It's kind of a shame that this case had such bad thermals. These older dell cases were built like tanks and I'd love to use an Mid tower one for my next case if I don't go with the Fractal Design North, just because of how sturdy they are. I wish dell still knew how to build durable computers.
I personally recommend a dell dimension tower from this era for a sleeper build. It worked great for me, just put fans on the bottom of the case. Keeps the sleeper look, with good thermals
There's a lot of work involved in getting new hardware to fit in those old optiplex cases. Motherboard standoffs need to be installed which requires beating the mounting flanges for the old motherboard flat with a hammer. The IO shield area needs modifying. The PSU opening needs to be cut to allow the plug to fit on a regular psu. The front IO cable needs to be cut and soldered onto standardized connectors for USB and power button/drive light. The list goes on.
I remember the middle school I went to got a bunch of these when I was in the 6th grade in 2007, I actually got to help set them up. I'm not sure if they were new or refurbished at the time as I didn't get to see them in boxes. By 8th grade 2009 a lot of them were already boot looping. The high school I went to was across the street and they had over 100 of these in the library. By then a lot of them were either extremely slow, would boot loop, would crash, or were completely dead. The school then replaced all 100 or so with brand new 2010 apple imacs in the middle of my freshman year. After this the library was much quiter and cooler. I remember the school newsletter talking about how they got a grant from somebody to buy them and how teachers weren't wanting to take their classes to the library to use the computers because they were so slow and frustrating for the students to try to get their work done on as a lot of them didn't even work and a lot of them would take up to 20 minutes just to go from the log in screen to the desktop, but now that they got the new imacs all the teachers were wanting to schedule the library to use them for their classes, so much so that there was now a waiting list. They even opened up the library during lunch time to let students come in there and use them due to the high demand. It's crazy the things I remember. By the time I graduated in 2014 the imacs still ran like new and last I heard when a relative of mine went there in 2019, they were still there and working fine. So they definitely outlived the dells.
more old computers stuff like this!!! even core 2 duos and quads would be fine just love watching old poor design choices being fixed especially simple ways like this vid!1 thumbs up dude!
That difference is crazy! Your previous video inspired me to buy an old Optiplex as my school used to have them. So thanks to you I'm now the proud owner of a bad-capped and hot running GX270 :)
if you have a 3d printer or know someone who has one have them print the shround so hot air doesnt come back in. it will stilll be 55c bu its still a drop in temp.
Found your channel through the original video and loved the "retrospective" style you went for. Experienced these machines in a very hot & stuffy computer lab back in school. More videos like that! - I'm subscribed for future uploads :)
Hey thanks, sorry I never responded before. Yeah I think we all have ptsd in some form or another from these things 😀. Part of me still misses those days. I still remember working at one client when my co-worker walked in with a tower that was reported to have the fans running 100% all the time. It wasn't a dell, just a generic beige tower. Well it had a Pentium D. The heatsink got so clogged up that the thing melted the plastic snaps that held it to the board and the cpufan and heatsink were literally dangling by the power lead. PC still ran with zero heatsink......poorly..but it booted into windows. I used to have pictures of it, but damned if I can find em now.
@@jims_junk what a time it must have been to work on those machines back in the day haha.. unfortunately I got into IT support in 2020, nowhere near as fun and interesting 😂 I picked up one of these SFF GX series after your video just for some nostalgia throwbacks, especially as I never really got to tinker around with the inside of them. Such a thermal beast!
It’s amazing what such a small modification can do to this computer. Why it wasn’t like this from factory, I’m not sure. If I ever get around to it, I might try it on my small desktop model GX270(or 280) and see how much better it works.
Rather than showing the improvement after 3 different mods were applied at the same time, I'd love to see the results of each one independent of the others, as well as what happens when just 2 of the 3 mods are applied. For example, measure the temps when: a. only reversing the PSU fan (same voltage, no CPU fan shroud) b. only adding the CPU fan shroud (no changes to PSU fan) c. reversing PSU fan, leaving it at stock voltage, plus add CPU fan shroud d. reversing PSU fan plus increase fan speed w/7V, but no CPU fan shroud added The result would help identify which mods are most effective, as well as how much (or little) the other mods help.
i love these old pentium 4 hotbox machines. in laptops manufacturers had to get creative in their cooling for them which led to some absolutely thicc tastic beasts or massive media center machines.
Man that’s impressive! You may have just figured out how to extend the life of ma y of these Pentium 4 Dell machines! I wonder if this would work on some of the laptops as they draw air from a vent on the bottom and blast it out the back, along with multiple other vents on the back and sides.
We had these in a Call center I worked at.. and the slightly larger version of the P4 cases had slits in one side following the contours of the grey pieces. These side would be the top if you had it vertical.
Thank you! Problem was back in the day with thousands of these per client, wasn't about to flip the fan on every one.....specially when Dell just sent us new mobo's for free. We had one guy who literally swapped motherboards day in and day out.
God those PCs ran so hot... I can't believe doing something so simple made such a massive difference. Dell at some point just have went "Well... We have to flip the PSU fan... That will cost us, what, like 3 cents per PSU to do that and make them last longer? PSHHHHHH!!! Just keep it cooking! Gimme my 3 cents!"
It works that way because the power supply is originally 160W, and it works close to its limit. During load, it easily reaches 80 degrees, and this is a temperature above the temperature of the air inside the case, so it is not viable to blow air heated to 80 degrees into the case. It is better to blow 60 degree air into the PSU and have it expelled through its ventilation grille. But to be honest, the HDD creates a lot of heat inside the case, replacing it with an SSD will make a big difference. The side near the processor has a ventilation grille on the plastic part, but it does not match the metal part. There are no ventilation holes on the metal part aligned with the plastic part, which creates resistance in the air that should circulate.
Mounting the Fan on the outside of the PSU is a good idea too! My unit came with a DELTA branded fan which is slightly thicker 60x60x25mm and that's the reason why I decided to leave it inside the PSU is because I also use a wi-fi and GeForce 6200 which would "block" the air path of the fan. When using a large (3,5 inch HDD) the airflow is pretty much restricted and doesn't reach the CPU fan which insults into a really bad hotspot around the HDD/Southbridge area. Don't ask me how I figured that out lol. When using a smaller (2,5 inch) drive this method works pretty well but as soon as there are extension cards installed the air get's trapped again. Well this case is just cursed - pun intended - but at least we can work with it to improve it at least somehow. The 3D printed shroud for the CPU fan is a good idea, too bad I don't have a 3D printer otherwise I would have printed one myself. Later fan revisions also came with a larger shroud that sit flush with the case and I still encounter some of these on ebay from time to time. Another experiment I had back then was using a Thermistor in front of the fan so would act in the same way like the CPU fan when things get toasty but I kinda scrapped that idea since 5 and 7V are barely any difference in noise levels. Wish I had done these kind of recordings like you did nowadays! Hopefully it will help some ppl out there who still have a heart for these machines. 😀
As much as I hated these pcs back in the day, I always liked the look of them. But yeah, I can't imagine though having any large pci or agp cards in them. Like you said it traps the air.
This is the opposite of what I did with a large number of first generation ATX PCs that had the fan in the bottom of the PSU, blowing warmed air at the hot CPU, and recirculating internal air through various holes in the PSU case. I'd flip the PSU fan and seal up all the internal holes in the PSU with aluminum flue tape. Pull that CPU heated air up and blow it out the back. Eventually the ATX specification changed to exhausting air through the PSU as it had been pre-ATX. With this low profile Dell case the warming of air pulled through the PSU is far less of a heat adder than the CPU and very poor circulation. Surprising that Dell didn't have a duct from the CPU directly to the back when many of their towers had a passive heatsink on the CPU with a duct/hood up to a rear mounted fan to pull a lot of air past the CPU and blow it directly out. Blowing hot air in the general direction of the perforated back panel, while the PSU fan is simultaneously pulling air in through that same panel is madness. If you want finer visualization of airflow using smoke, get some punk sticks used for lighting fireworks. They're the same thing as incense sticks, minus the scented oil. Light it, blow the flame out, have a narrow and steady source of smoke.
I did that with my optiplex, but I think that you forget to mention that the best performance is using a laptop hard drive or an ssd, because a full 7200rpm hard drive get's way too hot and combined with the exaust air that now comes from the PSU makes it even hotter, in my case reaching 69° in just the hard drive. So personally, if you are using a 7200rpm hard drive i recommend to just do the 7v mod to the psu, but not reversing it, or it will exaust hot air directly to that already hot drive, and adding a small fan to the original "intake" for getting a little better performance and trying to avoid killing your drives.
Imagine how much e-waste could have been prevented had Dell not gone for this shoddy design in the first place (the capacitor plague would still have gotten them but at a later moment)
The best solution, I had for Dell Optiplex GX 280 (Pentium 4 LGA775 and PCI Express x16 slot) was to cut opening for 120mm fan, and that large fan helped so much, harddrives didn't died anymore.
That fan shroud thing you did is actually what Dell did later on Core i models that still use the blower style coolers. Still,imagine if this had a dedicated GPU it would probably reach 70+
I had a gateway gt4024 with a pentium D and that thing ran HOT. Fans were super loud too. I probably ended up cooking it by using it pretty much continuously from 2006-2014. It was very quiet its first year but by 07-08 it was very loud and only got louder as time went on. It eventually became completely unusable. I replaced the hard drive, ram, thermal paste, and graphics card out of boredom in 2015 and that didn’t help it. Maybe the capacitors were bad. Who knows. I don’t have it anymore
As for why dell didn’t do this, I’d bet that power supply is an off the shelf psu so they likely couldn’t really modify it for the system. Or it’s a cheap machine and dell used that as an excuse not to care. Probably both
@@shodan2958 Generally with parts like this made for many desktops they are built a certain way that works best for most systems. Just something as simple as rotating the fan would mean changing that part of the assembly line for that power supply or more likely, a new line entirely. For a cheap system like this, dell probably didnt think it was worth the money to commission a special psu for this system.
@@lenshibo Given how omnipresent these were around 2001-2006-ish you'd expect the economies of scale to tilt towards a separate design for these things. And these SFF PSUs afaik were a custom design anyway.
Had one in highschool for our graphics class. Thing would overheat all the time and our IT guys eventually took it apart to do something and left it in the office. I took the shroud and used a hole cutter from shop class to cut a giant hole in the side. IT guy wasn't too happy until he checked and it stopped running magma hot. So he screwed a mesh over the hole and called it a day.
I did something like this for a custom full size optiplex sleeper PC. I don't know about the slimline ones, but the full size models have a very small grate above(when upright) the usb ports to intake air. I used this to my advantage by replacing the 92mm fan at the back with a super thick(and loud) one. To prevent the extreme negative case pressure from fighting the psu fan, I opened up the PSU and turned the fan backward. Then, to keep the CPU fan from fighting the psu fan, I also turned it backward to suck air up from the mobo through its low profile cooler. The gpu survives thanks to some vented PCIe covers that intake air sucked through by the rear fan. God, that whole case was a PITA. My head almost exploded trying to get the front headphone jack detection working with the HD audio standard(works perfectly now but isn't pretty).
Very interesting video, this modification of this computer is very interesting, I will definitely do the same in my DELL Optiplex gx260. It's strange that dell didn't use such a solution as you showed in the video, surely then these computers would be less faulty
apparently, whoever designed this pc was a rocket scientist. I know pc's were the new big thing at the time and if you had even dialup you were the shit but if they know thermals can be an issue, they should've tested their products before releasing them on the market to breakdown in 1 year just to make sure it wont happen with regular use before mass producing them. i honestly though it had an intake at the front like the desktop but no.
I'd say that you can improve airflow more if you're willing to modify the shroud so it covers the entire heat sink rather than just the area where the blower sends air to. I'd say that it is strange considering the Optiplex 755 Tower I currently use as a server has one large fan with a shroud that pulls air from the front and cools the CPU first before sending the air inside the rest of the case.
I've encountered this on other Dell machines. Mine have side air intakes and it would bring air from the back; I put a magnetic floor vent extender on the side of the case so it brings air from the front. I figured the heat from the power supply being blown inside the case would make it warmer. So everything is cooler, including the power supply which now gets fresh air from the outside instead of warmed air from the case.
That is a wonderful solution. If it was my PC back in the day, I'd have drilled a hole in the front! Just shows that there is more than one way to skin a cat
Dang! I imagine this also helps with the "up against the wall" problem, since the old fan config realistically had 0 way for new air to enter into the machine if it had a CRT monitor on top, and a wall
thanks for the vids on this old bastard lol i love them tho fr. use to work on these exact mfers back when i was 13 helping my papaw with his business . very commonly i would see the over heating warning when wiping there virus's lol
Just trying to argue to counterpoint that I personally don't believe in, but maybe the engineers considered the cubbyhole desks for towers popular at the time that really only have good air in the front, and they didn't measure flow and just assumed air would come from said front tiny grille. And then a fan didn't happen. As someone that's worked in many different manufacturing fields from medical to energy to housing, these disconnects are just part of doing business. You can't anticipate a bean counter doing penny pinching in a design.
i have an Acer Veriton X270 -- heh he h it shares a model # with the Dell GX.. it's a DDR-2 small form factor similar to this one in video. I wonder if drilling holes in the flat part of the top of the case could improve airflow, since i installed a half-height GPU into the one of two slots in the MB. I don't know if there's enough spare space in the case - it's all tight AF in there. Removing the ROM drive can create a RAM air effect, but it looks unsightly. I want to see if I can drill holes in the case to improve airflow. You did alot of work that most ppl can't do with testing equipment, running voltage, rearranging a power unit etc. Cool though. What is the long term effect of the comp running at it's stock temp vs the reduced temp after your modification?
I haven't used it since this video as I have no real use for it. However I did let it run for quite a while just to test to make sure it wasn't a fluke and the temps were rock solid. As far as drilling holes, I thought of that. In doing that I'd also have to block off the rear vent where the air would enter the case and use the updated fan to plug the exhaust. Essentially keep the hot air out and allow cool air in to sweep across the board. The tower version was much better as it allowed for air to be sucked in from the front. Not much, but enough to make a difference. I still have the computer, so maybe I'll do a further update with other ideas in the future if there's any interest. I'd also like to pull the mobo out and try and fix the one ram slot. Only one slot works. Not sure if its further cap problems, or if its just a cracked solder joint.
the CPU never gets hot enough to be an issue, the main catalyst that drives fan speeds up is the northbridge so the PSU fan flip and a northbridge fan jumping power off the CPU fan connector will solve the issue, why they didn't at least flip the PSU fan baffles me.
I can only find these with centrifugal fans on both the psu and cpu. Edit: my best guess is you got a region specific model, refurbed or dell used multiple OEMs with yours being a minority.
too bad ya can't upgrade to a heat pipe cooler like you can on the P4 dell tower models the part being Dell 9Y212. i do wonder if there was ever a replacement Heatsinks that was all copper by a third party.
what if you block off the sections of the rear vents that don't have any direct in or out air flow, trying to make the back "leak proof" is what i'm getting at so air can only go in through the PSU fan and out the CPU fan. kind of like how laptop vents work.
was going to, but when I tested it with the smoke...case air actually was exiting from there. So if anything that would create a buffer between the cpu fan exhaust and the power supply intake. Regardless the temps are so low, it doesn't even matter now.
Also yes the fan is pwm driven by the mobo, in other fan models they crushed or removed the thermal diode inside the fan and just let the mobo pwm it proper. Better rpm when it needed it and the longer exit ofbthe blower actuly touched the back and created a better air flow. This was the 280s tho.
did they ever make any core 2 duo versions of these chassis? i kinda do like the chassis look. i've had a DELL 760 USFF before. they had pentium 4 and core 2 duo options if i remember.
Ya know, I swear they did, but can't find any online. I know the one client that had them, they were all p4's. However, this other client who had them I swear had core2duo's inside...maybe my memory sucks. I asked an ex co-worker and he said he remembers the same thing.
@@rayproductionsbackupchanne3862 hmm yeah looks that way...just looked it up found it says they were released in 1997...and it took RDRam..so definitely older than the gx2xx. Was trying to find a pic of the mobo and came across this: shorturl.at/hnDNZ That is a server/workstation mobo..but doubt it fits in the desktop case. Regardless, it would be fun to play with :)
Chances are if you find any, the caps will be bad. So just find one with a good case and repair the motherboard. Maybe I can do a quick video to help people who don't know how to go about that?
@@jims_junk I've seen the PC turn on and function, I've used it before, everything seems to work fine and so far it has no issues, but 8n not sure what do do about retro gaming since it has a Pentium 4, 1gb ram, 40 GB hard drive, no GPU, just integrated, what games should I run
This girl i really wanted to date that was way out of my league un 2012 needed a conputer badly. I usuallu have tons of conputers but this was the only comouter i had. I fixed it up the best i could and gave it to her. I really regret that decision. Pieces of sht was worse than the computer it replaced 🤣 i dont get how i thought guving her this piece of garbage would help my chances of dating her at all. I just wanted to see her so bad and i dig through my piles of sht to make somthing that ran. She said she needed it for schhol for microsoft office n sht. I figured the school used these pile of garbage so it should work for her 🤣
It's kind of a shame that this case had such bad thermals. These older dell cases were built like tanks and I'd love to use an Mid tower one for my next case if I don't go with the Fractal Design North, just because of how sturdy they are. I wish dell still knew how to build durable computers.
I personally recommend a dell dimension tower from this era for a sleeper build. It worked great for me, just put fans on the bottom of the case. Keeps the sleeper look, with good thermals
There's a lot of work involved in getting new hardware to fit in those old optiplex cases. Motherboard standoffs need to be installed which requires beating the mounting flanges for the old motherboard flat with a hammer. The IO shield area needs modifying. The PSU opening needs to be cut to allow the plug to fit on a regular psu. The front IO cable needs to be cut and soldered onto standardized connectors for USB and power button/drive light. The list goes on.
That's a massive difference for such a small change!
I remember the middle school I went to got a bunch of these when I was in the 6th grade in 2007, I actually got to help set them up. I'm not sure if they were new or refurbished at the time as I didn't get to see them in boxes. By 8th grade 2009 a lot of them were already boot looping. The high school I went to was across the street and they had over 100 of these in the library. By then a lot of them were either extremely slow, would boot loop, would crash, or were completely dead. The school then replaced all 100 or so with brand new 2010 apple imacs in the middle of my freshman year. After this the library was much quiter and cooler. I remember the school newsletter talking about how they got a grant from somebody to buy them and how teachers weren't wanting to take their classes to the library to use the computers because they were so slow and frustrating for the students to try to get their work done on as a lot of them didn't even work and a lot of them would take up to 20 minutes just to go from the log in screen to the desktop, but now that they got the new imacs all the teachers were wanting to schedule the library to use them for their classes, so much so that there was now a waiting list. They even opened up the library during lunch time to let students come in there and use them due to the high demand. It's crazy the things I remember. By the time I graduated in 2014 the imacs still ran like new and last I heard when a relative of mine went there in 2019, they were still there and working fine. So they definitely outlived the dells.
Same thing happened at my school district, old dells to iMacs
more old computers stuff like this!!! even core 2 duos and quads would be fine just love watching old poor design choices being fixed especially simple ways like this vid!1 thumbs up dude!
That difference is crazy! Your previous video inspired me to buy an old Optiplex as my school used to have them. So thanks to you I'm now the proud owner of a bad-capped and hot running GX270 :)
LOL not sure if I should say 'congrats' or 'I'm so sorry' :) Well if anything welcome to the club!
if you have a 3d printer or know someone who has one have them print the shround so hot air doesnt come back in. it will stilll be 55c bu its still a drop in temp.
Found your channel through the original video and loved the "retrospective" style you went for. Experienced these machines in a very hot & stuffy computer lab back in school. More videos like that! - I'm subscribed for future uploads :)
Hey thanks, sorry I never responded before. Yeah I think we all have ptsd in some form or another from these things 😀. Part of me still misses those days. I still remember working at one client when my co-worker walked in with a tower that was reported to have the fans running 100% all the time. It wasn't a dell, just a generic beige tower. Well it had a Pentium D. The heatsink got so clogged up that the thing melted the plastic snaps that held it to the board and the cpufan and heatsink were literally dangling by the power lead. PC still ran with zero heatsink......poorly..but it booted into windows. I used to have pictures of it, but damned if I can find em now.
@@jims_junk what a time it must have been to work on those machines back in the day haha.. unfortunately I got into IT support in 2020, nowhere near as fun and interesting 😂 I picked up one of these SFF GX series after your video just for some nostalgia throwbacks, especially as I never really got to tinker around with the inside of them. Such a thermal beast!
@@Techwen lol yeah there were so many designs then where you'd stare at it and go WHYYYYYYYYYYYY
It’s amazing what such a small modification can do to this computer. Why it wasn’t like this from factory, I’m not sure. If I ever get around to it, I might try it on my small desktop model GX270(or 280) and see how much better it works.
Rather than showing the improvement after 3 different mods were applied at the same time, I'd love to see the results of each one independent of the others, as well as what happens when just 2 of the 3 mods are applied. For example, measure the temps when:
a. only reversing the PSU fan (same voltage, no CPU fan shroud)
b. only adding the CPU fan shroud (no changes to PSU fan)
c. reversing PSU fan, leaving it at stock voltage, plus add CPU fan shroud
d. reversing PSU fan plus increase fan speed w/7V, but no CPU fan shroud added
The result would help identify which mods are most effective, as well as how much (or little) the other mods help.
i love these old pentium 4 hotbox machines. in laptops manufacturers had to get creative in their cooling for them which led to some absolutely thicc tastic beasts or massive media center machines.
Very cool video! (im lucy off the yestergear discord btw) and i own a dimension 4300s that that same predicament. bro runs so hottt
Hey, thanks!
Man that’s impressive! You may have just figured out how to extend the life of ma y of these Pentium 4 Dell machines! I wonder if this would work on some of the laptops as they draw air from a vent on the bottom and blast it out the back, along with multiple other vents on the back and sides.
Really enjoying the direction this channel is going in.
We had these in a Call center I worked at.. and the slightly larger version of the P4 cases had slits in one side following the contours of the grey pieces. These side would be the top if you had it vertical.
Awesome mod. Sometimes just a little tweaking will do the job. Well done.
Thank you! Problem was back in the day with thousands of these per client, wasn't about to flip the fan on every one.....specially when Dell just sent us new mobo's for free. We had one guy who literally swapped motherboards day in and day out.
God those PCs ran so hot... I can't believe doing something so simple made such a massive difference. Dell at some point just have went "Well... We have to flip the PSU fan... That will cost us, what, like 3 cents per PSU to do that and make them last longer? PSHHHHHH!!! Just keep it cooking! Gimme my 3 cents!"
It works that way because the power supply is originally 160W, and it works close to its limit. During load, it easily reaches 80 degrees, and this is a temperature above the temperature of the air inside the case, so it is not viable to blow air heated to 80 degrees into the case. It is better to blow 60 degree air into the PSU and have it expelled through its ventilation grille.
But to be honest, the HDD creates a lot of heat inside the case, replacing it with an SSD will make a big difference. The side near the processor has a ventilation grille on the plastic part, but it does not match the metal part. There are no ventilation holes on the metal part aligned with the plastic part, which creates resistance in the air that should circulate.
Mounting the Fan on the outside of the PSU is a good idea too! My unit came with a DELTA branded fan which is slightly thicker 60x60x25mm and that's the reason why I decided to leave it inside the PSU is because I also use a wi-fi and GeForce 6200 which would "block" the air path of the fan.
When using a large (3,5 inch HDD) the airflow is pretty much restricted and doesn't reach the CPU fan which insults into a really bad hotspot around the HDD/Southbridge area. Don't ask me how I figured that out lol.
When using a smaller (2,5 inch) drive this method works pretty well but as soon as there are extension cards installed the air get's trapped again. Well this case is just cursed - pun intended - but at least we can work with it to improve it at least somehow. The 3D printed shroud for the CPU fan is a good idea, too bad I don't have a 3D printer otherwise I would have printed one myself. Later fan revisions also came with a larger shroud that sit flush with the case and I still encounter some of these on ebay from time to time.
Another experiment I had back then was using a Thermistor in front of the fan so would act in the same way like the CPU fan when things get toasty but I kinda scrapped that idea since 5 and 7V are barely any difference in noise levels. Wish I had done these kind of recordings like you did nowadays! Hopefully it will help some ppl out there who still have a heart for these machines. 😀
As much as I hated these pcs back in the day, I always liked the look of them. But yeah, I can't imagine though having any large pci or agp cards in them. Like you said it traps the air.
Dell really messed up. Even just changing the direction of the PSU fan would have made such a big difference
This is the opposite of what I did with a large number of first generation ATX PCs that had the fan in the bottom of the PSU, blowing warmed air at the hot CPU, and recirculating internal air through various holes in the PSU case.
I'd flip the PSU fan and seal up all the internal holes in the PSU with aluminum flue tape. Pull that CPU heated air up and blow it out the back. Eventually the ATX specification changed to exhausting air through the PSU as it had been pre-ATX.
With this low profile Dell case the warming of air pulled through the PSU is far less of a heat adder than the CPU and very poor circulation. Surprising that Dell didn't have a duct from the CPU directly to the back when many of their towers had a passive heatsink on the CPU with a duct/hood up to a rear mounted fan to pull a lot of air past the CPU and blow it directly out. Blowing hot air in the general direction of the perforated back panel, while the PSU fan is simultaneously pulling air in through that same panel is madness.
If you want finer visualization of airflow using smoke, get some punk sticks used for lighting fireworks. They're the same thing as incense sticks, minus the scented oil. Light it, blow the flame out, have a narrow and steady source of smoke.
I did that with my optiplex, but I think that you forget to mention that the best performance is using a laptop hard drive or an ssd, because a full 7200rpm hard drive get's way too hot and combined with the exaust air that now comes from the PSU makes it even hotter, in my case reaching 69° in just the hard drive. So personally, if you are using a 7200rpm hard drive i recommend to just do the 7v mod to the psu, but not reversing it, or it will exaust hot air directly to that already hot drive, and adding a small fan to the original "intake" for getting a little better performance and trying to avoid killing your drives.
Imagine how much e-waste could have been prevented had Dell not gone for this shoddy design in the first place (the capacitor plague would still have gotten them but at a later moment)
The best solution, I had for Dell Optiplex GX 280 (Pentium 4 LGA775 and PCI Express x16 slot) was to cut opening for 120mm fan, and that large fan helped so much, harddrives didn't died anymore.
That fan shroud thing you did is actually what Dell did later on Core i models that still use the blower style coolers. Still,imagine if this had a dedicated GPU it would probably reach 70+
Dell Optiplex GX520/620 where designed for better airflow from the factory, because they were based on Pentium D.
I had a gateway gt4024 with a pentium D and that thing ran HOT. Fans were super loud too. I probably ended up cooking it by using it pretty much continuously from 2006-2014. It was very quiet its first year but by 07-08 it was very loud and only got louder as time went on. It eventually became completely unusable. I replaced the hard drive, ram, thermal paste, and graphics card out of boredom in 2015 and that didn’t help it. Maybe the capacitors were bad. Who knows. I don’t have it anymore
No, they are better because its BTX design. BTX is alot more efficient than ATX.
As for why dell didn’t do this, I’d bet that power supply is an off the shelf psu so they likely couldn’t really modify it for the system. Or it’s a cheap machine and dell used that as an excuse not to care. Probably both
I mean, I'd imagine they had a contract with the OEM in question who could've done the change needed. All they had to do is ask
@@shodan2958 Generally with parts like this made for many desktops they are built a certain way that works best for most systems. Just something as simple as rotating the fan would mean changing that part of the assembly line for that power supply or more likely, a new line entirely. For a cheap system like this, dell probably didnt think it was worth the money to commission a special psu for this system.
@@lenshibo Given how omnipresent these were around 2001-2006-ish you'd expect the economies of scale to tilt towards a separate design for these things. And these SFF PSUs afaik were a custom design anyway.
Dell should hire you to fix this kind of stuff in the future PCs
That's nuts! I definitely gotta try this out. One of these computers blew up its PSU when I plugged it in ages ago. I might get it working again!
Had one in highschool for our graphics class. Thing would overheat all the time and our IT guys eventually took it apart to do something and left it in the office. I took the shroud and used a hole cutter from shop class to cut a giant hole in the side. IT guy wasn't too happy until he checked and it stopped running magma hot. So he screwed a mesh over the hole and called it a day.
I have a GX270 which is similar to this one. I will simply buy and mount a fan into one of the PCI card slots to help the airflow a bit.
I did something like this for a custom full size optiplex sleeper PC. I don't know about the slimline ones, but the full size models have a very small grate above(when upright) the usb ports to intake air. I used this to my advantage by replacing the 92mm fan at the back with a super thick(and loud) one. To prevent the extreme negative case pressure from fighting the psu fan, I opened up the PSU and turned the fan backward. Then, to keep the CPU fan from fighting the psu fan, I also turned it backward to suck air up from the mobo through its low profile cooler. The gpu survives thanks to some vented PCIe covers that intake air sucked through by the rear fan. God, that whole case was a PITA. My head almost exploded trying to get the front headphone jack detection working with the HD audio standard(works perfectly now but isn't pretty).
Very interesting video, this modification of this computer is very interesting, I will definitely do the same in my DELL Optiplex gx260. It's strange that dell didn't use such a solution as you showed in the video, surely then these computers would be less faulty
just found this channel, its dope af 🔥
apparently, whoever designed this pc was a rocket scientist. I know pc's were the new big thing at the time and if you had even dialup you were the shit but if they know thermals can be an issue, they should've tested their products before releasing them on the market to breakdown in 1 year just to make sure it wont happen with regular use before mass producing them. i honestly though it had an intake at the front like the desktop but no.
The Dell Sandwhich press returns!!!!
I'd say that you can improve airflow more if you're willing to modify the shroud so it covers the entire heat sink rather than just the area where the blower sends air to. I'd say that it is strange considering the Optiplex 755 Tower I currently use as a server has one large fan with a shroud that pulls air from the front and cools the CPU first before sending the air inside the rest of the case.
I've encountered this on other Dell machines. Mine have side air intakes and it would bring air from the back; I put a magnetic floor vent extender on the side of the case so it brings air from the front.
I figured the heat from the power supply being blown inside the case would make it warmer. So everything is cooler, including the power supply which now gets fresh air from the outside instead of warmed air from the case.
It's working! xD
That is a wonderful solution. If it was my PC back in the day, I'd have drilled a hole in the front!
Just shows that there is more than one way to skin a cat
Dang! I imagine this also helps with the "up against the wall" problem, since the old fan config realistically had 0 way for new air to enter into the machine if it had a CRT monitor on top, and a wall
Fantastic! Earned a sub
Awesome, thank you!
Keep the dell shenanigan channel theme and I'll subscribe
thanks for the vids on this old bastard lol i love them tho fr. use to work on these exact mfers back when i was 13 helping my papaw with his business . very commonly i would see the over heating warning when wiping there virus's lol
Just trying to argue to counterpoint that I personally don't believe in, but maybe the engineers considered the cubbyhole desks for towers popular at the time that really only have good air in the front, and they didn't measure flow and just assumed air would come from said front tiny grille. And then a fan didn't happen.
As someone that's worked in many different manufacturing fields from medical to energy to housing, these disconnects are just part of doing business. You can't anticipate a bean counter doing penny pinching in a design.
i have an Acer Veriton X270 -- heh he h it shares a model # with the Dell GX.. it's a DDR-2 small form factor similar to this one in video. I wonder if drilling holes in the flat part of the top of the case could improve airflow, since i installed a half-height GPU into the one of two slots in the MB.
I don't know if there's enough spare space in the case - it's all tight AF in there. Removing the ROM drive can create a RAM air effect, but it looks unsightly. I want to see if I can drill holes in the case to improve airflow.
You did alot of work that most ppl can't do with testing equipment, running voltage, rearranging a power unit etc. Cool though.
What is the long term effect of the comp running at it's stock temp vs the reduced temp after your modification?
I haven't used it since this video as I have no real use for it. However I did let it run for quite a while just to test to make sure it wasn't a fluke and the temps were rock solid.
As far as drilling holes, I thought of that. In doing that I'd also have to block off the rear vent where the air would enter the case and use the updated fan to plug the exhaust. Essentially keep the hot air out and allow cool air in to sweep across the board. The tower version was much better as it allowed for air to be sucked in from the front. Not much, but enough to make a difference.
I still have the computer, so maybe I'll do a further update with other ideas in the future if there's any interest. I'd also like to pull the mobo out and try and fix the one ram slot. Only one slot works. Not sure if its further cap problems, or if its just a cracked solder joint.
worried about a noisy fan ? bless your heart. 12 volts or nothing for fans! you people are soft and cant handle some noise
I should flip the fan in my power supply. The air filters are a terrible air block, even 2 intake fans 1 exhaust fan makes the case a vacuum.
Now you need to get a gpu and game on it 🤩
the CPU never gets hot enough to be an issue, the main catalyst that drives fan speeds up is the northbridge so the PSU fan flip and a northbridge fan jumping power off the CPU fan connector will solve the issue, why they didn't at least flip the PSU fan baffles me.
could cause dust intake on the psu (but an external dust filter could solve that)
ok for horizontal but if vertical, top mounted psu is fighting against convection, but still better
Also an SSD would prevent high temperatures from hard drive
True but back then that wasn't really an option unfortunately
@@jims_junk Yes, now It can be upgraded for cheap
@@lorenzo.delbello yup
I can only find these with centrifugal fans on both the psu and cpu.
Edit: my best guess is you got a region specific model, refurbed or dell used multiple OEMs with yours being a minority.
There are different case sizes. The one shown here is the smallest. I think the next one up has those fans.
too bad ya can't upgrade to a heat pipe cooler like you can on the P4 dell tower models the part being Dell 9Y212.
i do wonder if there was ever a replacement Heatsinks that was all copper by a third party.
what if you block off the sections of the rear vents that don't have any direct in or out air flow, trying to make the back "leak proof" is what i'm getting at so air can only go in through the PSU fan and out the CPU fan. kind of like how laptop vents work.
was going to, but when I tested it with the smoke...case air actually was exiting from there. So if anything that would create a buffer between the cpu fan exhaust and the power supply intake. Regardless the temps are so low, it doesn't even matter now.
I saw one of these in the store at the front, think it was the register. I was wondering why the fan was running so loud
they probably had it shoved in a cubby with the back up against the glass or wood
@@jims_junk Yeah actually I think they did
Awesome
Its odd, cause i dont remeber that short of a fan. I have a box of ba13733b12h's. 24 of em. That's yer fix.
Also yes the fan is pwm driven by the mobo, in other fan models they crushed or removed the thermal diode inside the fan and just let the mobo pwm it proper. Better rpm when it needed it and the longer exit ofbthe blower actuly touched the back and created a better air flow. This was the 280s tho.
Would a liquid cooling system work as well?
did they ever make any core 2 duo versions of these chassis? i kinda do like the chassis look.
i've had a DELL 760 USFF before. they had pentium 4 and core 2 duo options if i remember.
Ya know, I swear they did, but can't find any online. I know the one client that had them, they were all p4's. However, this other client who had them I swear had core2duo's inside...maybe my memory sucks. I asked an ex co-worker and he said he remembers the same thing.
@@jims_junk looking around i found a Dell Precision 340. i think those are identical to the GX270? precision was more workstation than optiplex.
@@rayproductionsbackupchanne3862 hmm yeah looks that way...just looked it up found it says they were released in 1997...and it took RDRam..so definitely older than the gx2xx. Was trying to find a pic of the mobo and came across this: shorturl.at/hnDNZ
That is a server/workstation mobo..but doubt it fits in the desktop case. Regardless, it would be fun to play with :)
replace the thermal cpu paste and upgrading the rear mounted case fan
Is there any way to install a cool gpu in this thing? I know the PSU could limit your options
it would have to be low profile and AGP
ok, so I am starting a collection of retro machines, and this will be my first one, how should I go about it?
Chances are if you find any, the caps will be bad. So just find one with a good case and repair the motherboard. Maybe I can do a quick video to help people who don't know how to go about that?
@@jims_junk I've seen the PC turn on and function, I've used it before, everything seems to work fine and so far it has no issues, but 8n not sure what do do about retro gaming since it has a Pentium 4, 1gb ram, 40 GB hard drive, no GPU, just integrated, what games should I run
@@ajstechlab Check out www.youtube.com/@jims_junk/community
Just made a post there.
@@jims_junk thanks
...👏👍🖖
This girl i really wanted to date that was way out of my league un 2012 needed a conputer badly. I usuallu have tons of conputers but this was the only comouter i had. I fixed it up the best i could and gave it to her. I really regret that decision. Pieces of sht was worse than the computer it replaced 🤣 i dont get how i thought guving her this piece of garbage would help my chances of dating her at all. I just wanted to see her so bad and i dig through my piles of sht to make somthing that ran. She said she needed it for schhol for microsoft office n sht. I figured the school used these pile of garbage so it should work for her 🤣
First