Reviving a Monster

A few months ago I came into possession of an older Dell Precision 690 Workstation. At the time I saw the 1000W Power Supply and was immediately impressed. Looking down the board a bit I noticed the distinct setup of a memory riser and an empty CPU slot. It hadn't quite sunk in just how powerful this machine could become. It wasn't until a couple weeks later that I started looking into upgrading the system.

The current specs on the machine are:

• Dual core Intel Xeon 5130 (Woodcrest)
• OEM Memory Riser (allows upgrading to 64GB of DDR2 PC2-5300)
• 4x1GB DDR2 PC2-5300
• 1000W PSU
• Matrox RT.X100 Extreme Video Editing card
• DVD RW drive
• 320GB HDD

These specs are a little disappointing given what the potential for the system is. To give you an idea here is what I want to upgrade to:

• 2x Quad core Intel Xeon 5345 (Clovertown)
• 16x2GB DDR2 PC2-5300
• 128 GB Crucial SSD
• 3x750GB WD Caviar Black
• GeForce GTX 570

This will make for a significant upgrade to the system and hopefully make it much faster than it currently is. The RAM upgrades will have to be incremental as they are not cheap, but the first start is going to be the 2x Quad core Xeons. I can find a set of them (they have to be matched) on eBay for about $130.

If anyone wants to donate to help revive this monster and wants to see pictures of the changes to it as I go please feel free to let me know! Any help is appreciated and will help keep me doing new projects.

For reference please see the below image of a stock Dell 690. I want to do some cooling mods and possibly revamp the color of the exterior.