I used a optiplex 3000 (something i forgor) until 2023 when i bought a pc, i had a 1050ti and an ssd (only in early 2023 🗿), it usable even for gaming with a graphics card
you could... but the SFF means you have to use half-height cards. your better off maxing out the memory and using it as some sort of home server. but yes they definitely have potential still.
@@clays32You're limited in both CPU and GPU selection because of the custom motherboard form factor and the half height PCIe. Newest boards in these are fourth gen.
Ironically, these PCs can still do most basic office tasks such as running Microsoft Office, play 4k videos, and browse the web. Even some light editing like photoshop and AutoCAD. In my country, these will run until the hardware gives up. Most just slap an SSD and it's ready for its second life as a basic productivity PC.
Don't forget to make a backup of the recovery partition! Afaik there's only one version of the 3020 on archive that doesn't seem to work (and it's only for the mid tower version)
For Dells you can take the service tag or express service code (you can see it at around 1:26) to the support site to get the exact system configuration and its full history, including any service events like if it was repaired (it says you need an email address to view - anything will work). This Dell was shipped to a customer/client in El Salvador on 22 June 2015.
Yep! I already looked that up before filming. Didn't see any service events, probably because it wasn't used. However I didn't notice that it was shipped to El Salvador. That certainly explains why Windows was in Spanish!
@@MichaelMJDwhy did you opt to install Ubuntu over something like Debian or Fedora (or Arch I don’t judge)? I’m assuming you don’t like canonical as much as the next guy, so was it a compatibility choice? Ease of use? PPA support?
What's odd is that Dell was shipped from my country and returned back to the US, then tossed in the trash and finally to MJD desk. usually once they are shipped there ain't gonna get it back, that's a rarity to see being shipped back to the US, there's so many local businesses selling cast off Dells, HP and Lenovo machines here.
Optiplexs are always a great option. Super cheap 99% of the time for a computer that is plenty good enough for everyday tasks and even some gaming with a few minor upgrades
Yeah I saw some of them that has 8th gen i5 being sold for only 120 bucks in mint condition, that's much cheaper than most new celeron mini PCs right now
I've grown out of my late 2000s/early 2010s 'I must build my own PC' days. In my more senior years now, if I need a PC, I cruise eBay for an Optiplex. Which isn't often, since they're like cockroaches and keep living.
i was gonna make a custom arcade cabinet (for playing newer windows based games) and i looked on ebay and saw so many optiplex listings and they were all like $100-$120 so like thats pretty cheap
I've worked in IT for 9 years now and regularly handeled these different optiplex models in big production environments and I have never had to RMA any of these sffs unlike the laptops, they are really solid and stable machines
I work with a lot of these, we still run them in the office. Honestly, even the older ones, those that run the Ivy Bridge processors are still absolutely fine for lighter tasks. I managed to snag one off work, found an i5 3470 for pocket change, got an ssd, got the ram up to 16 gigs, installed a fresh WIndows 10. Easily can watch RUclips at 1080p, file editing, word, excels, all work absolutely fine. got an sff rx550 and managed to play quite a few games, from 90s classics, to 2000s goats like san andreas and various nfs, ending up with 2010s with the likes of payday 2 and war thunder.
It's probably the "spare". Most large companies will buy a few extras when the do their hardware refreshes. Need 48, buy 50 so you can have a spare on the shelf. Sometimes they get used... Sometimes they don't. This is the spare that was never needed.
Holy, this is so nostalgic. When I worked as helpdesk, I used to support PCs like this (among a lot of other versions of the OptiPlex). When you opened it, it opened some memories. I remember when we were migrating from Win7 to Win10, and we also changed the HDDs to SSDs, which Dell had the great idea of making this so easy to work on, honestly, great experience with OptiPlexes overall!
Seeing that hard drive mechanism instantly brought back memories of working in a recycling center back in high school as part of an exchange program and running into a couple of these arguably incredibly boring but to me weirdly delightful office/professional PCs. Even if some of them were less than ideal when it came to stuff like cooling and such, I've always appreciated these OptiPlexes and their competitors' counterparts. It was incredibly easy to get into them and either scrap them for parts or fix them up and give them a new lease on life, so many things used tool-free mounts, things were easy to disassemble, I even remember some of them having a motherboard tray that tilted out so you could work on it. It genuinely felt like someone made those cases with the consideration that some underpaid IT guy would have to repair them quite frequently when something went wrong and they were made with that in mind. It's been over 10 years since I last had the pleasure of cracking one open, but every time I see one in a video like this, it's a delight I can't quite explain.
My latitude E6400 still lives on, and runs without a hitch. It runs Windows 10, and is used for niche applications like Android ADB installations and for playing old games... And its still somewhat snappy considering that it runs on a Core 2 Duo P8700 (2.53 GHz). One great thing about this laptop, is the GPU, it allows me to overclock the screen to 90Hz, and it feels much better to use tbh.
Where I'm from, this stuff is unheard of. Even DDR2 RAM is expensive, SSDs for me are mythical sightings, never used one myself, or a GPU. Junk PCs here are really, but really old stuff and they're usually broken beyond repair, water damaged, or burnt.
Then there is maybe business opportunity. Sourcing stacks of these machines in North America, Europe and Asia is no problem, they'll almost give them away.
A coworker of mine actually bought a shit ton of these from a surplus auction. we have actually had to buy some off of him, to sell to customers who needed a replacement machine. his original plan with buying them was to sell to low income families in our area. these things are workhorses!
i swear that old high end office computers are a hidden gym i have two older high end Dells and ever since I made my custom PC be a proxmox server, they have been my partner and I's main computers Dells in particular tend to be pretty easy to repair and upkeep
@@FlyboyHelosim It's actually in the same generation as the 3020 (LGA 1150 and Haswell CPU). The 9020 is just the high end one with better chipset and NIC. Also the 9020 has USFF version while 3020 doesn't. On the other hand they both have MT, SFF and Micro versions.
I had a 4th gen (4770K i7 paired with a GTX 1070) machine as my primary computer until last October. I find people wildly understate how capable these machines are. People talk about how they are "good for light tasks" or apparently only good for browsing. That old system of mine is still perfectly capable of playing a lot of relatively modern games, and frankly I didn't even have a great reason to replace it except that I wanted a new PC.
I had a pleasure to work with dozens of these machines. One time we had an order of 30 of these which needed cleaning, thermal paste change, swapping hdds for an ssd and installing windows on them. You wouldn't believe how well built these are. They were made with repair and maintenance in mind, plus they're fairly speedy machines too!
Something about reviving old computers that intrigue me. I guess that's one huge thing that I really like about Linux, it gives older computers another chance at life due to being lighter weight than Windows while also having modern software support and has security support. An old office PC from 2014 and here it is running a 2024 OS absolutely no problem. Just wonderful, less e-waste in the world is always good
This machine would run just fine on Windows 10 (I actually used one that was a year older until last year), and would also be perfectly capable of running 11 if Microsoft didn't have arbitrary CPU requirements. From experience using older machines, the biggest bottleneck (after adding an SSD, this is true for both Linux and Windows) will be the web browser, since so many modern websites are built entirely in poorly optimized JavaScript.
Business PCs are so nice to work/tinker with. We have quite a lot of Fujitsu machines at work, and the towers from the last ~10 years or so can be serviced without a screwdriver (unless you wanna remove the heat sink). That's mostly so technicians that might get called in for repairs can swap parts faster. The only downside is that especially the smaller formfactor models often include proprietary tech that's not so easy to get replacements for. Fujitsu has been using custom mainboards and PSUs that only supply 12V (with custom connectors on the MB and proprietary cables) for many years.
As someone who has my own Dell OptiPlex 3020 SFF, I found this kinda cool. I got mine back in June of last year, has an 4th-gen Core i3 and Windows 7 CoA (with a manufacturing date of July 2015, ironically), chucked Windows 7 on it and it's quite an enjoyable unit!
These 'old' SFF office PCs are great. I got one a few years ago on eBay as my main PC, it's an HP Elite 8300. I added an SSD for Windows (11) and 3TB of hard disks for everything else. I also maxed out the RAM to 32GB, and fitted an Nvidia GTX 1050Ti graphics card, a WiFi card, and a card reader. It does everything I need it to do flawlessly and plays all the games I want it to at 1080p with more than acceptable frame rates.
This reminds me of my Mom's "new" PC. It had a fried mobo and got thrown out, fixed it for $40. Sure it's a decade old but it's more then plenty for my Mom. One Kubuntu install later and she's more then happy with it. Edit: MJD I'm one of those people who will buy random old computers at good prices. Sometimes I add to the PC horde with Craigslist deals I really don't need out of force of habit.
I sent one of those to recycling that looked exactly like that, nearly perfect condition, front plastic on it. I deployed it when it was new. It was used in an office environment for about 7-8 years, was reliable and decently fast. Most of these shipped in i5 4GB or 8GB configs with a 500GB hard drive. I still have like 4 of them on my shelf lol.
@@MrPir84free honestly I'm personally a fan of spreading the stuff smooth (necessary for bare dies) but I understand that the X pattern (on a heat spreader) is good enough and the second-best method. But yeah 100% he did it because of that.
I rescued a mini office pc recently and made it my Plex server. I love these little computers and how handy they can actually be for a lot of non-intensive tasks
These old Optiplexes are everywhere since businesses have moved on from them. I bought my parents a refurbished one a few years ago for dirt cheap and threw in a 512gb SSD. Works like a charm.
I got an XE2 saved from the dump and swapped in the best server CPU I could find. They are basically i7s. $20. Maxed out the ram to 32gb, SSD and 1060 graphics card. Thing runs like a dream!!!
Oh the optiplex, my vocational school's economy lab got equipped with those, replacing ancient PCs from over 20 or so years. Me being part of the IT students were in charge of replacing the old stuff with these ones. Was kind of controversial for us considering our labs were equipped with much weaker PCs.
If you want a simple distro like Ubuntu than use Linux Mint. Linux Mint doesn't force you to use snaps and is more popular. Due to it being more popular there is more support.
These 3000, 5000 and 7000 series Optiplexs are bulletproof. I've had have dozens in the field running all their original hardware even after 10+ years. The only drawback is the 3010 only allows for 8 gb ram max but starting with the 3020 you have there allows for up 32gb and all the 5000 and 7000 series all accept at least 32 or more depending on model year.
Did I just time travel to 2002? I don't find people tossing out PC's like they use to anymore. Those were the good ole days when I use to find Old PC's being tossed out in the trash. Then they moved to the recycling center when we use to be allow to pick through. Someone in the town got wise and put a stop to that.
Dell Optiplex computers are ubiquitous and fun to customize for the average user. Even though those computers are rather boring, I’ve used these at libraries and workplaces, they are easy to repair and service!
I have the same pc sitting under my TV. It's runs Truenas and my CCTV server. Mine was free too, a thank you for sourcing and setting up it's replacement for a mate.
I have the optiplex 790 MT and I did the Nvme Pci mod with the custom bios and it was worth it, my grandmother was going to throw it away but I rescued it for 15 dollars and now it is one of my best personal PCs, especially when I had the adrenaline of the custom bios, it runs Ubuntu great along with Windows 11 on that 1Tb Nvme
Man I've worked on so many of these things lmao. They aren't terrible, they're perfectly usable for what they're designed for. And I can attest to the fixability of them, even doing a board swap is fairly quick. The only downside is the use of proprietary stuff that limits how long you can keep them going.
I work at a computer refurbishing company, and I've seen hundreds of these. Most of those were filthy as hell, some had plant seeds in the power supply, and the whole thing was covered with some sticky dust inside, wich also smelled bad, I wondered where they get these machines, the front covers where often broken, scratches, and lot of them just broke down without reason, I hated to work with them, but otherwise they easy to disassembly at least.
I found a 9020 in street trash. It was in incredible condition. Put an SSD in it and it and it ran windows 10 without a hitch. It's my backup PC even though I have a windows 11 laptop lying around somewhere. My main PC is an old HP Z440. Love your work bro. 👍🏾👏🏾
I found a PC in a neighbor’s recycle bin with a mint ASUS mobo and all it needed was a new power supply. I took it completely apart and cleaned it, bought a new power supply and SSD and it was good as new. Amazing what people throw out.
I can't tell you how many offices I used to do IT work in that used either that model or similar. SO easy to work with and fix, both hardware and software!
a while back I also got a 3020 from my school. I used it as my main machine on windows 7 for half a year in 2022 and now in 2024 i use it as my 2nd machine
To comment on the beginning, I actually saw these while working in an electronics recycling facility a few years back and I tore apart/tested several of these!
I bought a SFF HP a few years ago after a while of watching a ton of videos like this one that featured Optiplexes and the like. Yes they're just common school and business PCs but I love mine, it's been my main PC since I got it. I hadn't had a desktop before it and it's the first PC I ever bought with my own money. Whenever it is that I get the chance to upgrade to a more modern setup I'm not gonna get rid of it because I know it'll still have uses and it'll always have sentimental value to me.
if you want windows 10 support for longer get the IoT enterprise LTSC iso and install that, i use it as my main windows build, and it doesn’t have all the bloatware and spyware
With these devices, Swap in an SSD and they will run Windows 11 fairly well for basic stuff. I have a bunch of them around the office (I am the IT manager). Make your Windows 11 ISO with Rufus, and disable all the checks, it installs fine. We need all the PCs on Windows 11 due to Windows 10 going away, so no going to dump old hardware if it still works...
I'm planning on doing that to Dell OptiPlex 3010 with in i3 and 8GB Ram and a laptop. Another c0mputer I've been using mostly had Win 7 Home. I put an SSD drive into it and running Zorin 17.1
I got multiple Dell and HP desktops and laptops from a Corproate dumpster dive. I had to get some cmos batteries to replace the ones in some of the laptops .
My school still has a room full of these, they are used for PCB design and are equipped with double monitors. We use them quite often. In other classes we have either Lenovo laptops or Dell all in one PCs
Currently watching this on my living room multimedia PC (An Optiplex 3020) A fun gaming performance note: I play emulated PS2 games on this guy and usually get a solid 60fps at native resolution. It's been an awesome emulation machine!
This reminds me of my first days doing desktop support and I i got a ticket from a small service area and this woman was still suffering along with a GX280 that took like 15 minutes to boot up.. She had an Optiplex 770 that was still sitting in the box and had burned up 2 out of 3 years of warranty just sitting there. Apparently they'd had really bad experiences with other techs who wouldn't migrate their stuff and she never wanted to move it over. She was pretty pleased with the performance boost after that though!
i've worked on these model at my old company, and from what i'm remember all of them will shipped with win7 pro and they will give you a DVD to upgrade to win8 and 10 and from what i recall the win10 pro recovery disc is kinda broken at least i never able manage to use it to do the upgrade
It's likely a spare unit that just never got used. They upgraded their equipment, and thus the spare no longer had a purpose so it got recycled with the rest of them.
i got a dell xps 8940, i5 10400 16gb ram gtx 1660s 512gb kioxia ssd 1tb hdd from the e waste. filthy computer covered in tar. nothing wrong with it at all. swapped in an AIO cpu cooler, 16gb more ram, and another fan in the front. had to damage the case externally you can’t tell. i love it so much. i’ve been using it a lot just because i like it. considering making into a hackintosh with an amd gpu
Just got two 5070s and a 5090 from the trash, all with I7's. Not NEW, but still in very good condition. Surprisingly, they all still work after being (literally) thrown in the trash.
I got refurbished dell optiplex from amazon and it works well. It's a great basic pc that frankly should be windows 11 compatible but isn't. It has an intel i5-6500 which runs very well and it's maxed out at 16Gb of ram and the hard drive was replaced with a 256Gb SSD.
I used to run Kubuntu as my daily driver. I like the KDE/Plasma desktop environment. When Canonical moved more towards Snap's I had to let it go ( I know you can desnapify it permanently, Linux right! ). It is out of line with the running theme and mousepointer, scrollbar etc.. That is the same with Flatpaks. So I really avoid using them. On old machines, with original hardware Snap's just use too much space. Now my HP Envy ( I7, 16 GB, 1 TB NVME ) died during heavy rainfall, I only have old stuff. Don't worry, i'll repair her. I have a Dell laptop ( I5 4th gen, 8 GB with a rusty HDD ) which runs MX23 and an Macbook Pro from mid 2010 running on Zorin OS Lite. The Mac I upgraded with an SSD and she runs better than some cheap new stuff. Later I will upgrade the Dell as well with an SSD. Saving old hardware is good and has it's use.
ClassiCube isn’t just a clone, it’s a direct port of Minecraft Classic with some quality-of-life improvements and of course a texture pack for legal reasons.
The best use for these old Dell Optiplex computers is a home server. You get a lot of bang for your buck with them. The one I got is my NAS and Plex server. I put in a multi gig Ethernet port, three internal drives and an external USB 4 drive bay. It works amazingly well for how little I spent on it.
I have an Optiplex 3010, bought it from Best Buy in like 2019 for $120. Swapped the i3 for a 3rd gen i5 i had laying around. Swapped the HDD for an SSD, and swapped the 4 gb of ram for 8. Use the thing daily as my media center computer and it runs Windows 10 just fine.
One of my friend actually runs Minecraft servers on an OptiPlex! I'm not sure if it's the same model, but it was really surprising to figure out that it can handle modded Minecraft with 5-6 players at a time
Trash picking is the best, I recently found an Atari Video Music system that was only missing the outside box but still was wrapped in the plastic and had the styrofoam protection ends still attached. It was previously used but it works as good as new and the unit is flawless. Also got a bunch of Betamax, VHS, 8 track, and cassettes from that find.
I HAVE THE EXACT MACHINE AT HOME!!! I have a vendor who got it sorted for me. The same machine but with Windows 10, an SSD and 16GB add-on. No complaints, it is working like a charm. I legitimately am happy with these machines when they were made. And the best part was that I got it for PKR15000, which is roughly 20, 30 freedom eagles? And that's inclusive of the add ons so... Dirt cheap all around.
Hmmm... Maybe not used too much. Got a hold of 2 Dell Optiplex 3050 PCs. Looks about the same size as yours. Has i5, Win 10 Pro, but they are labeled as Refurb. Haven't tested them yet. Great find on your part!
i actually started a job in an office just 1 week ago, and we actually work with these dells, what were the odds of you uploading a video on this exact type of pc just after i started my job lol
As a former Microsoft tester, Vista really sucked. Blue screen of death on install reboot twice in a hard drive I swapped in my pc for the test. Pc was supposedly Vista compliant. Had Windows 7 Pro, Windows 8 8.1(junk) and 10 a year before release. That pc should run Recalbox console emulation.
A few people suggested checking the power on hours count on the original HDD, so I did and... 2 hours!
Damn, you scored here.
I guess this system was deployed to a Spanish-speaking business as a spare and then never used.
HEY MJD, Why not try installing Windows 10 on a 486 computer? If it Is even possible?
this is a good find you got here
Install Windows 10 LTSC 2021!
I got a dell optiplex 3040 from the trash. It’s my main pc now
I got a vostro 3245 with i5 7 th, optiplex with i5 8th and a dell optiplex xe2 with i5 4th from the same trash for free.
Mine is a dell optiolex 780 lol
I got a Optiplex 7010
I used a optiplex 3000 (something i forgor) until 2023 when i bought a pc, i had a 1050ti and an ssd (only in early 2023 🗿), it usable even for gaming with a graphics card
i got a lenovo think centre m81 for 50bgn (~25 dollars) with pentium g620 and 12gb ram, still going strong
I love it when people rescue these old machines. Many people just don't see the full potential of these old computers.
Man, you can Build such a sleeper PC with a chassis like this, it would be kind of sweet!
you could... but the SFF means you have to use half-height cards. your better off maxing out the memory and using it as some sort of home server. but yes they definitely have potential still.
@@clays32You're limited in both CPU and GPU selection because of the custom motherboard form factor and the half height PCIe. Newest boards in these are fourth gen.
Ironically, these PCs can still do most basic office tasks such as running Microsoft Office, play 4k videos, and browse the web. Even some light editing like photoshop and AutoCAD.
In my country, these will run until the hardware gives up. Most just slap an SSD and it's ready for its second life as a basic productivity PC.
@rzpogi I got an i5 3470 pc, added a 1050, and now play gtav at medium 1080p 60fps, basic office tasks and content streaming
Don't forget to make a backup of the recovery partition! Afaik there's only one version of the 3020 on archive that doesn't seem to work (and it's only for the mid tower version)
definitely. These optiplex use recovery DVDs and dell sometimes wont release iso versions for recovery media.
110% a major issue unfortunately.. Factory images are hard to come by @@Golecom2
I agree. These recovery images are so precious and should really be backed up to the internet archive!
Any forums or torrents out there for it?
For Dells you can take the service tag or express service code (you can see it at around 1:26) to the support site to get the exact system configuration and its full history, including any service events like if it was repaired (it says you need an email address to view - anything will work). This Dell was shipped to a customer/client in El Salvador on 22 June 2015.
Yep! I already looked that up before filming. Didn't see any service events, probably because it wasn't used. However I didn't notice that it was shipped to El Salvador. That certainly explains why Windows was in Spanish!
@@MichaelMJD It's hidden a little bit. You need to click "Manage services" in the overview - the ship date and location are listed there.
@@MichaelMJDwhy did you opt to install Ubuntu over something like Debian or Fedora (or Arch I don’t judge)? I’m assuming you don’t like canonical as much as the next guy, so was it a compatibility choice? Ease of use? PPA support?
What's odd is that Dell was shipped from my country and returned back to the US, then tossed in the trash and finally to MJD desk. usually once they are shipped there ain't gonna get it back, that's a rarity to see being shipped back to the US, there's so many local businesses selling cast off Dells, HP and Lenovo machines here.
Optiplexs are always a great option. Super cheap 99% of the time for a computer that is plenty good enough for everyday tasks and even some gaming with a few minor upgrades
Yeah I saw some of them that has 8th gen i5 being sold for only 120 bucks in mint condition, that's much cheaper than most new celeron mini PCs right now
I've grown out of my late 2000s/early 2010s 'I must build my own PC' days. In my more senior years now, if I need a PC, I cruise eBay for an Optiplex. Which isn't often, since they're like cockroaches and keep living.
@@MattExzy Yeah Optiplex’s are very durable and long-lasting
i was gonna make a custom arcade cabinet (for playing newer windows based games) and i looked on ebay and saw so many optiplex listings and they were all like $100-$120 so like thats pretty cheap
“Mostly uninteresting”
It’s not nice to lie, Michael. You know why we’re all here.
But it all went wrong 😅
These things are everywhere, they aged like fine wine when it comes to "it just works performance"
I've worked in IT for 9 years now and regularly handeled these different optiplex models in big production environments and I have never had to RMA any of these sffs unlike the laptops, they are really solid and stable machines
instantly blasted back to highschool where someone printed out a picture of a troll face and shoved it in the disk drive of one of these guys.
To blast me back to high school (we call it upper school here in England), it would have to be a BBC Micro computer!
Someone put a picture of Saul Goodman into one of em in my high school
Thats a nice prank
@@FloweyFanClub my classmates were a little less sophisticated, they would stick pop tarts in the disk drives
I work with a lot of these, we still run them in the office. Honestly, even the older ones, those that run the Ivy Bridge processors are still absolutely fine for lighter tasks.
I managed to snag one off work, found an i5 3470 for pocket change, got an ssd, got the ram up to 16 gigs, installed a fresh WIndows 10. Easily can watch RUclips at 1080p, file editing, word, excels, all work absolutely fine. got an sff rx550 and managed to play quite a few games, from 90s classics, to 2000s goats like san andreas and various nfs, ending up with 2010s with the likes of payday 2 and war thunder.
I use much older for the same tasks. Like core2duo. My gaming PC is an i7 3770 from 2013
Foe older tasks i had c2d with 9800gt run 2000s tripleA while my main cpu using gen7 i3 and rx550 fornmodern triple As 😊
no doubt DS (Dungeon Siege) 1 and 2 would be fine
It's probably the "spare". Most large companies will buy a few extras when the do their hardware refreshes. Need 48, buy 50 so you can have a spare on the shelf. Sometimes they get used... Sometimes they don't. This is the spare that was never needed.
Holy, this is so nostalgic. When I worked as helpdesk, I used to support PCs like this (among a lot of other versions of the OptiPlex). When you opened it, it opened some memories.
I remember when we were migrating from Win7 to Win10, and we also changed the HDDs to SSDs, which Dell had the great idea of making this so easy to work on, honestly, great experience with OptiPlexes overall!
Seeing that hard drive mechanism instantly brought back memories of working in a recycling center back in high school as part of an exchange program and running into a couple of these arguably incredibly boring but to me weirdly delightful office/professional PCs.
Even if some of them were less than ideal when it came to stuff like cooling and such, I've always appreciated these OptiPlexes and their competitors' counterparts. It was incredibly easy to get into them and either scrap them for parts or fix them up and give them a new lease on life, so many things used tool-free mounts, things were easy to disassemble, I even remember some of them having a motherboard tray that tilted out so you could work on it. It genuinely felt like someone made those cases with the consideration that some underpaid IT guy would have to repair them quite frequently when something went wrong and they were made with that in mind.
It's been over 10 years since I last had the pleasure of cracking one open, but every time I see one in a video like this, it's a delight I can't quite explain.
Optiplex and Precision and Latitude are workhorses. Very nice and solid.
You're forgetting the Dimension series.
Every of them except Latitude E7470, my cpu just got fried for some reason
@@ciach0_ that sucks.. what cpu ??
@@remixedcat I believe it was i5-6300u
My latitude E6400 still lives on, and runs without a hitch. It runs Windows 10, and is used for niche applications like Android ADB installations and for playing old games... And its still somewhat snappy considering that it runs on a Core 2 Duo P8700 (2.53 GHz). One great thing about this laptop, is the GPU, it allows me to overclock the screen to 90Hz, and it feels much better to use tbh.
I have 5 of those on a shelf next to me right now. They hardly ever die. Run windows 11 perfectly fine as long as you got enough ram and the i5.
Where I'm from, this stuff is unheard of. Even DDR2 RAM is expensive, SSDs for me are mythical sightings, never used one myself, or a GPU.
Junk PCs here are really, but really old stuff and they're usually broken beyond repair, water damaged, or burnt.
Where are you from?
Like how old are they usually
Where ?
Blud must be living in Venezuela 💀
Then there is maybe business opportunity. Sourcing stacks of these machines in North America, Europe and Asia is no problem, they'll almost give them away.
A coworker of mine actually bought a shit ton of these from a surplus auction. we have actually had to buy some off of him, to sell to customers who needed a replacement machine. his original plan with buying them was to sell to low income families in our area. these things are workhorses!
i swear that old high end office computers are a hidden gym
i have two older high end Dells and ever since I made my custom PC be a proxmox server, they have been my partner and I's main computers
Dells in particular tend to be pretty easy to repair and upkeep
Watching this video on my OptiPlex 9020 which is the ultra small form factor version of this PC. It runs Arch really well.
The 9020 is a later generation, it's not the smaller version of this one.
@@FlyboyHelosim It's actually in the same generation as the 3020 (LGA 1150 and Haswell CPU). The 9020 is just the high end one with better chipset and NIC.
Also the 9020 has USFF version while 3020 doesn't. On the other hand they both have MT, SFF and Micro versions.
Thats my actual PC no way, also great video!
Thats crazy man
wait wtf
i keep seeing you everywhere
is it lightning fast?
Same. It's my spare pc and it's right next to my gaming pc
Very nice for free perfect for a kids first PC. Just two things for anybody getting one of these check cmos battery & replace if low also update BIOS.
I had a 4th gen (4770K i7 paired with a GTX 1070) machine as my primary computer until last October. I find people wildly understate how capable these machines are. People talk about how they are "good for light tasks" or apparently only good for browsing. That old system of mine is still perfectly capable of playing a lot of relatively modern games, and frankly I didn't even have a great reason to replace it except that I wanted a new PC.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but this might be the first MJD video that has a Spanish setup of Windows.
Boy, it brings me back lol.
Yeah it's the first time, but as i know one time he installed a french copy of windows NT 4.o on the windows 98 5$ pc
Saludos argentina!
Man, why can't I run into old Optiplexes looking that good?
Most old office PCs I find are beat up.
I had a pleasure to work with dozens of these machines.
One time we had an order of 30 of these which needed cleaning, thermal paste change, swapping hdds for an ssd and installing windows on them.
You wouldn't believe how well built these are.
They were made with repair and maintenance in mind, plus they're fairly speedy machines too!
Something about reviving old computers that intrigue me. I guess that's one huge thing that I really like about Linux, it gives older computers another chance at life due to being lighter weight than Windows while also having modern software support and has security support. An old office PC from 2014 and here it is running a 2024 OS absolutely no problem. Just wonderful, less e-waste in the world is always good
This machine would run just fine on Windows 10 (I actually used one that was a year older until last year), and would also be perfectly capable of running 11 if Microsoft didn't have arbitrary CPU requirements. From experience using older machines, the biggest bottleneck (after adding an SSD, this is true for both Linux and Windows) will be the web browser, since so many modern websites are built entirely in poorly optimized JavaScript.
Business PCs are so nice to work/tinker with. We have quite a lot of Fujitsu machines at work, and the towers from the last ~10 years or so can be serviced without a screwdriver (unless you wanna remove the heat sink). That's mostly so technicians that might get called in for repairs can swap parts faster.
The only downside is that especially the smaller formfactor models often include proprietary tech that's not so easy to get replacements for. Fujitsu has been using custom mainboards and PSUs that only supply 12V (with custom connectors on the MB and proprietary cables) for many years.
As someone who has my own Dell OptiPlex 3020 SFF, I found this kinda cool. I got mine back in June of last year, has an 4th-gen Core i3 and Windows 7 CoA (with a manufacturing date of July 2015, ironically), chucked Windows 7 on it and it's quite an enjoyable unit!
These specific old optiplexes have such a special place in my heart, because my old school used to have them back in 2015 and 2016
These 'old' SFF office PCs are great. I got one a few years ago on eBay as my main PC, it's an HP Elite 8300. I added an SSD for Windows (11) and 3TB of hard disks for everything else. I also maxed out the RAM to 32GB, and fitted an Nvidia GTX 1050Ti graphics card, a WiFi card, and a card reader. It does everything I need it to do flawlessly and plays all the games I want it to at 1080p with more than acceptable frame rates.
I think if your psu supports you should go for a rx 550 or 580
@@zeze64. 550 is trash tbh
i got dell vostro 3266 from trash ,now its my main computer,i found it with pentium g5460 inside and upgraded to i7 7700 and working like a beast
This reminds me of my Mom's "new" PC. It had a fried mobo and got thrown out, fixed it for $40. Sure it's a decade old but it's more then plenty for my Mom. One Kubuntu install later and she's more then happy with it.
Edit: MJD I'm one of those people who will buy random old computers at good prices. Sometimes I add to the PC horde with Craigslist deals I really don't need out of force of habit.
I sent one of those to recycling that looked exactly like that, nearly perfect condition, front plastic on it. I deployed it when it was new. It was used in an office environment for about 7-8 years, was reliable and decently fast. Most of these shipped in i5 4GB or 8GB configs with a 500GB hard drive. I still have like 4 of them on my shelf lol.
Did you censor the Thermal paste to avoid the great debate between pea size and small shwirl?
Actually that sounds like a great way to avoid the know-it-alls..
@@MrPir84free honestly I'm personally a fan of spreading the stuff smooth (necessary for bare dies) but I understand that the X pattern (on a heat spreader) is good enough and the second-best method.
But yeah 100% he did it because of that.
I rescued a mini office pc recently and made it my Plex server. I love these little computers and how handy they can actually be for a lot of non-intensive tasks
That's a very good find ngl
These old Optiplexes are everywhere since businesses have moved on from them. I bought my parents a refurbished one a few years ago for dirt cheap and threw in a 512gb SSD. Works like a charm.
We have tons of these at my job waiting for the landfill. I've considered just taking some to tinker with.
Grab them, upgrade them, and sell them.🤷♂️
put a rx 560 on those machines and you basically got a good gamin pc
Do it, these things are awesome.
I got an XE2 saved from the dump and swapped in the best server CPU I could find. They are basically i7s. $20. Maxed out the ram to 32gb, SSD and 1060 graphics card. Thing runs like a dream!!!
Oh the optiplex, my vocational school's economy lab got equipped with those, replacing ancient PCs from over 20 or so years.
Me being part of the IT students were in charge of replacing the old stuff with these ones.
Was kind of controversial for us considering our labs were equipped with much weaker PCs.
I still have my dell optiplex that I use still for school and some gaming. It works like a charm
always a good day when michael mjd drops a video
Yep, I remember my high school having these. I also remember them running Google Maps better than my laptop at home
If you want a simple distro like Ubuntu than use Linux Mint. Linux Mint doesn't force you to use snaps and is more popular. Due to it being more popular there is more support.
I graduated from high school in 2020 and we had computers super similar to this one that ran windows 10. Surprisingly they ran alright for their age.
1:17 wasn’t handled very DELLicately
He backed up the windows 7 recovery partition and uploaded it to his internet archive page if anyone wants it!
I couldn't find it.
1:21 my guy literally just told us, that he found his content in a trash
These 3000, 5000 and 7000 series Optiplexs are bulletproof. I've had have dozens in the field running all their original hardware even after 10+ years.
The only drawback is the 3010 only allows for 8 gb ram max but starting with the 3020 you have there allows for up 32gb and all the 5000 and 7000 series all accept at least 32 or more depending on model year.
Who's watching this on a Dell Optiplex?
Did I just time travel to 2002? I don't find people tossing out PC's like they use to anymore. Those were the good ole days when I use to find Old PC's being tossed out in the trash. Then they moved to the recycling center when we use to be allow to pick through. Someone in the town got wise and put a stop to that.
Dell Optiplex computers are ubiquitous and fun to customize for the average user. Even though those computers are rather boring, I’ve used these at libraries and workplaces, they are easy to repair and service!
I have the same pc sitting under my TV. It's runs Truenas and my CCTV server. Mine was free too, a thank you for sourcing and setting up it's replacement for a mate.
I have the optiplex 790 MT and I did the Nvme Pci mod with the custom bios and it was worth it, my grandmother was going to throw it away but I rescued it for 15 dollars and now it is one of my best personal PCs, especially when I had the adrenaline of the custom bios, it runs Ubuntu great along with Windows 11 on that 1Tb Nvme
Man I've worked on so many of these things lmao. They aren't terrible, they're perfectly usable for what they're designed for. And I can attest to the fixability of them, even doing a board swap is fairly quick. The only downside is the use of proprietary stuff that limits how long you can keep them going.
I work at a computer refurbishing company, and I've seen hundreds of these. Most of those were filthy as hell, some had plant seeds in the power supply, and the whole thing was covered with some sticky dust inside, wich also smelled bad, I wondered where they get these machines, the front covers where often broken, scratches, and lot of them just broke down without reason, I hated to work with them, but otherwise they easy to disassembly at least.
I found a 9020 in street trash. It was in incredible condition. Put an SSD in it and it and it ran windows 10 without a hitch. It's my backup PC even though I have a windows 11 laptop lying around somewhere. My main PC is an old HP Z440. Love your work bro. 👍🏾👏🏾
I found a PC in a neighbor’s recycle bin with a mint ASUS mobo and all it needed was a new power supply. I took it completely apart and cleaned it, bought a new power supply and SSD and it was good as new. Amazing what people throw out.
I can't tell you how many offices I used to do IT work in that used either that model or similar. SO easy to work with and fix, both hardware and software!
a while back I also got a 3020 from my school. I used it as my main machine on windows 7 for half a year in 2022 and now in 2024 i use it as my 2nd machine
To comment on the beginning, I actually saw these while working in an electronics recycling facility a few years back and I tore apart/tested several of these!
nice find! I like that these PCs are made to be very easily serviceable. It shows that they are designed for businessess and their support staff.
i just bought the mini version of 3020 with i5...to make an android tv box...cool PCs to mod
I bought a SFF HP a few years ago after a while of watching a ton of videos like this one that featured Optiplexes and the like. Yes they're just common school and business PCs but I love mine, it's been my main PC since I got it. I hadn't had a desktop before it and it's the first PC I ever bought with my own money. Whenever it is that I get the chance to upgrade to a more modern setup I'm not gonna get rid of it because I know it'll still have uses and it'll always have sentimental value to me.
if you want windows 10 support for longer get the IoT enterprise LTSC iso and install that, i use it as my main windows build, and it doesn’t have all the bloatware and spyware
With these devices, Swap in an SSD and they will run Windows 11 fairly well for basic stuff. I have a bunch of them around the office (I am the IT manager). Make your Windows 11 ISO with Rufus, and disable all the checks, it installs fine. We need all the PCs on Windows 11 due to Windows 10 going away, so no going to dump old hardware if it still works...
I'm planning on doing that to Dell OptiPlex 3010 with in i3 and 8GB Ram and a laptop. Another c0mputer I've been using mostly had Win 7 Home. I put an SSD drive into it and running Zorin 17.1
I got multiple Dell and HP desktops and laptops from a Corproate dumpster dive. I had to get some cmos batteries to replace the ones in some of the laptops .
I'm using an old Optiplex running OpnSense. Was just sitting collecting dust, so I put it to work.
My school still has a room full of these, they are used for PCB design and are equipped with double monitors. We use them quite often. In other classes we have either Lenovo laptops or Dell all in one PCs
Currently watching this on my living room multimedia PC (An Optiplex 3020)
A fun gaming performance note: I play emulated PS2 games on this guy and usually get a solid 60fps at native resolution. It's been an awesome emulation machine!
Hell yea, my brothers still use these.
This reminds me of my first days doing desktop support and I i got a ticket from a small service area and this woman was still suffering along with a GX280 that took like 15 minutes to boot up..
She had an Optiplex 770 that was still sitting in the box and had burned up 2 out of 3 years of warranty just sitting there. Apparently they'd had really bad experiences with other techs who wouldn't migrate their stuff and she never wanted to move it over. She was pretty pleased with the performance boost after that though!
i've worked on these model at my old company, and from what i'm remember all of them will shipped with win7 pro and they will give you a DVD to upgrade to win8 and 10 and from what i recall the win10 pro recovery disc is kinda broken at least i never able manage to use it to do the upgrade
It's likely a spare unit that just never got used. They upgraded their equipment, and thus the spare no longer had a purpose so it got recycled with the rest of them.
We have lots of these Dell Optiplex PCs at work, very solid machines like all Dell Optiplex's!
i got a dell xps 8940, i5 10400 16gb ram gtx 1660s 512gb kioxia ssd 1tb hdd from the e waste. filthy computer covered in tar. nothing wrong with it at all. swapped in an AIO cpu cooler, 16gb more ram, and another fan in the front. had to damage the case externally you can’t tell. i love it so much. i’ve been using it a lot just because i like it. considering making into a hackintosh with an amd gpu
im in technical school and im learning informatics and my school uses those for workstations and yes we work on them in 2024
Just got two 5070s and a 5090 from the trash, all with I7's. Not NEW, but still in very good condition. Surprisingly, they all still work after being (literally) thrown in the trash.
I got a Dell OptiPlex 7050 after my old computer's motherboard failed. I use it to do work on and play games. it works really well
First OS in Spanish I see in this channel, Greetings from Colombia 👋🏼
I got refurbished dell optiplex from amazon and it works well. It's a great basic pc that frankly should be windows 11 compatible but isn't. It has an intel i5-6500 which runs very well and it's maxed out at 16Gb of ram and the hard drive was replaced with a 256Gb SSD.
I used to run Kubuntu as my daily driver. I like the KDE/Plasma desktop environment. When Canonical moved more towards Snap's I had to let it go ( I know you can desnapify it permanently, Linux right! ). It is out of line with the running theme and mousepointer, scrollbar etc.. That is the same with Flatpaks. So I really avoid using them.
On old machines, with original hardware Snap's just use too much space. Now my HP Envy ( I7, 16 GB, 1 TB NVME ) died during heavy rainfall, I only have old stuff. Don't worry, i'll repair her. I have a Dell laptop ( I5 4th gen, 8 GB with a rusty HDD ) which runs MX23 and an Macbook Pro from mid 2010 running on Zorin OS Lite. The Mac I upgraded with an SSD and she runs better than some cheap new stuff. Later I will upgrade the Dell as well with an SSD.
Saving old hardware is good and has it's use.
This era of optiplex brings me back to elementary and middle school.
ClassiCube isn’t just a clone, it’s a direct port of Minecraft Classic with some quality-of-life improvements and of course a texture pack for legal reasons.
Glad to see Classic Cube worked well on that machine!
The best use for these old Dell Optiplex computers is a home server. You get a lot of bang for your buck with them. The one I got is my NAS and Plex server. I put in a multi gig Ethernet port, three internal drives and an external USB 4 drive bay. It works amazingly well for how little I spent on it.
8:13 this part about the different windows versions made me sad to hear
I got Optiplex 790, I still use that, and it works fine
Also if you have any problems with it try updating the bios to the newest version, that fixed all my problems
We need a nickname for this computer! How about “The trashed-fished optiplex 3020”
I have an Optiplex 3010, bought it from Best Buy in like 2019 for $120. Swapped the i3 for a 3rd gen i5 i had laying around. Swapped the HDD for an SSD, and swapped the 4 gb of ram for 8. Use the thing daily as my media center computer and it runs Windows 10 just fine.
One of my friend actually runs Minecraft servers on an OptiPlex! I'm not sure if it's the same model, but it was really surprising to figure out that it can handle modded Minecraft with 5-6 players at a time
Trash picking is the best, I recently found an Atari Video Music system that was only missing the outside box but still was wrapped in the plastic and had the styrofoam protection ends still attached. It was previously used but it works as good as new and the unit is flawless.
Also got a bunch of Betamax, VHS, 8 track, and cassettes from that find.
i just upgraded from a similar model a few weeks ago. i put in a 2tb ssd with windows 11 and 8 gigs of ram. it ran amazing
I guess you could say that SSD upgrade was ... Crucial 😅
I HAVE THE EXACT MACHINE AT HOME!!! I have a vendor who got it sorted for me. The same machine but with Windows 10, an SSD and 16GB add-on. No complaints, it is working like a charm.
I legitimately am happy with these machines when they were made. And the best part was that I got it for PKR15000, which is roughly 20, 30 freedom eagles? And that's inclusive of the add ons so... Dirt cheap all around.
Hmmm... Maybe not used too much. Got a hold of 2 Dell Optiplex 3050 PCs. Looks about the same size as yours. Has i5, Win 10 Pro, but they are labeled as Refurb. Haven't tested them yet. Great find on your part!
i actually started a job in an office just 1 week ago, and we actually work with these dells, what were the odds of you uploading a video on this exact type of pc just after i started my job lol
As a former Microsoft tester, Vista really sucked. Blue screen of death on install reboot twice in a hard drive I swapped in my pc for the test. Pc was supposedly Vista compliant. Had Windows 7 Pro, Windows 8 8.1(junk) and 10 a year before release. That pc should run Recalbox console emulation.