What's the best OLD Dell 17" to buy for upgrading?

All the newer dells can upgrade the CPU and GPU but only to certain points. All of the ones I will list have plenty of ports.

WXGA+ - 1440 x 900.
WUXGA - 1920 x 1200.

Inspiron 9300 - Intel Pentium M (single core 32-bit CPU), i915 chipset, 6800 go vanilla GPU. Pentium M 400 MHz CPU's can be pinmodded to have a 533 MHz FSB. The highest stock CPU is 2.26 GHz 533 MHz FSB 2MB L2. With either latest 9300 bios or hacked XPS2 bios it can support either the 6800 go Ultra or 7800 go GTX GPU. The max RAM supported is 2 GB by the chipset. Either PATA or SATA HD depending on model.

XPS2/XPS M170 - Same thing as a 9300 with Gigabit ethernet and puurrrdy LED's (lid casing, side fans, front speakers). Obviously, no hacked BIOS required for the aforementioned GPU's. PATA HD's only.

Inspiron 9400/E1705 - Intel Core Duo and Core 2 Duo (dual core 64-bit CPU), i945 chipset, 7900 GS GPU. No pinmod working (for dell's at least). The highest stock CPU supported is 2.33 GHz 667 MHz FSB 4MB L2. With latest BIOS supports 7900 GTX and 7950 GTX GPU's. Also, note that the 7900 GS comes in two flavors with rev0 (vs. rev1) being rarer (nowadays) and faster. Maximum RAM is 4 GB supported by the 32-bit chipset, however, you will see 3.25 GB useable inside the OS due to memory mapped I/O. SATA HD's only

XPS M1710 - Same as 9400 except it supports a OC'able CPU - The T7600G. Has LED's (lid casing, side fans, front speakers, one-color touchpad letters). SATA.

M6300 (my personal fav) - Intel Core 2 Duo (64-bit dual core CPU), GM965 chipset, 1600M or 3600M GPU. Max CPU supported stock is 2.8 GHz 800 MHz FSB 6M L2 (X9000). This overclockable CPU however cannot be overclocked because of the M6300 BIOS. Max RAM - 8 GB? SATA.

This list is from oldest to newest. None of these systems have LED screens. I have not mentioned some other precision models on this list but they are essentially the same but do not support OC'able CPU's or LED's as the XPS systems do. Also, all the GPU's listed are nvidia geforce and nvidia has some equivalent quadro's they make that I haven't listed. I stopped because I got bored and I didn't list any systems I wasn't particularly interested in (all of which are too new anyway).

Well zzpulp pretty much summed it up and took quite a bit of time to do so. Out of his list, very similar to mine besides the M6300, I would go with the M1710. It isn't to big like the new M1730 and the fact that you can overclock the 7600G which is something I am sure you would want.

I picked up my M6300 in my Sig for $1250.00 on Ebay, for that price it was bargin. I upraded the memory and Hard Drive.

I don't think there's gonna be a deal like that again though...

The M6300 is likely too new for you PK but I just wanted to put it on the list as closure.

I had the M1710 since it came out. I never had an over heating problem. I did however have a problem with my LCD but it was quickly resolved. Besides that it was a great lappy.

Obviously as you know, a lot of people like to over clock the GPU and CPU and being a able to over clock the CPU is a more recent find. So to see a few threads popping up now does not surprise me.

Whatever you do I would still make sure you get one that has a warranty and if possible upgrade to CC. I will never go without it again. They replaced my M1710 3 times, and the final time I got the beast in my sig. I am very hard on electronics

I've been using the M1710 for about 2 years now with no heating problems whatsoever.

I think if your doing regular cleanings etc on these laptops it should go on for a long time

have yet to have the first problem with mine, and it's been used quite a bit for 2 years

e1705 user here w/ 7950GTX transplant.