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
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)
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.
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
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.
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 CZcams 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.
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!
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
@@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.
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 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.
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 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!
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!
Ive got a Sff Optiplex with 16 gb ram and an i3 5th gen, upgraded to an i7 5th, has a random radeon card that came with it, 1 tb ssd and 1 tb hdd, only 20€ for the pc ans 30€ for the cpu and ssd hdd. The ssd is a cheap ADATA that i got for free. Its now my "office/server/second pc" beside my gaming rig. (Its actually better than the gaming pc ive had in 2014 LOL). I think i will keep it for a long time because it works so good.
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 trash picked an Optiplex 720, it came with an i5, 4gb of RAM, 500gb HDD and WIN7. I upgraded it to a i7-2600, and 10gb of RAM, 1tb HDD, and a EVGA 1050ti SC, and gamed with it til the video card and system just couldn't keep up anymore. Ended up parting it out on ebay.
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!!!
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.
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.
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.
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 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
My mom has slightly older generation of this, Optiplex 7010 SFF! Looks absolutely the same, has slightly lower end hardware but it has 4 USB ports in the front panel, 2x USB3 and 2x USB2.
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
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.
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.
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!
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.
Nice. I found a Dell OptiPlex over a month ago inside a dumpster (there were actually two). I have gotten a Dell OptiPlex 960 for this find. May do a video on it in the future. I also found a Dell OptiPlex 7010, but never bothered saving it, as I only savaged the graphics card. Good find for a BRAND NEW Series 4 OptiPlex that was trash picked.
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 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
Oh I love these, actually have the mini version of it the 3020m. Was decently cheap on eBay and was in great condition from a recycling center. Upgraded it with an i7, 16gb ram and SSD it’s still a delight to use.
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
I love Dell Optiplex machines. They're so fun to mess around with, wish they were a bit more flexible in terms of components but small form factor and easy to service
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.
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.
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.
It's a bummer so many capable machines will be recycled at the end of Windows 10. I picked up a truck load of these from a local school last year. The ones I did keep have been restored to original OS. Vista, XP, 7, 8.1 just to have the old OS on systems from the time when XP and Vista was still supported and Dell does have the drivers. Great for old photo editing programs, older games.
I saved one of these w/ an i7-4770 from the dumpster at my old job. Far nastier though since it was in a woodshop. just swapped it into an old coolermaster case and have been daily driving it. Fantastic computers. Always were my favorite to work on when I used to run an Ebay store and still my go to (along with Vostros) when recommending budget build platforms to people
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!
I would recommend installing the new version of Linux Mint which is Linux Mint 22 instead of Ubuntu, It is more stable and I think for machines like this, stability and resource management will be way better with that distro just for normal every day use.
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.
Optiplex 9010, my main rig, rescued from e-waste. I have never seen a 3020 with such a new manufactured date. It must have been the last one off the line LOL. 😂
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
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 like those old Dell Optiplex machines. I have an Optiplex 7010 with a Core i7 3770, and 16 gb. RAM, and it's currently powering my home NAS with OpenMediaVault and a couple of external 10 tb. drives in a USB3 drive caddy. It's been up pretty much 24-7 since last September. Can't complain for $105 and free shipping on Ebay!😉
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
I have a second-smallest version of this desktop that I have since replaced with something way stronger and I bet if I plug it in now it'll still work just as good as day 1. The only complaint I have with it is the door fits so loosely that the fan makes it rattle which is kind of annoying. I ended up taping the top of the door to the top of the case just to stop the noise. Still a good desktop for the price it was as well as how light it is
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.
My first gaming pc was an dell optiplex pentium where I got an radeon hd 7750 low profile in it. Worked quite well for the time and I still have it. I use it as a Home theater pc now to watch movies and play light games. I installed Lubuntu on mine and works great.
My friend's parents had a storage unit and they were cleaning it out and for some reason they had 6 of these just chilling in there. I got them all for free.
I was in a tech support program in high school around 2014 when they upgraded to very similar machines. It was my friend and I who were tasked with imaging the 700 or so new hard drives with windows 8. After about 2 months of horrific technical problems, microsoft finally allowed us to use windows 7 again. That just meant my friend and I had half of the time to re-image the drives again. Luckily we got provided with the extra equipment. I view this generation with a much fonder perspective than the core2 or especially the old pentium Dell workstations.
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
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?
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
“Mostly uninteresting”
It’s not nice to lie, Michael. You know why we’re all here.
But it all went wrong 😅
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.
These things are everywhere, they aged like fine wine when it comes to "it just works performance"
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
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
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.
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 CZcams 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
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!
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!
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Did you censor the Thermal paste to avoid the great debate between pea size and small shwirl?
idk why, i seen another video of someone putting a thermal paste but thats censored too
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.
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 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.
Man, why can't I run into old Optiplexes looking that good?
Most old office PCs I find are beat up.
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 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!
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.
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!
That's a very good find ngl
Ive got a Sff Optiplex with 16 gb ram and an i3 5th gen, upgraded to an i7 5th, has a random radeon card that came with it, 1 tb ssd and 1 tb hdd, only 20€ for the pc ans 30€ for the cpu and ssd hdd. The ssd is a cheap ADATA that i got for free. Its now my "office/server/second pc" beside my gaming rig. (Its actually better than the gaming pc ive had in 2014 LOL). I think i will keep it for a long time because it works so good.
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 trash picked an Optiplex 720, it came with an i5, 4gb of RAM, 500gb HDD and WIN7.
I upgraded it to a i7-2600, and 10gb of RAM, 1tb HDD, and a EVGA 1050ti SC, and gamed with it til the video card and system just couldn't keep up anymore.
Ended up parting it out on ebay.
always a good day when michael mjd drops a video
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!!!
1:21 my guy literally just told us, that he found his content in a trash
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.
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.
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.
Who's watching this on a Dell Optiplex?
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.
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
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
My mom has slightly older generation of this, Optiplex 7010 SFF! Looks absolutely the same, has slightly lower end hardware but it has 4 USB ports in the front panel, 2x USB3 and 2x USB2.
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
I still have my dell optiplex that I use still for school and some gaming. It works like a charm
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.
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.
We need a nickname for this computer! How about “The trashed-fished optiplex 3020”
Glad to see Classic Cube worked well on that 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!
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.
Nice. I found a Dell OptiPlex over a month ago inside a dumpster (there were actually two). I have gotten a Dell OptiPlex 960 for this find. May do a video on it in the future. I also found a Dell OptiPlex 7010, but never bothered saving it, as I only savaged the graphics card. Good find for a BRAND NEW Series 4 OptiPlex that was trash picked.
last month, i picked pc (idk brand) with windows vista,a nd i installed windows 7 and i can dualboot now
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 installed Windows 11 Enterprise on this machine and it works perfectly, with no issues.
How? Did you bypass the TPM check?
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
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
Oh I love these, actually have the mini version of it the 3020m. Was decently cheap on eBay and was in great condition from a recycling center. Upgraded it with an i7, 16gb ram and SSD it’s still a delight to use.
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
I love Dell Optiplex machines. They're so fun to mess around with, wish they were a bit more flexible in terms of components but small form factor and easy to service
AH I have you of that. Optiplex 790 SFF. Looks nice.
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.
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.
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.
As a Mac user this feels like a blast from the past. Between Windoze and MacOS, I tried many Linux distro's...😅
I'm using an old Optiplex running OpnSense. Was just sitting collecting dust, so I put it to work.
It's a bummer so many capable machines will be recycled at the end of Windows 10. I picked up a truck load of these from a local school last year. The ones I did keep have been restored to original OS. Vista, XP, 7, 8.1 just to have the old OS on systems from the time when XP and Vista was still supported and Dell does have the drivers. Great for old photo editing programs, older games.
I saved one of these w/ an i7-4770 from the dumpster at my old job. Far nastier though since it was in a woodshop. just swapped it into an old coolermaster case and have been daily driving it. Fantastic computers. Always were my favorite to work on when I used to run an Ebay store and still my go to (along with Vostros) when recommending budget build platforms to people
Where do you get ewaste? i have wondered and i have tried buying from recyclers but i haven't gotten one that sells to the public.
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!
I would recommend installing the new version of Linux Mint which is Linux Mint 22 instead of Ubuntu, It is more stable and I think for machines like this, stability and resource management will be way better with that distro just for normal every day use.
Either is fine. Mint 22 is based on Ubuntu 24.04. They share the same kernels, Xorg drivers and almost all the same userland software.
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.
These look exactly like the computers from the computer lab when I was in elementary school!
Soooooo nostalgic. When this was being manufactured my life was PERFECT. Not like the toilet I live in these days: a total criminal gulag. 🚽
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 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
Optiplex 9010, my main rig, rescued from e-waste.
I have never seen a 3020 with such a new manufactured date.
It must have been the last one off the line LOL. 😂
Yep, I remember my high school having these. I also remember them running Google Maps better than my laptop at home
I've got 5 of these in a cluster being used as servers, they are really good for homelabbing or a simple home server! (hint hint video idea)
I have a second hand Dell Optiplex 9020 sporting a core i7 4790 and I use this thing every day for 8-10 hours. Great computer and an absolute bargain.
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
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 like those old Dell Optiplex machines. I have an Optiplex 7010 with a Core i7 3770, and 16 gb. RAM, and it's currently powering my home NAS with OpenMediaVault and a couple of external 10 tb. drives in a USB3 drive caddy. It's been up pretty much 24-7 since last September. Can't complain for $105 and free shipping on Ebay!😉
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
A buddy of mine just got rid of a bunch of these. I got one and it’s running Debian 12 and a bunch of self hosted stuff. Super solid
I have a second-smallest version of this desktop that I have since replaced with something way stronger and I bet if I plug it in now it'll still work just as good as day 1. The only complaint I have with it is the door fits so loosely that the fan makes it rattle which is kind of annoying. I ended up taping the top of the door to the top of the case just to stop the noise. Still a good desktop for the price it was as well as how light it is
Hell yea, my brothers still use these.
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.
My first gaming pc was an dell optiplex pentium where I got an radeon hd 7750 low profile in it. Worked quite well for the time and I still have it. I use it as a Home theater pc now to watch movies and play light games.
I installed Lubuntu on mine and works great.
My friend's parents had a storage unit and they were cleaning it out and for some reason they had 6 of these just chilling in there. I got them all for free.
8:13 this part about the different windows versions made me sad to hear
I was in a tech support program in high school around 2014 when they upgraded to very similar machines. It was my friend and I who were tasked with imaging the 700 or so new hard drives with windows 8. After about 2 months of horrific technical problems, microsoft finally allowed us to use windows 7 again. That just meant my friend and I had half of the time to re-image the drives again. Luckily we got provided with the extra equipment. I view this generation with a much fonder perspective than the core2 or especially the old pentium Dell workstations.
I bought a Dell when they were shipping 8 on things and opted for 7. Did upgrade it to 10 later down the road, and it's still running that.