Vostro 3900G Motherboard Upgrade

Possible but not an easy task with all the Dell proprietary and undocumented cabling. Partially standard motherboard mounting, Proprietary fans, etc.   If you want to use a different motherboard then buy and use a standard ATX case.  The additional cost is minimum.

If you still would like to proceed, a user has figured out Dell front IO pinout.

the front I/O panel figure like this:

1 2/ 3 4/ 5 6/ 7 8/ 9 x(no pin)/ 10 11

1=Hdd+ ; 2=pw led+ ; 3=Hdd- ; 4=pw led- ; 5,6= power switch ; 7=none ; 8=connected to 6 ; 9=none ; 10= connected to 8; 11= none 

Re: 

upgrade it with a more recent Micro ATX motherboard that has all USB 3.0 sockets and fits the existing case. 

to restate your plan, you would like to reuse the Dell Vostro case for an mATX mobo upgrade.

Re: Is this possible?  yes and no, it is possible to some extent because the oem mobo looks like a standard mATX board.  this means the case can fit another non-Dell mATX board.  however the stock board has no standard USB 3.0 header, which means the case FIO does not have standard USB 3.0 cable either.  thus a new board with USB 3.0 header would have no FIO cable to connect to.  But you can install a USB 3.0 PCIe adapter card to have rear USB 3.0 ports.

Many thanks for your great help redxps630.

The reason I wanted to reuse the Vostro 3900G MT case is that is very good quality. Its rigid, unlike the non-Dell cases I have seen.

Anyway, I will give this some more thought.

All the best.

. 

The new XPS 8950 Desktop with DDR5 RAM may solve my problem if it ever comes to Japan at a sane price.

The case measures the same as my Vostro 3900G MT. So there should be no cooling problems and the case should be easy to work inside.

New 8950 case is proprietary and much more difficult to swap for non 8950 motherboard or standard ATX psu.  The case is essentially designed to work with only 8950 board.

Apologies redxps630 for my post. I would like to replace the Vostro 3900G MT in toto with the new XPS 8950.

All the best and many thanks for your contributions to Dell Community.