picking all the parts and building from scratch, but the cost was going to be several hundred dollars more.  Oh yeah, as a Dell Advantage member, I will also get 5% reward for this purchase, so figure another $30 or so in Dell eGift Card.  Might put that toward a new game or something.

Hope this helps anyone that may be considering doing this.  If you can get the XPS 8700 on a good sale, with the Core i7, I would not hesitate to do it again.  Thanks!