I'm in the same boat.  Ordered a GX620 from ebay last Friday, also without DVD a drive, and also waiting for it to be delivered.

I believe our options are:

1) Use an external USB 2.0 DVD drive - this is probably the easiest, cheapest and the most flexible option.

2) Use any slim internal IDE DVD drive with a flat facia, and install it inside the GX620 SFF using Dell bracket part number H9669 (Dell GX620 GX520 5100c SFF Drive Tray w/cable)

3) Buy one of the following Dell slim DVD drive packages that come with the above drive tray and cable included: W9020, W9019, W9056, P9467, R9116, YC101, possibly tons of others. For example:

http://www.impactcomputers.com/dellparts--parts-for-dell-optiplex-parts-for-dell-optiplex-gx620-small-form-factor-storage.html

Considering the current prices for the refurbished GX620 SFF machines, which go for around $110-$140 (I got mine for $120), the option #3 above, and perhaps even #2 are not very economical unless you find a really good deal.  GX620 BIOS supports booting from USB.  So I am planning to go with option #1 for the rare occasions when I do need a DVD drive, for example to re-install Windows and such.  Most of the time, though, I expect my machine to be running off my home network, so I don't really need a built-in optical drive on this system. Do you?

Good luck with whatever you decided for your system to be.

Wow, we must have been looking at the same sales guys.  I also purchased one of these.  I was surprised at the lack of information here and online as to what these part numbers are, and other information I needed.  tallrussian, thanks for your research!  One other suggestion I might have, I found on ebay an enclosure for a slimline cd drive to make it usb for around 20 bucks with shipping.  Just search up "slim cd enclosure".  I tried to find the same locally at the large computer places but they don't carry them.

I was looking for an inexpensive system to do low end gaming on, but this is not really it.  I think I can get by with a little more memory and a video card upgrade.  Any idea where I could get 12v off this motherboard for a video card fan?

roarkmaan, that little board you listed will convert your drive to ide, but the connector on the motherboard you would plug into is Dell specific.  I can't really identify it.  I have settled on the enclosure, as I bought a slimline drive, but like you have no tray or cable, and expect someone wants an arm and a leg for it.  I also bought a 7C586 slimline to ide Dell cable, but it is wrong for this model.  It connects to a slim cd drive ok, but the motherboard end is standard 40 pin ide and won't work on this motherboard.

Keep in touch guys!

Thanks.  It looks like it should, but I've already ordered the enclosure so I'll have to try that.  Wish I'd seen this first though.  I do have a slim drive I had ordered just for this (got a good price), but found I needed the tray and bought the wrong cable.  Nice catch on this though!  I was looking at BTX tower cases, no cheap buys there!  Even scratched and used cases go for 40-50 dollars.  Tech support also tells me they bundle their drives with the tray and cable.  Don't know if I believe that unless it was sold specifically for this system.  The parts section of the Dell store no longer carries CD drives (combo, etc.) specifically for this system, but they have plenty of floppy drives.

knarlomatic,

If you already have a slim DVD drive and just want the tray and the cable for GX620, you may want to check out this listing on eBay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&item=350118887641

I don't knot whether it works or not, though, and whether it would fit your machine.  It looks like it should.

The seller is asking $30 for it, with free shipping. The tray itself can be found elsewhere for about $5-$7. So I guess that makes the price of the GX620 slim IDE cable is $15-$17, I think, plus about $5-$7 for shipping.  I think it's kind of a steep price, for what it is...

Thanks for the input guys.  Either the slim drive enclosure or the drive tray w/ cable seem like they would be the best options for me, though I'm going to see how long I can go before the lack of cd/dvd drive becomes annoying.  For now, I'm going to be running either Ubuntu or Fedora and those can be installed easily enough via USB. 

When the time comes that I want an optical drive, I'll probably buy a cheap external drive.  Sony has had a couple refurbished models for sale, but seem to be out of stock at the moment.

If you are going that route, I have another suggestion for you.  I also installed Ubuntu without a CD drive.  I used Daemon Tools, which is a CD/DVD emulator.  It acts just like a CD/DVD drive, and you can mount an ISO on it and to the OS it will look just like a CD/DVD drive.

From inside Windows, I installed Daemon Tools (which I think is freeware), then downloaded the ISO of the Ubuntu image, and mounted that to Daemon tools, and installed Ubuntu from inside Windows.  This is an option from the Ubuntu install CD that will make a file on your Windows hard disk that contains the install of Ubuntu, and then sets up a dual boot option for you.  You can control how much of the windows drive is used for Ubuntu.  I have been using this type of Ubuntu install and it is plenty fast.

Good luck!

When the time comes that I want an optical drive, I'll probably buy a cheap external drive.  Sony has had a couple refurbished models for sale, but seem to be out of stock at the moment.

If you're going to go for an external drive, it doesn't have to be a 'slim' model? Just buy any standard external optical drive - which gives you the option of many dozens of different makes/models/speeds :emotion-55:

FWIW... I can personally recommend LG and Samsung external drives :emotion-5: