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I've worked on HUNDREDS of optiplex's over the years. The SFF 790's had our HIGHEST failure rate because about 10% of them would blow PSUs. Just keep that in mind. Otherwise, great value. Don't use for mission critical applications without a proprietary backup PSU on hand. You've been warned!!!!!!
They keep dropping. Always the PSU. All the other optiplex's combined equal probably 2 units in total failing for ANY reason (guessing around 100-150 units of various years). 790 SFF I'd guess 30 outta 200. Which is insane when comparing ratios. I believe it's a power trace/delivery failure on the MB. But ya, in general optiplex's are tanks mang. Would never hate someone using them. I still use a 9020 SFF for a backup server. I just worry about newbies getting involved with proprietary components like PSU and motherboard I/O. ... For the price? ... And for someone just getting into homelab? I get it. Pull the trigger on em!
I hope to find some help here in the comments. I have this exact PC, Optiplex 790 DT with the i5-2400 on 3.1 GHz and am unsure about the power supply of the PCIe ports. I would like to install a low profile AMD R5 340X 2GB GPU but it claims to drain 65W at max and I found some specs of the PC telling me the slots only support up to 35 W. Is there any way to make this GPU work without an additional psu or changing the motherboard or am I mixing up the specs and the gpu will work? On other sites I found that the PCIe 16 slot always supports up to 75W? Thanks in advance.
When I did IT support for my college we had hundreds of 790s in our labs. Mostly still had mechanical drives so super slow but they were surprisingly reliable
I really enjoy working on those Dell PCs, they are well-documented, have decent support, quality parts. Last summer I worked on my older 775 based Optiplex 755. I upgraded the RAM, the CPU to the legendary Core2Quad Q6600 and placed an old Radeon HD4550 from dump, to get an HDMI output. Now it sits next to my friend’s TV as a media center.
I work on a public university in Brazil using a HP Compaq with a i5 2400 and 8GB RAM. This month i upgraded it to use a SSD for win10 (that i bought) and let the 500GB HD just for backup. Right now i have two monitors connected, 6 tabs opened in chrome, some PDFs on Edge, telegram, whatsapp, email and matlab opened in background. I work with some simulations on matlab in my PhD and it handle the simulations just right (when the 8gb is enought xD). Also code and compile little programs and run python. It's a really good machine? No! but it's plenty usable for daily use AFTER PUTING A SSD (very important note!!). Here in university we have a plan to buy LOTS and LOTS of SSDs and ddr3 RAM to literally revive the computers with 2nd and 3rd gen i5 used just for daily work. I compare it's the performance now with a 4 or 5 years old laptop that is way more expensive that this OEM pcs
I actually just got the usff version of this model scrap from work and it is an amazing silent trueNAS/plex server with the dvd drive replaced with a 2.5in adaptor. It's even pretty decent running a VM too once upgraded from i5 2400 to i7 2600s.
I've got an sff optiplex 990. It got a low profile 1050ti so my son could play games, it was then handed down to my daughter and now she's gone onto something newer its back to me for a final upgrade before selling. Over it's life I upped the ram to 12gb and swapped the dvd drive for a SSD caddy, upgraded the hard drive to 1tb and lastly popped in a i7-2600k as they are quite cheap now. It's surprising how many e-sport and lighter titles it can play absolutely fine on medium settings.
I used to see this era of Optiplex a lot throughout elementary, middle, and high school. So seeing this gives me nostalgia alongside the previous case design.
Ahhh the Optiplex has finally made an appearance on HH! So glad to see this stalwart get some screentime on this channel, bcz somehow it seems like a fresh take on an old mainstay. Great Videos, as usual. Three years ago I grabbed a USFF 780 with an E8400 and 4gb of ram running W10 and used it as a MC server and Pihole on my network. I kept it headless and used VNC to remote into it. It got an upgrade to an E8600 as well as an SSD. Then, 18 months ago I replaced it with an USFF 9020 (i5-4570S, 8gb ram, and the W10 120gb ssd out of the 780) and it is my new MC server & FileZilla server, and never breaks 37°C, after a cleanup plus fresh paste. The 780 is a linux box now and since I have multiple Pi's taking on the roles of Pihole, Kodi, and two NAS, I wonder what to do with it. I wonder what You would do with a low spec Ultra Small Form Factor like my "upgraded" 780. 🤔
Older machines are great for older games. I was a huge fan of the OG Rainbow Six and Rogue Spear games, and A-10 Cuba back in the mid to late 90s. Sometimes modern machines are far too capable and the best platform are those that are a bit closer in age, then again, we are talking about games from the 90s. Surprisingly, I find really old systems being sold quite often locally on Marketplace. It's funny when someone lists a tower from that era with an old CRT monitor and asks for a few hundred. A recent one I saw comes with a BLUE ethernet cable (ooOOoOoOOooo)! I suppose I could queue up a VM on my Synology and allocate some of the resources to be comparable, but still might run into display driver issues. Plus, there is a bit of nostalgia-factor in using true-to-era hardware.
Got 4 of these for free, swapped in i7 2600 for the clock boost and HT ($30), Radeon 8570 1GB ($9), Sound Blaster Audigy SE Low profile PCI ($15) and 16GB of ram ($40), definitely gonna get used for some homelab projects.
No one talking about howhe used the fire beat for this video. Sick tremolo bass line with a few walks and some synth and misc instruments jam even has small vocal "riffs" up in there too.
Awesome video! But for the future, it would be nice to have something to compare the benchmark scored with, since the numbers doesnt say a lot on their own (yes i saw the xeon comparison but maybe it would be nice with something more modern or something people would buy as a budget option)
The power supply form factor in this case is called TFX, and you CAN get different models if you wanted to swap the motherboard out for something ITX and build a sleeper with it. Just watch out for the cooler mounting studs on the motherboard tray, if it's anything like my Optiplex 7020. AH, no, it's the DT form factor 790, not the SFF, so a Micro ATX board would fit fine, lol
I have a very similar Lenovo workstation I picked out of my city's e-waste site. Scavenged a few other computers and brought the ram up to 16gb. I've been using it as a SMB share on my home network for work files and it works fantastic. Yes, the Sandy Bridge is pretty power hungry, but I don't leave it on all the time, just during work hours.
I scooped one up a few years go for $100 shipped, just about before the "human malware" scare. It came with an i7 3770, 8GB of ram & a radeon hd 7470. A year later I decided to upgrade it just about before the "human malware" scare hit. Since then I had just been playing Minecraft & TES4: Oblivion since that's about all the GPU could handle. For about an extra $200 I swapped the case from the 2U desktop case to a standard MATX case, 500 watt PSU, an RX 580 8GB, 16GB kit of ram, tower cooler & mounting adapter, special sata cables to go under the long GPU (great design dell :X ) a 120GB SSD, 4TB HDD plus the 750GB HDD it came with. It plays every game I want absolutely cranked with lighting & texture mods. When I eventually upgrade the platform it'll definitely go back into that old case to be a small torrent/NAS/streaming box.
I use a Dell 780 (4GB ram) running latest Linux Mint right now. Excellent for everyday use, emulation (up to N64 & PSX), watcing movies, online support with Anydesk and light gaming (Heroes 3 and computer wargames).
In 2015, my only computer in this apartment that wasn't a phone was a Raspberry Pi 3. I bought an Optiplex 9010 from a recycler, and I paid I wanna say $350 at the time. It had an Ivy Bridge 3770 (non-K), 16GB RAM, a 128GB SSD and 500GB hard drive, and an OEM Radeon HD 7470. It was about as good as this machine got. The SSD gave out. The HD was decomissioned. The power supply died. All replaced. The video card got upgraded to its successor. The machine currently runs my Jellyfin server which has 23TB of formatted space. Connected to a SFF desktop workstation from 2011/2012ish using eSATA. That said … not for too much longer because holy crap it is time to upgrade this thing.
The great thing about this DT Optiplex form factor is that the mounting holes for mobo are standard Micro ATX. The PSU is also a TFX - so you can replace the motherboard with anything you have and get a new TFX PSU from Be Quiet or Silverstone for example. The only problem is that the power button has a proprietary connector, and the optiplexes that had 4 USB on the front have combo USB 2.0 and Audio connectors. You can dig out the button and McGyver a standard 2 pin button as a replacement, and use an after market USB front panel in the 5,25 bay though.
Interesting. I have an OptiPlex 790 too, but the internal layout is different. In mine, the power supply runs the full length of the case and the hard drive is mounted higher up behind the optical drive. Yours appears to have a half-length PSU and the HDD is mounted beside it in the gap at the bottom.
lot of people slam these as e-waste and other things like "oh you cant game properly on them" and all that shit! look at it from another point of view,you have a kid whos into computers are you gonna spend hundreds to thousands on a system that they will wreck or otherwise abuse or are you gonna buy them something like this at $20 and say "heres something to mess with,learn how to upgrade it and find out how pcs work" then move them up as they advance to something better and so on! Thats how i started, made deals for junkers when i was younger,fixed and scrapped laptops and pcs for people and learned as i went! when i was ready build my first expensive pc to my preferance! people nowdays want it all in a box with a ribbon on top!
I have a 790 MT. I like the ability to use an aftermarket power supply without needing an adapter. You still need an adapter for the cpu fan & front controls, but only if you put it in a fancy aftermarket case. Not a fan of blinky lights or fancy paint. Those don't improve performance one bit.
I've turned a similar old Optiplex into a Dedicated Minecraft Server (Valheim ran on it too). Since it was given away for free as an old leasing model, its total build cost was, well, free. Ive put a Desktop OS on it so that it can still be used for Writing and Net browsing, since its inside the craft room, and it handels everything pretty well
I have this PC with i7 2600, 16GB DDR3-1600, 480GB Kingston SATA SSD, LG SATA DVD+/-RW / BD-Rom, USB Wireless N 150, USB Bluetooth 5.0, and a Dell OEM Radeon R7 450 4GB GDDR5. I've been running Linux Mint 22.1 Cinnamon on it.
@@HardwareHaven Awesome! I followed along with the Minecraft Server one and it works great!! I am only running on 20% CPU power when I have 2 people on line!
I have a Dell Optiplex 790 SFF Windows 10 Pro and upgraded the CPU to i7-2600, 16GB DDR3 RAM, 1TB HHD, Realtek USB Wireless LAN for WiFi I find it good for email, and RUclips, I use LibreOfficej7.5, and Storing Photos and videos, from my DSLR Cannon Camera. Digital Photo Professional 4 from Cannon. Bought from Discount Electronics for $85.00 It came with an Windows 10 Home 80GB HHD 8GB RAM and an i3 2500 CPU.
I have 2 of the 790s - the one that you have, and the smaller one. I got them both off of facebook marketplace for cheap and was looking to do neat things with them until a friend brought me 2, 3010s he rescued from the recycler. Still, I'd like to come up with something to do with them sometime - once I figure out how to mount the drives in them, mine didn't come with caddies...
I have a bunch of Dell's in the home lab. (i live near dell's home base) (T1600, Optiplex 3010, etc) and for as much as I like them I also hate they don't have industry standard ATX motherboards in them. I have the USFF Optiplex780 and it is reliable but that USFF form factor isn't upgradeable at all. no slots of any type in the device. I just upgrated my Optiplex Mini Tower to an i7-3770 with a GTX 1070Ti (8gb) and it games pretty good for an old PC. 20 bucks for that 780 was a good deal. Great video, you always have such good production values and well thought out video.
Oh man, I have an optiplex I’m turning into a plex server (the plex-optiplex if you will) and a few lenovo towers I’m turning into NAS boxes all because I’m now in charge of decomming systems at work and so long as I wipe the drives before they leave the building they don’t care what I do with them.
Also with one of those icydock4x 3.5" in one 5.25" bay, you could get 4 SSD's and a cheap SATA->PCI card and with PROXMOX setup a ZFS and have all your containers/virtual computers on them...SSD's make these things SCREAM...I'm talking 20-30 second boot times
This is my all time favourite prebuilt PC model. Cooling in the case is excellent for quite a hefty wattages. Power supply is a piece of garbage but you can pick a new quality one for pretty cheap nowadays. Otherwise rest of the components are high quality and performance considering the price is G R E A T
8:46 ... Well, you were mostly testing games that were around at the time this CPU launched and was commonly used (CSGO 2012, Fallout4 2014, Rocket League 2015) so no big surprises there.
I have a 790 too! Mine is the full desktop tower, though. It came with a Core i7-2600, but with no RAM or storage. I currently use it for my VGA PCI capture card (my main PC doesn't have PCI slots...), but in the future I want to slap my GTX 960 on there and use it as a superfast Windows XP gaming machine...
I actually configured a NAS/lancache server using an i5 2500k. You are right about the power draw though and have since left it off unless it's necessary. Ever think about making a video with lancache? While it is easy to setup with it's own dedicated storage, I found that it was beyond my knowledge to direct lancache's downloads into a local share directory.
Yeah… that falls in the category of “I have no idea how to do it and barely have time to make videos on what I know” haha Could be cool down the line though
i haved optiplex 790 ssf and the same procesor and a put gigabite gt 730 lp and my power supply exploded after 2 months and now i have 790 DT and i put silverstone strider essential 400W power supply before it explodes again (and live in czech :D)
The i5 2400 can handle 32gb ram but it is only 2.0 PCIE and usb. A good thing is 790 is upgradable to third generation CPU which offers 3.0 😁 like i7 3770 with 4 cores 8 threads 💪
i got a mt version for $30 with 8gb ram and a 500gb hdd ive drilled out the hdd caddie so I can fit my rx 580. I am now trying to find a compatible xeon seems like all the sandy bridge ones are working with it
I'd recommend going to 16gb of RAM and swapping out the i5 2400 for a xeon e3 1240 v2. It's basically a better i7 2600 and doesn't use anywhere near as much power. This combined with a better GPU (RX 550 might be a good choice) should give you much better performance with that computer.
You called it.. how about a follow up video using Ubuntu server and docker containers for jellyfin and other services to compare against the Windows use case? Just an idea. Appreciate the content as always my man!
I have a similar system, but with an i7-2760Q (iirc) and a chinese motherboard to go with it. Same idle consumption (even a bit higher because I slotted in a 2nd HDD) which I tried to decrease with a picoPSU, and failed. Now it's sitting on my shelf, waiting for a family member to need an OK pc for free
@Hardware Haven the cpu draws about 50w with what I have it doing and idles about 20w and I also have a gtx 970 in it that idles at about 15w and when gaming with steam link uses 100w
So beside the erproprietary PSU everything else can be changed, right? It s a bit counterintuitive, but i have an retro Matx kit and would like to put it in one of these cases, for design and space reasons. With a small low power gpu, of course.
Picked up one of these over the weekend (full size cause though) to use for jellyfin, sad to hear it's not as well supported as mine also has the 2400. I planned on slotting in a gpu eventually for hardware transcoding via nvenc. It's a shame dell didn't have a bios update for these motherboards to support 3rd gen Intel. Hopefully it's okay for jellyfin for now, I can maybe upgrade one day anyway.
I see you install Windows for all your tests (I do the same). In case you are not aware, you can create a tiny version of windows 10 or 11, which will run way better in outdated machines. Tiny11 can run with 2GB RAM. Also, I hope you use answer files so the installation is automated from USB/ISO boot till desktop. Keep up the good job!
I use standard windows because I find that it gives provides more meaningful info to the average viewer. I don't setup these systems in away that reflects my personal preferences/use case
@@HardwareHaven The whole point is to automate your installations and not lose tone. About the tiny installs, it's just the same OS but without bloatware, so machines score better results. I promote you to make a test with answer files and tiny installs. Reach me of you need any help. I would gladly show you how it's done and save you time to learn it.
you could always run linux on this for a more free computing experience - run windows as a vm - even tiny11 or pe versions - qemu runs vms of all kinds very well even on older hw - what is the actual power delta between this and newer versions - it can't be that much - please provide some numbers so we all know definitively - thanks for the content!
I have a similar system (same gen, but a mobile i7) that I ran Fedora and TrueNAS. I measured the power draw, it was 35-36W idle with x2 spinning drives and no pcie card. Peak power draw was above 100W. Also he did put in some power numbers in the video too, getting similar results like me.
@@derisis13 you aren't going to do much better than 35w idle except by going to sbc/arm - new chips like amd use like 100w at idle - i doubt going to 6th gen is going to save you sig amount to balance out cost (initial outlay) - in a few years arm will likely have 12 core and be a better bet price/perf and roi/tco but for now old intel refurbs are king essentially - all things considered - even power consumption - it does rely on some variable like where you live and what kw/hr rates are - average cost is 13 cents per kilowatt hr so total cost will be about 4 bucks a mo
@@HardwareHaven at least for 20 usd wasn't bad for a full working system, and a xeon 1270 costs more than this probably 😂, and the form factor is nice from this systems
So I hope to find some help here in the comments. I have this exact PC, Optiplex 790 DT with the i5-2400 on 3.1 GHz and am unsure about the power supply of the PCIe ports. I would like to install a low profile AMD R5 340X 2GB GPU but it claims to drain 65W at max and I found some specs of the PC telling me the slots only support up to 35 W. Is there any way to make this GPU work without an additional psu or changing the motherboard or am I mixing up the specs and the gpu will work? On other sites I found that the PCIe 16 slot always supports up to 75W? Thanks in advance.
@@RuruFIN now that you mention it, I haven't noticed anything in physics but what does seem to be consistent is that NPC speech (like the actual audio) isn't in sync with the models mouth/face movements
I recycle tech and the Dell Otiplex model is something I take apart regularly. Seems like in 22/23 big companies all got rid of their Optiplex’s for whatever reason
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CORRECTIONS AND FAQ:
- The "under load" and "power idle" are flipped at 6:38
Did you forget to pin this?
@@MarcoGPUtuber Maaaaaybe... lol thanks
I've worked on HUNDREDS of optiplex's over the years. The SFF 790's had our HIGHEST failure rate because about 10% of them would blow PSUs. Just keep that in mind. Otherwise, great value. Don't use for mission critical applications without a proprietary backup PSU on hand. You've been warned!!!!!!
Those that didn't, are still running today ;)
press F for those people who got unlucky on those optiplex 790
They keep dropping. Always the PSU. All the other optiplex's combined equal probably 2 units in total failing for ANY reason (guessing around 100-150 units of various years). 790 SFF I'd guess 30 outta 200. Which is insane when comparing ratios. I believe it's a power trace/delivery failure on the MB. But ya, in general optiplex's are tanks mang. Would never hate someone using them. I still use a 9020 SFF for a backup server. I just worry about newbies getting involved with proprietary components like PSU and motherboard I/O. ... For the price? ... And for someone just getting into homelab? I get it. Pull the trigger on em!
I hope to find some help here in the comments. I have this exact PC, Optiplex 790 DT with the i5-2400 on 3.1 GHz and am unsure about the power supply of the PCIe ports. I would like to install a low profile AMD R5 340X 2GB GPU but it claims to drain 65W at max and I found some specs of the PC telling me the slots only support up to 35 W. Is there any way to make this GPU work without an additional psu or changing the motherboard or am I mixing up the specs and the gpu will work? On other sites I found that the PCIe 16 slot always supports up to 75W? Thanks in advance.
I know all about that power supply problem in the desktops. That is why I never bought a Dell. I saw more than 10% blow their PSU.
When I did IT support for my college we had hundreds of 790s in our labs. Mostly still had mechanical drives so super slow but they were surprisingly reliable
I really enjoy working on those Dell PCs, they are well-documented, have decent support, quality parts. Last summer I worked on my older 775 based Optiplex 755. I upgraded the RAM, the CPU to the legendary Core2Quad Q6600 and placed an old Radeon HD4550 from dump, to get an HDMI output. Now it sits next to my friend’s TV as a media center.
Very nice!
I'm still using a similar HP dc7900 SFF with a Core2 Quad Q6600 @ 3.0GHz (BSEL mod), 8GB DDR2, Radeon HD 6570 as a HTPC
I work on a public university in Brazil using a HP Compaq with a i5 2400 and 8GB RAM. This month i upgraded it to use a SSD for win10 (that i bought) and let the 500GB HD just for backup.
Right now i have two monitors connected, 6 tabs opened in chrome, some PDFs on Edge, telegram, whatsapp, email and matlab opened in background. I work with some simulations on matlab in my PhD and it handle the simulations just right (when the 8gb is enought xD). Also code and compile little programs and run python.
It's a really good machine? No! but it's plenty usable for daily use AFTER PUTING A SSD (very important note!!).
Here in university we have a plan to buy LOTS and LOTS of SSDs and ddr3 RAM to literally revive the computers with 2nd and 3rd gen i5 used just for daily work.
I compare it's the performance now with a 4 or 5 years old laptop that is way more expensive that this OEM pcs
I actually just got the usff version of this model scrap from work and it is an amazing silent trueNAS/plex server with the dvd drive replaced with a 2.5in adaptor. It's even pretty decent running a VM too once upgraded from i5 2400 to i7 2600s.
I've got an sff optiplex 990. It got a low profile 1050ti so my son could play games, it was then handed down to my daughter and now she's gone onto something newer its back to me for a final upgrade before selling. Over it's life I upped the ram to 12gb and swapped the dvd drive for a SSD caddy, upgraded the hard drive to 1tb and lastly popped in a i7-2600k as they are quite cheap now. It's surprising how many e-sport and lighter titles it can play absolutely fine on medium settings.
I used to see this era of Optiplex a lot throughout elementary, middle, and high school. So seeing this gives me nostalgia alongside the previous case design.
Ahhh the Optiplex has finally made an appearance on HH! So glad to see this stalwart get some screentime on this channel, bcz somehow it seems like a fresh take on an old mainstay.
Great Videos, as usual.
Three years ago I grabbed a USFF 780 with an E8400 and 4gb of ram running W10 and used it as a MC server and Pihole on my network. I kept it headless and used VNC to remote into it. It got an upgrade to an E8600 as well as an SSD.
Then, 18 months ago I replaced it with an USFF 9020 (i5-4570S, 8gb ram, and the W10 120gb ssd out of the 780) and it is my new MC server & FileZilla server, and never breaks 37°C, after a cleanup plus fresh paste.
The 780 is a linux box now and since I have multiple Pi's taking on the roles of Pihole, Kodi, and two NAS, I wonder what to do with it.
I wonder what You would do with a low spec Ultra Small Form Factor like my "upgraded" 780. 🤔
Thanks! To be fair I did use and optiplex in my $150 NAS video haha
Older machines are great for older games. I was a huge fan of the OG Rainbow Six and Rogue Spear games, and A-10 Cuba back in the mid to late 90s. Sometimes modern machines are far too capable and the best platform are those that are a bit closer in age, then again, we are talking about games from the 90s. Surprisingly, I find really old systems being sold quite often locally on Marketplace. It's funny when someone lists a tower from that era with an old CRT monitor and asks for a few hundred. A recent one I saw comes with a BLUE ethernet cable (ooOOoOoOOooo)! I suppose I could queue up a VM on my Synology and allocate some of the resources to be comparable, but still might run into display driver issues. Plus, there is a bit of nostalgia-factor in using true-to-era hardware.
Got 4 of these for free, swapped in i7 2600 for the clock boost and HT ($30), Radeon 8570 1GB ($9), Sound Blaster Audigy SE Low profile PCI ($15) and 16GB of ram ($40), definitely gonna get used for some homelab projects.
Same except i got 7 of these i didnt get to upgrade them but they were free
No one talking about howhe used the fire beat for this video. Sick tremolo bass line with a few walks and some synth and misc instruments jam even has small vocal "riffs" up in there too.
Awesome video! But for the future, it would be nice to have something to compare the benchmark scored with, since the numbers doesnt say a lot on their own (yes i saw the xeon comparison but maybe it would be nice with something more modern or something people would buy as a budget option)
That’s fair! I try to find comparisons that I think are relevant, but hopefully down the road I can have a larger sample size to compare to.
The power supply form factor in this case is called TFX, and you CAN get different models if you wanted to swap the motherboard out for something ITX and build a sleeper with it. Just watch out for the cooler mounting studs on the motherboard tray, if it's anything like my Optiplex 7020.
AH, no, it's the DT form factor 790, not the SFF, so a Micro ATX board would fit fine, lol
Oh nice! Love learning new things haha
I have a very similar Lenovo workstation I picked out of my city's e-waste site. Scavenged a few other computers and brought the ram up to 16gb. I've been using it as a SMB share on my home network for work files and it works fantastic. Yes, the Sandy Bridge is pretty power hungry, but I don't leave it on all the time, just during work hours.
Nice!
I scooped one up a few years go for $100 shipped, just about before the "human malware" scare. It came with an i7 3770, 8GB of ram & a radeon hd 7470. A year later I decided to upgrade it just about before the "human malware" scare hit. Since then I had just been playing Minecraft & TES4: Oblivion since that's about all the GPU could handle. For about an extra $200 I swapped the case from the 2U desktop case to a standard MATX case, 500 watt PSU, an RX 580 8GB, 16GB kit of ram, tower cooler & mounting adapter, special sata cables to go under the long GPU (great design dell :X ) a 120GB SSD, 4TB HDD plus the 750GB HDD it came with. It plays every game I want absolutely cranked with lighting & texture mods. When I eventually upgrade the platform it'll definitely go back into that old case to be a small torrent/NAS/streaming box.
Love it!
I have a 2500K @ 4.6GHz paired with 24GB RAM and a RX 460 4GB as my media PC, I agree that 4c/4t Sandy is still usable.
Very useable!
I use a Dell 780 (4GB ram) running latest Linux Mint right now. Excellent for everyday use, emulation (up to N64 & PSX), watcing movies, online support with Anydesk and light gaming (Heroes 3 and computer wargames).
Still running a i7 2600k with a GTX1650 super as my gaming pc. Still works great. Sandy bridge was pretty good.
Optiplex's ftw I have like 4 of them, one as a server. The rest for taking an angle grinder to for case mods because they're so cheap
Heck yeah haha. I need to get an angle grinder
I also picked up a Optiplex 7010, (also an I5 2400, 8GB ram, 256GB SSD) for £20, pretty decent for a basic server.
In 2015, my only computer in this apartment that wasn't a phone was a Raspberry Pi 3. I bought an Optiplex 9010 from a recycler, and I paid I wanna say $350 at the time. It had an Ivy Bridge 3770 (non-K), 16GB RAM, a 128GB SSD and 500GB hard drive, and an OEM Radeon HD 7470. It was about as good as this machine got. The SSD gave out. The HD was decomissioned. The power supply died. All replaced. The video card got upgraded to its successor.
The machine currently runs my Jellyfin server which has 23TB of formatted space. Connected to a SFF desktop workstation from 2011/2012ish using eSATA. That said … not for too much longer because holy crap it is time to upgrade this thing.
The great thing about this DT Optiplex form factor is that the mounting holes for mobo are standard Micro ATX. The PSU is also a TFX - so you can replace the motherboard with anything you have and get a new TFX PSU from Be Quiet or Silverstone for example. The only problem is that the power button has a proprietary connector, and the optiplexes that had 4 USB on the front have combo USB 2.0 and Audio connectors. You can dig out the button and McGyver a standard 2 pin button as a replacement, and use an after market USB front panel in the 5,25 bay though.
Interesting. I have an OptiPlex 790 too, but the internal layout is different. In mine, the power supply runs the full length of the case and the hard drive is mounted higher up behind the optical drive. Yours appears to have a half-length PSU and the HDD is mounted beside it in the gap at the bottom.
lot of people slam these as e-waste and other things like "oh you cant game properly on them" and all that shit! look at it from another point of view,you have a kid whos into computers are you gonna spend hundreds to thousands on a system that they will wreck or otherwise abuse or are you gonna buy them something like this at $20 and say "heres something to mess with,learn how to upgrade it and find out how pcs work" then move them up as they advance to something better and so on! Thats how i started, made deals for junkers when i was younger,fixed and scrapped laptops and pcs for people and learned as i went! when i was ready build my first expensive pc to my preferance! people nowdays want it all in a box with a ribbon on top!
I have a 790 MT. I like the ability to use an aftermarket power supply without needing an adapter. You still need an adapter for the cpu fan & front controls, but only if you put it in a fancy aftermarket case. Not a fan of blinky lights or fancy paint. Those don't improve performance one bit.
I've turned a similar old Optiplex into a Dedicated Minecraft Server (Valheim ran on it too).
Since it was given away for free as an old leasing model, its total build cost was, well, free. Ive put a Desktop OS on it so that it can still be used for Writing and Net browsing, since its inside the craft room, and it handels everything pretty well
That’s awesome! I love hearing stuff like that
My friend and I split the money for one of these and now we are using it for all kinds of game servers, and discord bot hosting, etc
I have this PC with i7 2600, 16GB DDR3-1600, 480GB Kingston SATA SSD, LG SATA DVD+/-RW / BD-Rom, USB Wireless N 150, USB Bluetooth 5.0, and a Dell OEM Radeon R7 450 4GB GDDR5. I've been running Linux Mint 22.1 Cinnamon on it.
i really like the way you explain stuff in your vids, also your voice is calming.
Glad you think so, thanks!
Nice video! Btw at 6:47 you reversed the power idle and under load rows.
Dang it. Haha thanks!
Great Video once again! Can you do more videos on a step to step guide to make another Minecraft server or NAS or something like that?
I'm planning a few more tutorial style videos for the relatively new future. I just want to make sure I'm confident before I do!
@@HardwareHaven Awesome! I followed along with the Minecraft Server one and it works great!! I am only running on 20% CPU power when I have 2 people on line!
I have a Dell Optiplex 790 SFF Windows 10 Pro and upgraded the CPU to i7-2600, 16GB DDR3 RAM, 1TB HHD, Realtek USB Wireless LAN for WiFi I find it good for email, and RUclips, I use LibreOfficej7.5, and Storing Photos and videos, from my DSLR Cannon Camera. Digital Photo Professional 4 from Cannon. Bought from Discount Electronics for $85.00 It came with an Windows 10 Home 80GB HHD 8GB RAM and an i3 2500 CPU.
I have 2 of the 790s - the one that you have, and the smaller one. I got them both off of facebook marketplace for cheap and was looking to do neat things with them until a friend brought me 2, 3010s he rescued from the recycler. Still, I'd like to come up with something to do with them sometime - once I figure out how to mount the drives in them, mine didn't come with caddies...
I have a bunch of Dell's in the home lab. (i live near dell's home base) (T1600, Optiplex 3010, etc) and for as much as I like them I also hate they don't have industry standard ATX motherboards in them. I have the USFF Optiplex780 and it is reliable but that USFF form factor isn't upgradeable at all. no slots of any type in the device. I just upgrated my Optiplex Mini Tower to an i7-3770 with a GTX 1070Ti (8gb) and it games pretty good for an old PC. 20 bucks for that 780 was a good deal. Great video, you always have such good production values and well thought out video.
Thanks Johnny,
You always have such well thought out and kind comments haha
Be thankful I’m not rambling on and I’m sticking to the subject of the video! Ha. Getting old isn’t fun at all
@@JMassengill Idk, you seem like you would have fun ramblings haha
Thanks HH, you're too kind
You can install Android TV in it and make it a Streaming Box, and whenever you are done with it Press the Hibernate Button, after all it has an SSD
Oh man, I have an optiplex I’m turning into a plex server (the plex-optiplex if you will) and a few lenovo towers I’m turning into NAS boxes all because I’m now in charge of decomming systems at work and so long as I wipe the drives before they leave the building they don’t care what I do with them.
Awesome machine for home assistant server.
It is a DT model and can be case swapped. The mobo is matx form factor.
Had an Optiplex 9020, upgraded to NVME with 32GB RAM, 4790 and an RX6400. I installed HoloISO software and it was a darn good game console!
This is the way.
Also with one of those icydock4x 3.5" in one 5.25" bay, you could get 4 SSD's and a cheap SATA->PCI card and with PROXMOX setup a ZFS and have all your containers/virtual computers on them...SSD's make these things SCREAM...I'm talking 20-30 second boot times
For sure, but I'd be paying more for the dock than the PC haha. Those things are pretty sweet though
I had about one hundred of those. I donated a lot of them. I ended up selling the rest for about $30 each to some guy from Nicaragua.
This is my all time favourite prebuilt PC model. Cooling in the case is excellent for quite a hefty wattages. Power supply is a piece of garbage but you can pick a new quality one for pretty cheap nowadays. Otherwise rest of the components are high quality and performance considering the price is G R E A T
8:46 ... Well, you were mostly testing games that were around at the time this CPU launched and was commonly used (CSGO 2012, Fallout4 2014, Rocket League 2015) so no big surprises there.
Yeah, that's fair. In hindsight I definitely should've tried at least a couple newer titles
Ay I watched your Patreon early released and so far I love it!
I got the same from my school for free, only it has
a celeron, but it can still run W10 and works great as a file server.
Nice!
I have a 790 too! Mine is the full desktop tower, though.
It came with a Core i7-2600, but with no RAM or storage.
I currently use it for my VGA PCI capture card (my main PC doesn't have PCI slots...), but in the future I want to slap my GTX 960 on there and use it as a superfast Windows XP gaming machine...
That't a cool use for it!
I would love you see this updated with a 3050 or newer. Under $400 home lab?
I actually configured a NAS/lancache server using an i5 2500k. You are right about the power draw though and have since left it off unless it's necessary. Ever think about making a video with lancache? While it is easy to setup with it's own dedicated storage, I found that it was beyond my knowledge to direct lancache's downloads into a local share directory.
Yeah… that falls in the category of “I have no idea how to do it and barely have time to make videos on what I know” haha
Could be cool down the line though
i haved optiplex 790 ssf and the same procesor and a put gigabite gt 730 lp and my power supply exploded after 2 months and now i have 790 DT and i put silverstone strider essential 400W power supply before it explodes again (and live in czech :D)
Watching this now while I use an Optiplex 790 as my home router. 😂
I bet thee will be a massive of landfill to lan machines after the end of support of Windows 10
i'm already subscribed, so i'm leaving my obligatory, "that would have run better with linux" comment here
The i5 2400 can handle 32gb ram but it is only 2.0 PCIE and usb. A good thing is 790 is upgradable to third generation CPU which offers 3.0 😁 like i7 3770 with 4 cores 8 threads 💪
Me - "laughs in 30 fps interlaced"😂😂
i got a mt version for $30 with 8gb ram and a 500gb hdd ive drilled out the hdd caddie so I can fit my rx 580. I am now trying to find a compatible xeon seems like all the sandy bridge ones are working with it
I'd recommend going to 16gb of RAM and swapping out the i5 2400 for a xeon e3 1240 v2. It's basically a better i7 2600 and doesn't use anywhere near as much power. This combined with a better GPU (RX 550 might be a good choice) should give you much better performance with that computer.
You called it.. how about a follow up video using Ubuntu server and docker containers for jellyfin and other services to compare against the Windows use case? Just an idea. Appreciate the content as always my man!
Follow up will actually be with unraid running containers for Jellyfin, makemkv, and handbrake 👍🏻
I have a similar system, but with an i7-2760Q (iirc) and a chinese motherboard to go with it. Same idle consumption (even a bit higher because I slotted in a 2nd HDD) which I tried to decrease with a picoPSU, and failed.
Now it's sitting on my shelf, waiting for a family member to need an OK pc for free
That's awesome. Love to see people doing that!
Landfill to LAN? Maybe i should send some of my old hardware hahaha
You can actually put a xeon 1230 in the dell 790 I use that as my server
Nice! I imagine power draw is still fairly high though, but I'd be curious to know!
@Hardware Haven the cpu draws about 50w with what I have it doing and idles about 20w and I also have a gtx 970 in it that idles at about 15w and when gaming with steam link uses 100w
So beside the erproprietary PSU everything else can be changed, right?
It s a bit counterintuitive, but i have an retro Matx kit and would like to put it in one of these cases, for design and space reasons. With a small low power gpu, of course.
Are you planing on making a video about that DIY stream deck? Would be fun project/video :)
Usually the things in the background are indeed teasers... ;)
@@HardwareHaven Awesome cant wait! :)
Already subscribed, video liked, as always... And: That computer, now aged and care given, would perform so much better in linux 😛
I'm getting a lot of recasing jobs with these types of slim office pcs when the psu die
Yeah, I wish OEMS had just decided on a standardized “SFF” psu design so replacing these wouldn’t be so hard.
5:46 the subscribe button has some animation???
Yeah I think that’s like a new built in RUclips feature or something. It’s weird haha
What is the best place to get some of this old equipment for cheap/ find it.
Picked up one of these over the weekend (full size cause though) to use for jellyfin, sad to hear it's not as well supported as mine also has the 2400. I planned on slotting in a gpu eventually for hardware transcoding via nvenc. It's a shame dell didn't have a bios update for these motherboards to support 3rd gen Intel.
Hopefully it's okay for jellyfin for now, I can maybe upgrade one day anyway.
If you're doing direct streaming it works great. I don't stream to my phone or over the internet really ever so it's not a huge issue.
I see you install Windows for all your tests (I do the same). In case you are not aware, you can create a tiny version of windows 10 or 11, which will run way better in outdated machines. Tiny11 can run with 2GB RAM.
Also, I hope you use answer files so the installation is automated from USB/ISO boot till desktop.
Keep up the good job!
I use standard windows because I find that it gives provides more meaningful info to the average viewer. I don't setup these systems in away that reflects my personal preferences/use case
@@HardwareHaven The whole point is to automate your installations and not lose tone. About the tiny installs, it's just the same OS but without bloatware, so machines score better results.
I promote you to make a test with answer files and tiny installs. Reach me of you need any help. I would gladly show you how it's done and save you time to learn it.
you could always run linux on this for a more free computing experience - run windows as a vm - even tiny11 or pe versions - qemu runs vms of all kinds very well even on older hw - what is the actual power delta between this and newer versions - it can't be that much - please provide some numbers so we all know definitively - thanks for the content!
I have a similar system (same gen, but a mobile i7) that I ran Fedora and TrueNAS. I measured the power draw, it was 35-36W idle with x2 spinning drives and no pcie card. Peak power draw was above 100W.
Also he did put in some power numbers in the video too, getting similar results like me.
@@derisis13 you aren't going to do much better than 35w idle except by going to sbc/arm - new chips like amd use like 100w at idle - i doubt going to 6th gen is going to save you sig amount to balance out cost (initial outlay) - in a few years arm will likely have 12 core and be a better bet price/perf and roi/tco but for now old intel refurbs are king essentially - all things considered - even power consumption - it does rely on some variable like where you live and what kw/hr rates are - average cost is 13 cents per kilowatt hr so total cost will be about 4 bucks a mo
Yay new video
Wow i really didnt know that 2nd gen core cpus had tdp of 95w!
Pfsense would be a great option to install
Could be, but over the course of a year or two it might be cheaper to go with something a bit newer and less power hungry
love your videos sir
I wonder if Jellyfin might work properly and efficiently under Ubuntu server edition.
Maybe. It doesn’t work using unraid though which is Debian I believe
The worst thing is that it doesn't support 3rd gen cpus, i use a motherboard from 790 with a xeon 1270 (that's cheap at aliexpress)
Yeah, 3rd/4th is sort of a sweet spot where the performance and efficiency is noticeably better but basically the same price on the used market
@@HardwareHaven at least for 20 usd wasn't bad for a full working system, and a xeon 1270 costs more than this probably 😂, and the form factor is nice from this systems
If you’re willing to spend a bit, this can be brought up to last Gen specs, possibly current Gen with a stock or LP CPU cooler.
Love you bro❤ Nice Video ❤
Thanks!
now do a optiplex 9020
So I hope to find some help here in the comments. I have this exact PC, Optiplex 790 DT with the i5-2400 on 3.1 GHz and am unsure about the power supply of the PCIe ports. I would like to install a low profile AMD R5 340X 2GB GPU but it claims to drain 65W at max and I found some specs of the PC telling me the slots only support up to 35 W. Is there any way to make this GPU work without an additional psu or changing the motherboard or am I mixing up the specs and the gpu will work? On other sites I found that the PCIe 16 slot always supports up to 75W? Thanks in advance.
You should make a video putting Linux on the new computer.
What was the model graphics card you put I please
Quadro k1200, but I wouldn’t go out of your way to get one. They are pretty old.
You mentioned a 60fps cap on fallout 4 but when I play it I can go far beyond that and I never changed anything about the game
Do you maybe know why?
The physics can go crazy when playing over 60FPS
@@RuruFIN now that you mention it, I haven't noticed anything in physics but what does seem to be consistent is that NPC speech (like the actual audio) isn't in sync with the models mouth/face movements
Nice video :)
Thanks!
Quicksync only became good at the 7th gen.
I recycle tech and the Dell Otiplex model is something I take apart regularly. Seems like in 22/23 big companies all got rid of their Optiplex’s for whatever reason
in many companies the pcs are leased, so when the leasing is over, they swaps thousand of pcs in the same moment.
Could you please do ps2 GC emulation
I did some on my lenovo m715q landfill to lan video. I probably should've at least given it a go here
why is the idle power higher than the load power??? mistake maybe
Yes they are flipped on that slide. My bad!
@@HardwareHaven could you pleas add a disclaimer or fix it
@@hannescampidell I felt like it was fairly obvious, but sure that probably makes sense.
And to be clear, I can't fix something like that after I've uploaded
@@HardwareHaven ok and at lest it is fixed in the description
why don´t you use tiny 11 ???
Do the guys at the scrapyard know you now?
I wish haha. I just had a friend wanting to get rid of it for free, but I felt bad and offered $20
@@HardwareHaven Can I be a friend that offers free old hardware too?
@@MarcoGPUtuber Haha sure
cant lie i was just about to throw one of these away
Where is Hollow knight test?
Haha yeah... I just felt like it was probably going to run great and wasn't worth the time. I should've though!
I'm running one of these as a mincraft server
Heck yeah!
15 secs not bad, second viewers 🥳
I'm leaving the Linux comment.
I use mine as my primary router lol
6:40 That's why I consider everything before Intel 4th gen economically dead today.
Just depends on circumstances, but yeah there's a substantial dip in value that isn't always represented in price on the used market
coffee filter gang
🙏🏻
Is PC Mark 10 a paid software?
How much are you paying for it.
It is but not super expensive. It’s on steam
I got a pile of these for free.
Edit: it actually is a 960 and is lga 775
For the algorithm:
You should have used Linux!!!