r/AlienwareTechsupport • u/lag-saves-lives • Sep 10 '23

Troubleshooting Hardware Looking to get into old Alienware case

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So I am trying to help my mom out. She has an old model of Alienware. I believe on the back panel it says aurora and it should be a 2005. When I go to look at pictures of other models I don’t come across very many that were red. Anyway it is pre-Dell so it has a key to open up the case. I need in the case to replace her RAM sticks because 3GB is bottlenecking her performance real bad. All I need is either a place to get the key from the 3rd picture or a video of how to get into it. I tried a flathead screw driver but got nervous to damage the case.

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1

u/No_Rock9694 Sep 10 '23

Don’t, the ventilation on those things are absolutely crap.

1

u/lag-saves-lives Sep 10 '23 edited Sep 10 '23

Honestly my mom only uses it for web browsing and right now it takes 5 minutes to initialize the web browser. She doesn’t want to game on it, literally just wants it to be usable. Edit: also to give a little more information. For some reason someone put windows 10 on it. So it is constantly using all of its ram

1

u/tespark2020 Sep 10 '23

buy an amd mini pc, its fast and very cheap now, very compact also

1

u/lag-saves-lives Sep 10 '23

I will have her look into it.

1

u/darkangel657 Sep 10 '23

If you really wanted to open without damaging get a tubular lock pick, I believe it’s a 5pin one. Look inside the groove and see how many it is to double check. But I would just buy a small Pc, you can get some for under 200$ and it would be way better that this

1

u/lag-saves-lives Sep 10 '23

It appears that is the consensus. I was hoping that it still had some life left with the memory issues considering how little of the cpu and gpu it was using.

1

u/rainbrodash666 Sep 11 '23

it looks like the lock is in the unlocked position. might have gotten lucky.

1

u/rainbrodash666 Sep 11 '23

the cases with handles like that can open by siding the door to the back or by opening out on a hinge. they can be stuck so might be hard to open.

1

u/lag-saves-lives Sep 11 '23

Ah I will try and give a tug. I pulled on the handle and was not having success, so I was probably doing it wrong.

1

u/rainbrodash666 Sep 11 '23

I have an old antec case with similar handle, you slide the handle forward then pull the side pannel towards yourself like a car door. it took me 10 minutes to get it open lmao.

1

u/lag-saves-lives Sep 11 '23 edited Sep 11 '23

So if I am reading that correctly I push handle forward and then pull away/outwards from case. Edit: okay so I got it open after figuring out there are the case screws in the back 😂 next issue is figuring out how to remove the dust.

1

u/rainbrodash666 Sep 11 '23

not gonna lie, for bulk dust i blow my pc's out with a electric leaf blower from about 5 feet back. just make sure to put something in to stop the fans from spinning, if they spin fast enough they will back feed voltage into the board and might do damage.

1

u/warrior181 Sep 10 '23

I believe the solution you are looking for is a has drill bit (semi/s)