My older customers love these little Optiplex "bricks" for basic web-browsing and such, they're affordable and easily upgraded. I've never had a complaint from any of them in the years I've sold them.
I also refurbed quite a few of them and the last one I refurbed had continuous problems with the power supply it seems. I fear that a cheap usb stick that ran terribly hot used too much power on the 5V rail, not sure tho. Also the i7 2600 might be a little too much compared to the 3470 that was in there before. Will have to check if replacement psus are available.
My XE project has been a frustrating one. But I think even this oldie can be great. It's not even my forte. I generally do a current generation custom build, which is wholly easier. I liked the small form factor. That's a new endeavor for me. No longer concerned about maximum performance, but still trying to get as much performance as wattage limitations would allow. For the Optiplex XE on the 775 socket, that turned out to be the Q9550s CPU, which is rated at 65 watts. It was a PITA to find. I'm also looking for space, efficiency and quiet. I got a Dell Radeon HD 7570 GPU Low Profile coming and it has a rating of 44 watts. I tried a more modern GPU such as RX 550, but I couldn't get it to install the OEM drivers. On a support board, someone mentioned that it didn't have DOS VESA support. That may have been why. *** www.dell.com/community/Optiplex-Desktops/Dell-Optiplex-XE-Dell-AMD-Radeon-R5-340X-upgrade/td-p/6217759 *** We'll see about the HD 7570. I've never been concerned about wattages before, but this project has made me. I have a 280W PSU and I do believe that there is a 300W out there, but 280W is fairly standard and I'm just trying to work within those parameters. I have Windows 10 on it and I'm already getting prepared to put Linux on it. And so I'm trying to be mindful of any HCL issues that may crop up. That's why I went with a Radeon GPU, which is the GPU brand that Linux seems to support very well.
They're still pretty capable for anything other than high end gaming. I have a new AM5 custom build and one of those SFF Optiplex 9020 that i use for my older games and other basic tasks. It's as snappy as my gaming rig with everything up to date so it's no wonder it's very popular with non gamers or light gamers. Mine doesn't even have a dedicated GPU and i can run all my older games maxed out anyway (Max Payne 2,GTA SA,Mafia) and even Mafia 2 or GTA IV on low-mid settings
I pulled a heap of these out of the bin at the local school I work at. All equipped with i7-3770’s and 16 gig ram. I threw a 1tb ssd and a gtx 1650lp In One of them. Quite a good little gaming pc.
I have my work FULL of these things. I nearly have everyone switched over to using them. Also have a couple of the larger form factor ones so I can install bigger GPU's for the CAD guys. Optiplex's are great and once you get them going they never give any trouble. In fact, my current work PC is an XPS Studio; another great value for money modern machine. A lot of people like to give Dell flak but after having used their stuff in the real world for years now I won't ever have a word said against them. My original slim XPS13 laptop still going strong at home too!
I’ve come to like Dell a lot more over the last few years. Sure, the stuff they sell to the general public is flimsy, slow and full of proprietary connections, but their workstation stuff is fantastic, built like tanks and super reliable.
I've been watching his channel off and on for many years. I LOVE this guy's accent!!! he's a cool GAMER dude!!! I like how he breaks down the components of each motherboard and PC. He keeps it simplified and quite clean. His narration is whacky, yet informative down to a SCIENCE that ANYONE can understand without pulling out a Dictionary!!! Do your thing Phil!! Love your accent brother!!! LOL!!!
I recently got a Dell OptiPlex 780 Small Form Factor from The Salvation Army for $10.75 USD. It works fine and it even came with a working 500GB hard drive and its power cable. I'm very exited about all of the things that I can do with it.
I bought a lot of these Dell, HP and Lenovo for the office workers. Second hand a couple of years ago. All are running Linux Mint Mate with Libre Office, perfect no OS or office pakket to pay. On PC runs win7 with Libre Office for accounting but that's it. For sound you can use a USB sound card, works well.
Thank you for using "silky smooth" instead of "buttery smooth". I've stroked both butter and silk at various ambient temperatures, and butter, while pasty, greasy and oily, can not ever be described as smooth in my experience. Silk can.
The old Optiplexes from the mid 00s made me a crap ton of money as a field repair tech for Dell. Back when they had the bulging caps problem. Basically every GX270 and GX280 Optiplex machine. You can Google that for more info, but basically by the end of it Dell guaranteed that any GX270 or GX280 no matter if it was out of warranty or not got a free replacement motherboard if you called tech support and just mentioned the words "bulging capacitor." So I'd walk into an office building or a school and there would be 20 of these buggers sitting against a wall ready for me to swap the motherboard. It was about a 15 minute job per machine thanks to Dell's stupidly service-friendly machines from the time. Those were good days. I'd pull $500-$700 from just a few hours work. Thanks for the screw up, Dell!
This is an excellent use case for Haswell SFF optiplex! Well done. IF you want to use this system for more modern titles or higher end emulation, I recommend possibly using an i7 OR an E3 v3 Xeon. Many of these haswell units can take something like an E3 1271 v3 which is on par with the i7s of the same family. Although you are limited to a single slot video card, you could buy a GT1030, RX6400, or even higher end Turing Quadro like the T400, T600 or T1000. Pascal quadros have also come down in price and can still game. Also, you may notice that this particular Haswell DOES have a PCIE 4x slot with a slotted hole. You can fit x8 and x16 dual slot cards with limited bandwidth. I have used x8 cards in the x4 slot and the performance isn't bad at all. My low profile GTX1650 could still perform well even in x4 mode.
I suggested an RX 550 in a separate comment. The GT 1030 and RX 6400 are both a step up from the GT 630 but they both lack a video encoder, therefore if one was hoping to do some content creation it would be a no go. And you're correct about the dual slot cards. I'm currently using a small form factor Optiplex 7050 that has an i7-6700 with 16GB DDR4-2133 ram. I'm running an RTX A2000 which is the equivalent to an RTX 3050 in the PCIE x4 slot. I can run titles like Cyberpunk 2077 on medium and still pull FPS of around 60.
@@blacksquaregamingpc you can get around the video encoding issue if your processor has onboard graphics. You can go into the bios and make sure Intel multidisplay or integrated is still turned on, then you can use into quick sync if your GPU has no encoding.
(As per my post at top). You CAN run a double slot (1/2 height) card off the 4x slot. We had the i7 4790, and a gtx 1650 in a SFF 9020 for my son, running flawlessly for over two years. "Losing" the 16x slot is NO detriment to performance, not at 1080/720p gaming anyway. You also get a full compliment of ports. ... Of course, no wifi (unless you go usb wifi?)
I would advice against the 1030, because the 750ti is more powerful, and 1050ti/1650S is getting cheaper I would also advise against the 6400, prettysure its x4 pcie lanes, unfortunately there isnt a 70w card from amd that is rdna based
While I was taking my final exams in senior year of high school back in 2019, I knew for a fact that these PCs would be perfect for retro gaming emulation. I'm glad I was right.
I've upgrade this year a Dell optiplex 3020 SSF to the max. An i3 to the i7 4790k, 4 gb to 2x8 gb ram at 1600 mhz. Old HDD and DVD-RW out for 2x2TB SSD and the GPU is a GTX 1650 low profile. It runs rly well. Even for 2023. Win10 just flies and most games play rly well.
Happy Friday Phil! Thanks for another great video. Lots of people loath SFF or USFF but I have a few of them even some IBM ones from around 1999-2001 and I think these small machines are awesome. A little limited on graphics options but it can be worked around in many cases. 98 and XP dual boot are possible as well with some of the older Dell SFF systems.
I see Matrox is releasing two low profile GPUs based on the Intel ARC A300 series GPUs, one has a fan, the A320 and the other, the A310 is passively cooled. The limitation is that you need Gen 10 or later CPUs with Resizable Bar for optimum performance. No word on pricing yet.
These also do work quite well as multimedia machines, I have a lot of people that genuinely cannot afford upgrading their already big TVs to a Smart TV of the same size, with higher resolution and such, so I recommended to check these Dell Optiplex machines, and they LOVE IT, not only it's doubling as a gaming system of sorts (The 1050/Ti is becoming a lot more popular around my old living area thanks to these), but they also work as a youtube/netflix/spotify machines, and because most people over here really do play with Xbox 360 and PS3 to this day, even at 720p30 in most games is more than enough for a lot of people, plus, King of Fighters is incredibly popular in Mexico, so having a way to run the series for real cheap, it's also a huge selling point. My country isn't wealthy, and we work with what we have, and it makes me happy that I'm able to expand entertainment to people of basically every budget. For me, I actually got interested in Windows XP gaming due to my nostalgia, and because I want to try out EAX so badly, a wet dream from my childhood as a pseudo-audiophile. Kudos for this, love your content.
@@philscomputerlab Whatever good EAX supported card would totally fit my bill, and yeah, unfortunately I will be out of luck with low profile, I really wanted to build something like that, but guess I'm out of luck, oh well, my next target is to probably use an old motherboard with a smaller mATX case.
Beautiful Dell design, small form factor, enough win xp performance - one of the best platforms for retro gaming. Thanks for the video. The best as always!
I got 4 optiplex 790 (i5 2400, 4GB Ram) rigs given to me for free, dropping in the low profile Radeon 8570 with 1GB of ram (cost $9 each) along with the low profile Audigy SE (SB0570) sound card for EAX ($15 each), makes a decent little XP retro gaming box, keep up the great work Phil!!!
My windows xp retro machine is a dell precision t5400 with dual 3 ghz Xeon 4gb ram and a 980 ti. Driver inf. File is modified to recognize a 980 ti and installs fine.
I run a slightly older version of one of these, a Dell 3010 with an upgraded i7 3770 and 16GB of RAM. I went with the Ivy Bridge variant because the PCI-E slot is actually one up from the bottom and so it supports dual slot cards. I’m currently running an Nvidia Quadro 600 in it, but may upgrade to the double height RTX A2000 when it becomes a little cheaper. Currently has a large platter drive along with an SSD for the main drive in the CD tray area. It makes for a great console replacement, sitting in my home entertainment center plugged into my TV. Running Launch Box, it’s great for running retro games through emulation, running lighter modern PC games, as well as multimedia usage. Plus it’s a lot of fun upgrading all aspects of one of these old small form factor PCs, and seeing how far they can go!
I was given a core duo optiplex tower a few years ago. I use it for my Launchox build. It runs everything up to Gamecube/Wii and PS2. Cracking machine 👌🏻
Great video Phil. This looks WAY more fun than testing to see if a new CPU/GPU is 10% faster than it's competition ;) I might have to do something like this and see how far we can push it. Thanks as always for the inspiration and great content :)
Great job! I did some repurposing of a similar Precision workstation from 2014 for XP a little while back with a 750 Ti! Crazily, it has a regular PCI slot - managed to stick an Audigy 2 ZS in there and it worked great. I've since turned that into another experiment box (card went elsewhere), but it ran games like crazy with no or very little issues whatsoever.
Im Swedish. There is a scandinavian company, based in Finland i believe. They buy up office monitors, desktops and turn them into Gaming rigs or home PC's. Differing price ranges ofcourse (workstations obviously being the best ones) Anyway, they get such negativity thrown at them, people complaining the pc's suck and whatnot. I just dont get it, its a great thing office desktops gets a new life, literally nothing bad can come of it. office rigs i find really fascinating, my mind keeps wondering, how far can you push it, what GPU can it run and then lets say it is all set up,then you got the contentment phase, content it runs well. :) I got a HP Z420 as a retro rig, i can put a 1660TI in it, but i got a gtx 1650 because i was tired of having to buy yet another cable it was missing. Honestly i got addicted to the desk space i made for it. The "office rig" company, they had a HP Z440, the successor to my rig with 3050 in it, serious bang for the buck. Havent touched my main gaming rig in 2 months now, i pretty much can do most that i need on the reserve HP rig, sweet stuff!
There are also the USB x-fi options that work quite well, I use the X-FI Surround 5.1 on my ITX XP PC as the only slot available is for the GFX card and the onboard is ok ish but not great. But as I found out the expensive way, it needs to be the original (1090) not the V3 (1095) which is the Pro (also the remote is a give away, if its a rounded end one, its the 1090, if its a small rectangle one, its the 1095), to have XP driver support and get all the goodies, but once you have it, you get the added option of using an IR remote to use the PC as a HTPC from the sofa.
These 9020s were also available in a "full" mid/mini tower case. You'll get a few more expansion expansion slot, drive bays, and room for a standard sized graphics card. That can allow for making a truly beastly XP machine for cheap. It can also run many more recent games too. I'm running one with a GTX 745, on win 10 and playing games like Raft, Thief, Subnautica, and more just fine. Heck I'm even able to play SCUM on it. Admittedly not always well or at anything close to the highest levels. But it does run.
The devil is in the detail with these. Especially the slot configuration. Some have only 2 slots, others 4, some only PCIe, some PCI as well. For XP retro, stick with 2nd, 3rd or 4th generation!
My school still uses Optiplex machines...it's small and web browsing, video playing works just fine! Although, it took them some more money when they bought those, but I really like them :)
These little small form factor desktop cases are nice for home server boxes. I have an i7 version with maxed out memory and all the slots with network adapters. I use it to run virtual machines
They make surprisingly powerful half-height video cards, I had a half-height Antec case with my living room PC that was the bane of my existence for ages. As long as you get ones that don't require external power, you can do just fine to run more modern games.
I'm using a 7020 with a 4th gen i5, running a few Minecraft servers and hosting some other things on it too. Runs 24/7 like a champ. It's crazy how cheap these little beasts are :)
How did you install the audio drivers since Dell never made audio drivers for XP for a 7020? Do they install alongside a GPU? I've got a Radeon R7 250 1gb on the way, hoping audio drivers are integrated into that like they are with Nvidia drivers
Nice job Phill. Even without usign it as retro pc, Haswell's i5 is still today capable for any basic office/net use. Just add memory to at least 8GB and switch to some basic SSD and thats it. And with these Optiplexes you have also nearly always guaranteed Win10 licence. 😁
My 9020 sff came with a i5 4590 and im throwing in 32gb ddr3 and the rx550 video card with a ssd boot drive, it's pretty much a budget entry level gaming pc for me and my son. These optiplex machines are such a deal my system cost me under $200 with everything.
I’ve upgraded my 9020 with 32GB, a RX550 and replaced the i5 with an Xeon V3. Added two SSDs and use this machine for Photoshop with UHD monitors. Very happy with it
Watching this video, I realized I had this very Dell model sitting spare in a closet. I found a cheap AMD HD 8570 online and paired it with an SSD that wasn't being used. I changed the bios from AHCI to ATA and enabled legacy boot, and was able to install Windows XP without external mass storage drivers. It's strange seeing XP running so quickly & natively on an i5 but it's a great setup for running late 90's early 00's era games. Fantastic, thanks for the video!
I miss working on Dell computers within a Dell ecosystem, they were so easy to disassemble and swap out FRUs. These little things were frustrating as one-offs though because they weren't as compatable and swappable as beige boxes.
You should have a LAN party with all those retro machines like the good old days. Painkiller: Black Edition looks like Scarlet Monastery Graveyard from World of Warcraft Doesn't it? Those machines bring back a lot of memories. Love your videos, Great Bargains.
so far my favorite sff pc ive setup is a lenovo thinkcentre haswell with a gtx 1050ti low profile and a gem of a cpu in the Xeon e3 1265Lv3 which turbos to 3.7ghz and uses only 45 watts , snatched the cpu for $25 , i threw 16 gb of memory in it and windows 8.1 enterprise and it amazingly snappy and performs well in emulation and games i play for its form factor
Nice video as always! The previous 3/7/9010 Optiplex models are even better since they use the standard ATX connecter, making power supply swaps super simple. Tower models can fit full-sized GPUs and can generally cope better with higher end GPUs since it's not as crammed inside, thus resulting in a better cooling. Supposedly there do exist the Haswell iGPU drivers for Windows XP Embedded. Maybe they also work on regular Windows XP SKUs as well. I wonder how stable they are under various games. Maybe a potential video material.
I upgraded skylake based 7040mt with third party psu for midrangde gpu requiring 8 pin connector. IT can be done, just needs SFX smaller form factor PSU like Corsair SF series, 24pim to 8 pin ATX adapter and some slight mode to case. For GPU there are 90 degree 8 pin connectors to make closing chassis easier. I installed on mine RX6600, it barely fit but it can be done. Also swapped fans with Noctua for both case and CPU, and while dell bios warns about failure they work fully well using standard 4 pin connectors.
I had on m previous company about hundred of 9020. I can confirm that this model is very stable and no problematic. Tip for improved cpu performance: disable c-states in bios
I think it's cheap n vfm if we buy directly from seller who use it not from shop sellers.. LOL last month I asked from many shops n they were asking 200 USD for such machines by saying these are imported so like imported cars, it's some kind of luxury stuff 🥲🤐
*Just a PSA* It is possible to find old OptiPlex's with Dual Core i3 CPUs in them and possibly horrendously low amounts of DDR ram (4GB??) as they were sold as the lowest tier unit. If you already have spare quad core CPU around from the same generation and extra DDR3 (*EVERYONE* has spare DDR3....) then you might be able to save yourself some further cash by opting for the i3 then putting your own quad core in it when it arrives. The storage idea shown in this video also makes this a viable platform to be run as a NAS as well. Its not cutting edge tech but it will work fine as a media or file server for a handful of users. Not as energy efficient as a dedicated Qnap or Synology that use a lot of Intel Atom/Celeron chips or ARM based chips for their lower end units but for the price you pay you can buy more storage space. So even if youre not into Retro Gaming. These units can be repurposed for other uses. The biggest fly in the ointment is the motherboards and power supplies are often proprietary so you wont be able to change or upgrade the powersupply unless you have a unit specifically from DELL.... *However* there are people who make and sell adapters that allow you to run regular off the shelf power supplies with your proprietary DELL motherboard... You will most likely find them on ebay or somewhere online.
I got a few Dell desktops for free when we upgraded our old machines. Even with Core 2 Duo Dells (like Optiplex 780 with 4GB Ram) you can install a lightweight Linux distro and run plenty of older console games (MAME, PSX, Snes, Genesis) at full speed with Retroarch. Even windows games (Age of Empires II HD or Galactic Civilizations III, ...) using Wine under Linux.
I like those Dell Optiplex Machines! Had a 7020 and a FX160, which is more or less a Thin Client installed DSM on it. Worked perfectly for years and still runs at my cousins house😉
If you want to look a bit more into doing builds for emulation, you might want to look at some of the emulation-specific Linux distros like Lakka and Batocera. Some of them have very nice and slick interfaces that automatically grab cover art for games and give a little preview and description of every game in your library. Very cool stuff.
Dear author. Please use MSI Afterburner in your videos. This utility shows how loaded the video card and processor are, you don't have to guess which of the components makes the game slow down. Sorry for my English, I'm using a translator. Thank you.
Club3D had an nice R7 250x in low profile single slot, should be at least twice as fast as the GT630. I think I still have a Dell 780 SFF which I updated with a quadcore Core2 and a Club3D R7 250x. Might still have a 9020 SFF with a GTX 745 (another low profile single slot GPU). In fact I think I have a few GTX 745's spare from old dead Dells scrapped at work, which came with a surprising 4GB or VRAM. Dell also shipped low profile single slot R7 250 cards in some of their Optiplex desktops. Pretty sure all these cards have drivers for XP. Got to love a SFF gaming rig, still have most of my Shuttle boxes also... 😁
"Meteor Mess" has finally been released back in 2022! So if you want a remastered version of Maniac Mansion, there you go. Just as a side note: That project was started back in 2008. It's insane how long it took for that game to be completed considering the original was written in less than a year.
bring back the win 98 builds my dear Phil! It's great to see you in person on your videos nowadays. I am planning a doomsday farm in mowgli's jungle area in MP, India. Complete with basement full of retro stuff, it would be a different feeling playing jungle book on it's land of origin! wildlife includes hyenas, jackals, foxes, langurs, cheetahs, leopards and a lot of other variety. you are welcome to join if you ever wish, tree planting starts soon and construction starts end of 23.
@philscomputerlab got a steal on a factory refurb and sold the low profile 1650 in to further dimish the hit. Having the dlss and Nis available greatly extended its capability
I watched the whole video and the question on my mind from the beginning was 'Will it run Crysis?' You answered the question so you get a like and a sub. I used to play Rome 2 Total War a lot which I recon it would handle and is still a great game. I wouldn't be surprised if it would play Medieval II Total War which I used to play with a HD4550 and 6000 series AGP card on the systems I had. At a push it might even manage Fallout 3 which will only play on Windows XP if it's an original DVD version. Good video.
I just picked up a fujitsu E734 Haswell laptop with Windows 10 Pro, 8GB Ram, i5 4200M 128GB SSD for 60 euros earlier this month. I gave it to my grandma since her core 2 quad system was dying of old age. The CPU, memory, wifi, SSD, ODD, WWAN and battery are user upgradable on most haswell and older laptops.
Yes these machines are a incredible value. A PSU alone costs more than the whole machine. This kind of video made me rethink about future purchases. I don't buy games at launch, instead I wait for them to get inexpensive at Gog or Steam and I don't need the latest hardware, is it just too expensie. Keeping behind the curve helps offset part of the inflation we have nowadays. Locally, I found such machine at roughly USD 160. Even more interesting Phil, there is a vertical tower version, with more room for the video card and PCI slots! For 250 USD I even found one with a i4790, which is worth the machine cost alone. My only doubt on this one it is the cooling - i4790 usually runs hot and need decent cooling. I would get the machine with the i4790 but swap for an i5.
always great to see a vid from ya especially for Retro PC gaming because it's alot more refreshing and very cheap to build for Windows XP era gaming lol
I have a 9020 SFF like this, except I maxed out everything on it. It has an i7-4790 processor, 32GB of DDR3-1600, and the video card is a Radeon RX6400 Low Profile. Runs Windows 10. I do some gaming on it, averaging about 70 fps on a 1440x900 monitor. Runs pretty well, except it can get warm. Averages about 80-85°C when gaming.
I've purchased an Acer mini pc (although, mine was intended for Batocera and with an i3 4130) and a tiny hp branded gt730. Never installed it though, as the machine is beyond loud. I can't remember now, but I think it didn't even have any extra screw holes for exhaust fan. Just a cooler, that's it. It overheats, it spins that maglev fan at 100% constantly, I've never had a machine that loud. Even a cheap tiny lc power furnace of a case had way better thermals. Maybe I'll get it out of storage when I have time and try to delid it and add a fan somewhere, but my honest advice is avoid these things.
My mom has a Optiplex 3020 SFF, almost the same as yours, just 2 less USB ports on the front and it had a Pentium CPU. I bought it as defective for 50€ 3 years ago, but it just needed approx. 0,5kg of dust removed and runs fine until today. I swapped out the Pentium for a i5 4570 and installed 8GB RAM, a 2TB HDD and a 250GB 850 EVO SSD. As a graphics card i actually installed a Firepro V3900 just a couple weeks ago, because she needed a 2nd monitor with Displayport. Got it for 13€ with shipping and it's faster than the GT 630 afaik.
I know it is all about the SFF but if you can choose between the 9020 in SFF or mini tower, the mini tower is the best option by a mile for not all that much extra space. Up until a little bit ago, my daughter's PC was an OptiPlex 9020 mini tower. I was able to put a standard Corsair 450w PSU and an RX580. It has a full size 5.25 bay and can hold three 3.5 HDDs. The motherboard in the mini tower also has a PCI slot and two PCIe x16 slots. You would have the room for a two slot video card and an X-Fi card, PCI or PCIe. I also ziptied a 92mm fan above the HDD cage for airflow. For running Minecraft at 2560x1080, it did pretty good and didn't get too hot either.
I agree. I think the mini tower option would be more interesting to look into. The ability to upgrade with more common video and sound card options is certainly more appealing
One thing to note about the mini towers like the Haswell 7020 and 9020 is that the PSU uses a proprietary 8 pin connector so either an adapter or a rewire is needed to upgrade the power supply. Their predecessor, the Ivy Bridge 7010 and 9010 utilizes a standard 24 pin ATX connector instead, so it's a little easier to drop in a better PSU on them.
As an added bonus these OptiPlex 9020 machines are also great for running MacOS Monterey (currently at 12.6.5) using OpenCore. A 3.5" to 2.5" drive adapter isn't strictly necessary since it's possible to attach the SSD to the metal drive cage with a single screw. It's not ideal but is enough to stop the SSD from moving around inside the case. The WinSetupFromUSB web site is currently down. I was able to download version 1.10 from FileEagle instead. The .exe has an md5sum of 3029455e6a2e47be8981ff79be09e8ad which looks like it matches the original release checksum.
I got an HP EliteDesk 800 G1, also Haswell Platform. Using an i7 4675T in with only 35W of TDP but 4C8T. Just still looking for a decent VGA in low profile form. Haswell is somehow one of my fav platforms, because its still strong and capable of many things up to today. Even my daily is a Haswell with an i7 4770S and a 1050ti, because for me its enough since i am not a hardcore gamer. For more performance like Video editing or shrinking BluRays i use an X79 with the Xeon E5 1680v2, the beast. But as you say, these nowadays cheap Haswell SFF devices make very good Windows XP gaming machines. Nice Video. Cheers.
I got a mid tower one of these for my dad to do his office work and web browsing on. Much better than the low end new builds he used buy, not just in quality(those things have a real longevity problem, they rarely work for more than two years) but performance and price, too.
I have a 7040 that I added an Radeon 1GB gaphics card running Win 7. Runs Quake I and 2 Enhanced, Doom 3 BFG and Quake 4 with no problems. (GPU fan does seems to run at full spead when doing so.) I like the idea that these are available.
I love all computers. I just can't help but see how much I can upgrade everything. I have several high end PCs but these old optiplex's are fun. I always throw an I7 in them and a R7 250 or GT 1030. Unless the PC has everything soldered on and is impossible to upgrade. In that case I toy with it and salvage anything usable or install emulators on it.
I still have a two or three of these along with some core 2 duo/quad variants. I sold most of the Sandy bridge and above units I had as office pcs from 2017-2019 after getting 25 or so from my brothers workplace. Made quite a few dollareedoos off of what was going to be E-waste. My main Windows XP machine for 2005ish and below is still a 2600+ with a 5950 ultra, she's not as powerful as one would think, but It's still a cool piece of history having the card. I built a newer unit using a phenom 2 x4 with an HD 5770 that I think is going to replace it fully in due time.
@@philscomputerlab They are as well as any of the first gen and above but I wanted to try something a little different with the phenom II line. You rarely see them get any love in the retro gaming scene. The phenom IIx6 is my next snag for the collection, have a 975 IIx4 and 720 IIx3 so far.
Great video! We used Optiplex 3010 in our LAN-Party room. They were able to operate dual slot low profile cards. CPU support was only ivy- and sandy-bridge but this should not be an issue with retro gaming.
My main gaming pc is a precision t1650 (same thing as optiplex just with xeon support) with i7 and gtx 1070. Runs awesome and I’ve gotten all of my friends on similar upgraded dell machines because of their reliability and price to performance. My next pc will probably end up being an 8th-10th gen intel optiplex once they come down in price lol
I also run a T1650 with a Xeon E3-1240 v2, 16GB DDR3 and a 1050ti…easily the most reliable system I’ve ever owned (and my PC journey goes back to 1996)
Actually the nice thing these days is you can just get an external optical drive which would allow you to expand the Internal storage without giving up access to optical media.
Nice unit... but I love my GTX960 too much for xp gaming. A must have in my opinion. Still, nice to see what the inside of the dell looks like. Too bad there's not more room for video cards.
@@philscomputerlab To me, the ideal xp system has both high performance and is cost effective. As such, a z77x motherboard and i5-3570k are perfect for xp gaming. No need to go haswell either. Just disable 2 cores on the 3570k and overclock to an easy 4.2ghz. Add a GTX960, GTX970 or GTX980 and youre ready to shred any game on max settings. I run mine with a GTX960 and its a joy to experience... 🙂
The worst thing about these SFF computers that work with Windows XP is that I still cannot find any sound cards with a gameport that has low profile capability. However, throwing a Quadro K1200 4GB and then modifying the GTX 750 Ti drivers to be Quadro K1200 drivers and you have a beast in Windows XP!
I am still running a Haswell-EP with 18 Cores on Linux. It still runs modern games just fine with my Vega 64 (if you squeeze every juice out of it with compiling a lot of packages from source).
Another great Video Phil! Question though, how do you deal with Windows XP activation issues? AFAIK you still have to activate online/via phone, do you do that? Or is there a way around?
These machines make a great plex server, etc as well. You can get some nice small GPUs that will give you a lot of simultaneous streams. All those tv subscriptions are getting expensive!
Using on of these as a HTPC in my living room. Looks like martrox is going to release a few intel ARC videocards in low profile configuration soon, would like to test it in them.
My older customers love these little Optiplex "bricks" for basic web-browsing and such, they're affordable and easily upgraded. I've never had a complaint from any of them in the years I've sold them.
I have one for watching Netflix / Music in the living room.
I also refurbed quite a few of them and the last one I refurbed had continuous problems with the power supply it seems. I fear that a cheap usb stick that ran terribly hot used too much power on the 5V rail, not sure tho. Also the i7 2600 might be a little too much compared to the 3470 that was in there before. Will have to check if replacement psus are available.
I have the same machine. My only complaint is the power supply started making a high frequency noise and its not the fan. ughhhh...
My XE project has been a frustrating one. But I think even this oldie can be great. It's not even my forte. I generally do a current generation custom build, which is wholly easier. I liked the small form factor. That's a new endeavor for me. No longer concerned about maximum performance, but still trying to get as much performance as wattage limitations would allow. For the Optiplex XE on the 775 socket, that turned out to be the Q9550s CPU, which is rated at 65 watts. It was a PITA to find. I'm also looking for space, efficiency and quiet. I got a Dell Radeon HD 7570 GPU Low Profile coming and it has a rating of 44 watts. I tried a more modern GPU such as RX 550, but I couldn't get it to install the OEM drivers. On a support board, someone mentioned that it didn't have DOS VESA support. That may have been why.
*** www.dell.com/community/Optiplex-Desktops/Dell-Optiplex-XE-Dell-AMD-Radeon-R5-340X-upgrade/td-p/6217759 ***
We'll see about the HD 7570.
I've never been concerned about wattages before, but this project has made me. I have a 280W PSU and I do believe that there is a 300W out there, but 280W is fairly standard and I'm just trying to work within those parameters. I have Windows 10 on it and I'm already getting prepared to put Linux on it. And so I'm trying to be mindful of any HCL issues that may crop up. That's why I went with a Radeon GPU, which is the GPU brand that Linux seems to support very well.
They're still pretty capable for anything other than high end gaming. I have a new AM5 custom build and one of those SFF Optiplex 9020 that i use for my older games and other basic tasks. It's as snappy as my gaming rig with everything up to date so it's no wonder it's very popular with non gamers or light gamers. Mine doesn't even have a dedicated GPU and i can run all my older games maxed out anyway (Max Payne 2,GTA SA,Mafia) and even Mafia 2 or GTA IV on low-mid settings
Hearing a computer with a Haswell i5 and 8 GB of RAM described as a "retro Windows XP machine" makes me feel ancient, man
This was my main computer literally last year with a 1030 in it. It works if you're dedicated enough. Kerbal Space Program and Fallout 4 at 720p
Eh i might have a i7-930 that i always wanted to overlock
If that's retro then what is my OptiPlex 760 which was my main PC until 2019?
I pulled a heap of these out of the bin at the local school I work at. All equipped with i7-3770’s and 16 gig ram. I threw a 1tb ssd and a gtx 1650lp In One of them. Quite a good little gaming pc.
Better teardown directions than Dell's own!
I use adhesive backed Velcro strips to mount SATA SSDs wherever convenient inside cases. Cheap and effective. Can also be used to help route cables.
I literally just sold one of these to a customer of mine. They're such excellent little workhorses.
I have my work FULL of these things. I nearly have everyone switched over to using them. Also have a couple of the larger form factor ones so I can install bigger GPU's for the CAD guys. Optiplex's are great and once you get them going they never give any trouble. In fact, my current work PC is an XPS Studio; another great value for money modern machine. A lot of people like to give Dell flak but after having used their stuff in the real world for years now I won't ever have a word said against them. My original slim XPS13 laptop still going strong at home too!
I’ve come to like Dell a lot more over the last few years. Sure, the stuff they sell to the general public is flimsy, slow and full of proprietary connections, but their workstation stuff is fantastic, built like tanks and super reliable.
I've been watching his channel off and on for many years. I LOVE this guy's accent!!! he's a cool GAMER dude!!! I like how he breaks down the components of each motherboard and PC. He keeps it simplified and quite clean. His narration is whacky, yet informative down to a SCIENCE that ANYONE can understand without pulling out a Dictionary!!! Do your thing Phil!! Love your accent brother!!! LOL!!!
I recently got a Dell OptiPlex 780 Small Form Factor from The Salvation Army for $10.75 USD. It works fine and it even came with a working 500GB hard drive and its power cable. I'm very exited about all of the things that I can do with it.
Nice!
@@philscomputerlab Thanks.
I bought a lot of these Dell, HP and Lenovo for the office workers. Second hand a couple of years ago. All are running Linux Mint Mate with Libre Office, perfect no OS or office pakket to pay. On PC runs win7 with Libre Office for accounting but that's it. For sound you can use a USB sound card, works well.
Thank you for using "silky smooth" instead of "buttery smooth". I've stroked both butter and silk at various ambient temperatures, and butter, while pasty, greasy and oily, can not ever be described as smooth in my experience. Silk can.
😅
The old Optiplexes from the mid 00s made me a crap ton of money as a field repair tech for Dell. Back when they had the bulging caps problem. Basically every GX270 and GX280 Optiplex machine. You can Google that for more info, but basically by the end of it Dell guaranteed that any GX270 or GX280 no matter if it was out of warranty or not got a free replacement motherboard if you called tech support and just mentioned the words "bulging capacitor." So I'd walk into an office building or a school and there would be 20 of these buggers sitting against a wall ready for me to swap the motherboard. It was about a 15 minute job per machine thanks to Dell's stupidly service-friendly machines from the time. Those were good days. I'd pull $500-$700 from just a few hours work. Thanks for the screw up, Dell!
Great story, thanks for sharing!
This is an excellent use case for Haswell SFF optiplex! Well done. IF you want to use this system for more modern titles or higher end emulation, I recommend possibly using an i7 OR an E3 v3 Xeon. Many of these haswell units can take something like an E3 1271 v3 which is on par with the i7s of the same family. Although you are limited to a single slot video card, you could buy a GT1030, RX6400, or even higher end Turing Quadro like the T400, T600 or T1000. Pascal quadros have also come down in price and can still game. Also, you may notice that this particular Haswell DOES have a PCIE 4x slot with a slotted hole. You can fit x8 and x16 dual slot cards with limited bandwidth. I have used x8 cards in the x4 slot and the performance isn't bad at all. My low profile GTX1650 could still perform well even in x4 mode.
I suggested an RX 550 in a separate comment. The GT 1030 and RX 6400 are both a step up from the GT 630 but they both lack a video encoder, therefore if one was hoping to do some content creation it would be a no go. And you're correct about the dual slot cards. I'm currently using a small form factor Optiplex 7050 that has an i7-6700 with 16GB DDR4-2133 ram. I'm running an RTX A2000 which is the equivalent to an RTX 3050 in the PCIE x4 slot. I can run titles like Cyberpunk 2077 on medium and still pull FPS of around 60.
@@blacksquaregamingpc you can get around the video encoding issue if your processor has onboard graphics. You can go into the bios and make sure Intel multidisplay or integrated is still turned on, then you can use into quick sync if your GPU has no encoding.
@@blacksquaregamingpc ofc doesnt work in windows xp
(As per my post at top). You CAN run a double slot (1/2 height) card off the 4x slot. We had the i7 4790, and a gtx 1650 in a SFF 9020 for my son, running flawlessly for over two years. "Losing" the 16x slot is NO detriment to performance, not at 1080/720p gaming anyway. You also get a full compliment of ports.
... Of course, no wifi (unless you go usb wifi?)
I would advice against the 1030, because the 750ti is more powerful, and 1050ti/1650S is getting cheaper
I would also advise against the 6400, prettysure its x4 pcie lanes, unfortunately there isnt a 70w card from amd that is rdna based
While I was taking my final exams in senior year of high school back in 2019, I knew for a fact that these PCs would be perfect for retro gaming emulation.
I'm glad I was right.
Your senior year was 2019? Man, I feel old... 😜
I've upgrade this year a Dell optiplex 3020 SSF to the max. An i3 to the i7 4790k, 4 gb to 2x8 gb ram at 1600 mhz. Old HDD and DVD-RW out for 2x2TB SSD and the GPU is a GTX 1650 low profile.
It runs rly well. Even for 2023.
Win10 just flies and most games play rly well.
It's fun upgrading these machines :)
@@philscomputerlab Yes:), also I think its a waste to throw them away. Plenty of life left in them:3
The Sandy Bridge Optiplex will be a beast for Windows XP gaming
Happy Friday Phil! Thanks for another great video. Lots of people loath SFF or USFF but I have a few of them even some IBM ones from around 1999-2001 and I think these small machines are awesome. A little limited on graphics options but it can be worked around in many cases. 98 and XP dual boot are possible as well with some of the older Dell SFF systems.
"Dude you're getting a Dell!"
Couldn't resist
I see Matrox is releasing two low profile GPUs based on the Intel ARC A300 series GPUs, one has a fan, the A320 and the other, the A310 is passively cooled. The limitation is that you need Gen 10 or later CPUs with Resizable Bar for optimum performance. No word on pricing yet.
These also do work quite well as multimedia machines, I have a lot of people that genuinely cannot afford upgrading their already big TVs to a Smart TV of the same size, with higher resolution and such, so I recommended to check these Dell Optiplex machines, and they LOVE IT, not only it's doubling as a gaming system of sorts (The 1050/Ti is becoming a lot more popular around my old living area thanks to these), but they also work as a youtube/netflix/spotify machines, and because most people over here really do play with Xbox 360 and PS3 to this day, even at 720p30 in most games is more than enough for a lot of people, plus, King of Fighters is incredibly popular in Mexico, so having a way to run the series for real cheap, it's also a huge selling point.
My country isn't wealthy, and we work with what we have, and it makes me happy that I'm able to expand entertainment to people of basically every budget.
For me, I actually got interested in Windows XP gaming due to my nostalgia, and because I want to try out EAX so badly, a wet dream from my childhood as a pseudo-audiophile.
Kudos for this, love your content.
EAX is so awesome but there are almost no low profile cards. So it's easier getting a full size computer. X-Fi is the sound blaster you want?
@@philscomputerlab Whatever good EAX supported card would totally fit my bill, and yeah, unfortunately I will be out of luck with low profile, I really wanted to build something like that, but guess I'm out of luck, oh well, my next target is to probably use an old motherboard with a smaller mATX case.
This kind of PC wasn't abused it's perfect for browsing
Beautiful Dell design, small form factor, enough win xp performance - one of the best platforms for retro gaming. Thanks for the video. The best as always!
office gear fanboys, lol
performance ?
I got 4 optiplex 790 (i5 2400, 4GB Ram) rigs given to me for free, dropping in the low profile Radeon 8570 with 1GB of ram (cost $9 each) along with the low profile Audigy SE (SB0570) sound card for EAX ($15 each), makes a decent little XP retro gaming box, keep up the great work Phil!!!
My windows xp retro machine is a dell precision t5400 with dual 3 ghz Xeon 4gb ram and a 980 ti. Driver inf. File is modified to recognize a 980 ti and installs fine.
I have an Auzentech X-Fi forte, it incredible and has a low profile bracket. Best sound card I ever had! It even comes with that extra 64mb ram !
Good suggestion; Phil is quite the audiophile.
I run a slightly older version of one of these, a Dell 3010 with an upgraded i7 3770 and 16GB of RAM. I went with the Ivy Bridge variant because the PCI-E slot is actually one up from the bottom and so it supports dual slot cards. I’m currently running an Nvidia Quadro 600 in it, but may upgrade to the double height RTX A2000 when it becomes a little cheaper.
Currently has a large platter drive along with an SSD for the main drive in the CD tray area.
It makes for a great console replacement, sitting in my home entertainment center plugged into my TV. Running Launch Box, it’s great for running retro games through emulation, running lighter modern PC games, as well as multimedia usage. Plus it’s a lot of fun upgrading all aspects of one of these old small form factor PCs, and seeing how far they can go!
Very interesting that this machine supports windows XP through 11 natively
We have those PCs on mass at my workplace- every time I see on of those I have think about work 😂
Great machines 💪
I was given a core duo optiplex tower a few years ago.
I use it for my Launchox build. It runs everything up to Gamecube/Wii and PS2.
Cracking machine 👌🏻
How is the emulation with ps2? I have one running bigbox - upgraded to RX580 gpu and bigger psu but the games are still laggy.
Great video Phil. This looks WAY more fun than testing to see if a new CPU/GPU is 10% faster than it's competition ;) I might have to do something like this and see how far we can push it. Thanks as always for the inspiration and great content :)
Great job! I did some repurposing of a similar Precision workstation from 2014 for XP a little while back with a 750 Ti! Crazily, it has a regular PCI slot - managed to stick an Audigy 2 ZS in there and it worked great.
I've since turned that into another experiment box (card went elsewhere), but it ran games like crazy with no or very little issues whatsoever.
Im Swedish. There is a scandinavian company, based in Finland i believe.
They buy up office monitors, desktops and turn them into Gaming rigs or home PC's. Differing price ranges ofcourse (workstations obviously being the best ones)
Anyway, they get such negativity thrown at them, people complaining the pc's suck and whatnot.
I just dont get it, its a great thing office desktops gets a new life, literally nothing bad can come of it.
office rigs i find really fascinating, my mind keeps wondering, how far can you push it, what GPU can it run and then lets say it is all set up,then you got the contentment phase, content it runs well. :)
I got a HP Z420 as a retro rig, i can put a 1660TI in it, but i got a gtx 1650 because i was tired of having to buy yet another cable it was missing. Honestly i got addicted to the desk space i made for it. The "office rig" company, they had a HP Z440, the successor to my rig with 3050 in it, serious bang for the buck.
Havent touched my main gaming rig in 2 months now, i pretty much can do most that i need on the reserve HP rig, sweet stuff!
I love how you leaned in with "But does it run Crysis?"
There are also the USB x-fi options that work quite well, I use the X-FI Surround 5.1 on my ITX XP PC as the only slot available is for the GFX card and the onboard is ok ish but not great. But as I found out the expensive way, it needs to be the original (1090) not the V3 (1095) which is the Pro (also the remote is a give away, if its a rounded end one, its the 1090, if its a small rectangle one, its the 1095), to have XP driver support and get all the goodies, but once you have it, you get the added option of using an IR remote to use the PC as a HTPC from the sofa.
These machines also work excellent as a Hackintosh. I have this same model running macOS
I love these machines. Great for retro. very reliable
These 9020s were also available in a "full" mid/mini tower case. You'll get a few more expansion expansion slot, drive bays, and room for a standard sized graphics card. That can allow for making a truly beastly XP machine for cheap. It can also run many more recent games too. I'm running one with a GTX 745, on win 10 and playing games like Raft, Thief, Subnautica, and more just fine. Heck I'm even able to play SCUM on it. Admittedly not always well or at anything close to the highest levels. But it does run.
Ok that's it. 2 of my favourite youtubers are now saying "SFF". You have convinced me to take a closer look at them. Cheers Phil from Scotland.
The devil is in the detail with these. Especially the slot configuration. Some have only 2 slots, others 4, some only PCIe, some PCI as well. For XP retro, stick with 2nd, 3rd or 4th generation!
My school still uses Optiplex machines...it's small and web browsing, video playing works just fine! Although, it took them some more money when they bought those, but I really like them :)
These little small form factor desktop cases are nice for home server boxes. I have an i7 version with maxed out memory and all the slots with network adapters. I use it to run virtual machines
They make surprisingly powerful half-height video cards, I had a half-height Antec case with my living room PC that was the bane of my existence for ages. As long as you get ones that don't require external power, you can do just fine to run more modern games.
I'm using a 7020 with a 4th gen i5, running a few Minecraft servers and hosting some other things on it too. Runs 24/7 like a champ. It's crazy how cheap these little beasts are :)
look for an i5 or i7 T-version.... only 35W of TDP and still decent power.
How did you install the audio drivers since Dell never made audio drivers for XP for a 7020? Do they install alongside a GPU? I've got a Radeon R7 250 1gb on the way, hoping audio drivers are integrated into that like they are with Nvidia drivers
I've got the same rig with that same form factor as a service PC for phone software fixing. A great machine for daily tasks.
Nice job Phill. Even without usign it as retro pc, Haswell's i5 is still today capable for any basic office/net use. Just add memory to at least 8GB and switch to some basic SSD and thats it. And with these Optiplexes you have also nearly always guaranteed Win10 licence. 😁
My 9020 sff came with a i5 4590 and im throwing in 32gb ddr3 and the rx550 video card with a ssd boot drive, it's pretty much a budget entry level gaming pc for me and my son. These optiplex machines are such a deal my system cost me under $200 with everything.
I’ve upgraded my 9020 with 32GB, a RX550 and replaced the i5 with an Xeon V3. Added two SSDs and use this machine for Photoshop with UHD monitors. Very happy with it
Excellent videos, to the point & informative. Really appreciate you sharing your vast wealth of knowledge with everyone.
Thank you!
@@philscomputerlab I am guessing you have extensive teaching experience?, if not, you are a natural.
Watching this video, I realized I had this very Dell model sitting spare in a closet. I found a cheap AMD HD 8570 online and paired it with an SSD that wasn't being used. I changed the bios from AHCI to ATA and enabled legacy boot, and was able to install Windows XP without external mass storage drivers. It's strange seeing XP running so quickly & natively on an i5 but it's a great setup for running late 90's early 00's era games. Fantastic, thanks for the video!
Hi Phil HB🎉 Great to see your videos again!!
those boxes are no joke
i got 3020 and it works as a stepmania machine.
I miss working on Dell computers within a Dell ecosystem, they were so easy to disassemble and swap out FRUs. These little things were frustrating as one-offs though because they weren't as compatable and swappable as beige boxes.
You should have a LAN party with all those retro machines like the good old days. Painkiller: Black Edition looks like Scarlet Monastery Graveyard from World of Warcraft Doesn't it? Those machines bring back a lot of memories. Love your videos, Great Bargains.
so far my favorite sff pc ive setup is a lenovo thinkcentre haswell with a gtx 1050ti low profile and a gem of a cpu in the Xeon e3 1265Lv3 which turbos to 3.7ghz and uses only 45 watts , snatched the cpu for $25 , i threw 16 gb of memory in it and windows 8.1 enterprise and it amazingly snappy and performs well in emulation and games i play for its form factor
Those low power Xeons are fantastic, I use them in all my personal builds. $25 is a steal for such a processor, good job 👍🏻
Nice video as always! The previous 3/7/9010 Optiplex models are even better since they use the standard ATX connecter, making power supply swaps super simple. Tower models can fit full-sized GPUs and can generally cope better with higher end GPUs since it's not as crammed inside, thus resulting in a better cooling. Supposedly there do exist the Haswell iGPU drivers for Windows XP Embedded. Maybe they also work on regular Windows XP SKUs as well. I wonder how stable they are under various games. Maybe a potential video material.
I upgraded skylake based 7040mt with third party psu for midrangde gpu requiring 8 pin connector. IT can be done, just needs SFX smaller form factor PSU like Corsair SF series, 24pim to 8 pin ATX adapter and some slight mode to case. For GPU there are 90 degree 8 pin connectors to make closing chassis easier. I installed on mine RX6600, it barely fit but it can be done. Also swapped fans with Noctua for both case and CPU, and while dell bios warns about failure they work fully well using standard 4 pin connectors.
I had on m previous company about hundred of 9020. I can confirm that this model is very stable and no problematic. Tip for improved cpu performance: disable c-states in bios
I got one of these for retro gaming too. They're great and very cheap.
I think it's cheap n vfm if we buy directly from seller who use it not from shop sellers.. LOL last month I asked from many shops n they were asking 200 USD for such machines by saying these are imported so like imported cars, it's some kind of luxury stuff 🥲🤐
*Just a PSA*
It is possible to find old OptiPlex's with Dual Core i3 CPUs in them and possibly horrendously low amounts of DDR ram (4GB??) as they were sold as the lowest tier unit.
If you already have spare quad core CPU around from the same generation and extra DDR3 (*EVERYONE* has spare DDR3....) then you might be able to save yourself some further cash by opting for the i3 then putting your own quad core in it when it arrives.
The storage idea shown in this video also makes this a viable platform to be run as a NAS as well. Its not cutting edge tech but it will work fine as a media or file server for a handful of users. Not as energy efficient as a dedicated Qnap or Synology that use a lot of Intel Atom/Celeron chips or ARM based chips for their lower end units but for the price you pay you can buy more storage space.
So even if youre not into Retro Gaming. These units can be repurposed for other uses.
The biggest fly in the ointment is the motherboards and power supplies are often proprietary so you wont be able to change or upgrade the powersupply unless you have a unit specifically from DELL.... *However* there are people who make and sell adapters that allow you to run regular off the shelf power supplies with your proprietary DELL motherboard... You will most likely find them on ebay or somewhere online.
Great information 🙂
I got a few Dell desktops for free when we upgraded our old machines. Even with Core 2 Duo Dells (like Optiplex 780 with 4GB Ram) you can install a lightweight Linux distro and run plenty of older console games (MAME, PSX, Snes, Genesis) at full speed with Retroarch. Even windows games (Age of Empires II HD or Galactic Civilizations III, ...) using Wine under Linux.
My fiancée is still using an i5 Haswell with RX580 as a modern gaming PC. Windows 10 runs fine and even the wizard game looks good at a locked 30FPS
I like those Dell Optiplex Machines! Had a 7020 and a FX160, which is more or less a Thin Client installed DSM on it. Worked perfectly for years and still runs at my cousins house😉
If you want to look a bit more into doing builds for emulation, you might want to look at some of the emulation-specific Linux distros like Lakka and Batocera. Some of them have very nice and slick interfaces that automatically grab cover art for games and give a little preview and description of every game in your library. Very cool stuff.
Dear author. Please use MSI Afterburner in your videos. This utility shows how loaded the video card and processor are, you don't have to guess which of the components makes the game slow down. Sorry for my English, I'm using a translator. Thank you.
Club3D had an nice R7 250x in low profile single slot, should be at least twice as fast as the GT630. I think I still have a Dell 780 SFF which I updated with a quadcore Core2 and a Club3D R7 250x. Might still have a 9020 SFF with a GTX 745 (another low profile single slot GPU). In fact I think I have a few GTX 745's spare from old dead Dells scrapped at work, which came with a surprising 4GB or VRAM. Dell also shipped low profile single slot R7 250 cards in some of their Optiplex desktops. Pretty sure all these cards have drivers for XP. Got to love a SFF gaming rig, still have most of my Shuttle boxes also... 😁
"Meteor Mess" has finally been released back in 2022! So if you want a remastered version of Maniac Mansion, there you go. Just as a side note: That project was started back in 2008. It's insane how long it took for that game to be completed considering the original was written in less than a year.
bring back the win 98 builds my dear Phil! It's great to see you in person on your videos nowadays. I am planning a doomsday farm in mowgli's jungle area in MP, India. Complete with basement full of retro stuff, it would be a different feeling playing jungle book on it's land of origin! wildlife includes hyenas, jackals, foxes, langurs, cheetahs, leopards and a lot of other variety. you are welcome to join if you ever wish, tree planting starts soon and construction starts end of 23.
Very nice system, like!
i built one up for my daughter with a 4790k and and a rtx a2000 in it, modded the case and added some fans, swapped to ssd, great machine
Isn't the A2000 quite expensive?
@philscomputerlab got a steal on a factory refurb and sold the low profile 1650 in to further dimish the hit. Having the dlss and Nis available greatly extended its capability
I watched the whole video and the question on my mind from the beginning was 'Will it run Crysis?' You answered the question so you get a like and a sub. I used to play Rome 2 Total War a lot which I recon it would handle and is still a great game. I wouldn't be surprised if it would play Medieval II Total War which I used to play with a HD4550 and 6000 series AGP card on the systems I had. At a push it might even manage Fallout 3 which will only play on Windows XP if it's an original DVD version. Good video.
The SFF versions are nice, but there are also "full size" versions of these, which can handle full height pcie cards.
I just picked up a fujitsu E734 Haswell laptop with Windows 10 Pro, 8GB Ram, i5 4200M 128GB SSD for 60 euros earlier this month.
I gave it to my grandma since her core 2 quad system was dying of old age.
The CPU, memory, wifi, SSD, ODD, WWAN and battery are user upgradable on most haswell and older laptops.
Nice!
Yes these machines are a incredible value. A PSU alone costs more than the whole machine. This kind of video made me rethink about future purchases. I don't buy games at launch, instead I wait for them to get inexpensive at Gog or Steam and I don't need the latest hardware, is it just too expensie. Keeping behind the curve helps offset part of the inflation we have nowadays. Locally, I found such machine at roughly USD 160. Even more interesting Phil, there is a vertical tower version, with more room for the video card and PCI slots! For 250 USD I even found one with a i4790, which is worth the machine cost alone. My only doubt on this one it is the cooling - i4790 usually runs hot and need decent cooling. I would get the machine with the i4790 but swap for an i5.
always great to see a vid from ya especially for Retro PC gaming because it's alot more refreshing and very cheap to build for Windows XP era gaming lol
I have a 9020 SFF like this, except I maxed out everything on it. It has an i7-4790 processor, 32GB of DDR3-1600, and the video card is a Radeon RX6400 Low Profile. Runs Windows 10. I do some gaming on it, averaging about 70 fps on a 1440x900 monitor. Runs pretty well, except it can get warm. Averages about 80-85°C when gaming.
Thanks for the Video Phil. I have a 7020 with a Radeon (dell) 7570 Haswell Core I5. Great Little Machine.
Perfect Retro PC!
I've purchased an Acer mini pc (although, mine was intended for Batocera and with an i3 4130) and a tiny hp branded gt730. Never installed it though, as the machine is beyond loud. I can't remember now, but I think it didn't even have any extra screw holes for exhaust fan. Just a cooler, that's it. It overheats, it spins that maglev fan at 100% constantly, I've never had a machine that loud. Even a cheap tiny lc power furnace of a case had way better thermals. Maybe I'll get it out of storage when I have time and try to delid it and add a fan somewhere, but my honest advice is avoid these things.
My mom has a Optiplex 3020 SFF, almost the same as yours, just 2 less USB ports on the front and it had a Pentium CPU.
I bought it as defective for 50€ 3 years ago, but it just needed approx. 0,5kg of dust removed and runs fine until today.
I swapped out the Pentium for a i5 4570 and installed 8GB RAM, a 2TB HDD and a 250GB 850 EVO SSD.
As a graphics card i actually installed a Firepro V3900 just a couple weeks ago, because she needed a 2nd monitor with Displayport.
Got it for 13€ with shipping and it's faster than the GT 630 afaik.
I know it is all about the SFF but if you can choose between the 9020 in SFF or mini tower, the mini tower is the best option by a mile for not all that much extra space. Up until a little bit ago, my daughter's PC was an OptiPlex 9020 mini tower. I was able to put a standard Corsair 450w PSU and an RX580. It has a full size 5.25 bay and can hold three 3.5 HDDs. The motherboard in the mini tower also has a PCI slot and two PCIe x16 slots. You would have the room for a two slot video card and an X-Fi card, PCI or PCIe. I also ziptied a 92mm fan above the HDD cage for airflow. For running Minecraft at 2560x1080, it did pretty good and didn't get too hot either.
Yes you're right. For some reason here in Australia it's all SFF models in seeing in eBay.
I agree. I think the mini tower option would be more interesting to look into. The ability to upgrade with more common video and sound card options is certainly more appealing
One thing to note about the mini towers like the Haswell 7020 and 9020 is that the PSU uses a proprietary 8 pin connector so either an adapter or a rewire is needed to upgrade the power supply. Their predecessor, the Ivy Bridge 7010 and 9010 utilizes a standard 24 pin ATX connector instead, so it's a little easier to drop in a better PSU on them.
As an added bonus these OptiPlex 9020 machines are also great for running MacOS Monterey (currently at 12.6.5) using OpenCore.
A 3.5" to 2.5" drive adapter isn't strictly necessary since it's possible to attach the SSD to the metal drive cage with a single screw. It's not ideal but is enough to stop the SSD from moving around inside the case.
The WinSetupFromUSB web site is currently down. I was able to download version 1.10 from FileEagle instead. The .exe has an md5sum of 3029455e6a2e47be8981ff79be09e8ad which looks like it matches the original release checksum.
Running MacOS? Hmm. I thought you needed high end hardware to do that.
I got an HP EliteDesk 800 G1, also Haswell Platform. Using an i7 4675T in with only 35W of TDP but 4C8T. Just still looking for a decent VGA in low profile form. Haswell is somehow one of my fav platforms, because its still strong and capable of many things up to today. Even my daily is a Haswell with an i7 4770S and a 1050ti, because for me its enough since i am not a hardcore gamer. For more performance like Video editing or shrinking BluRays i use an X79 with the Xeon E5 1680v2, the beast. But as you say, these nowadays cheap Haswell SFF devices make very good Windows XP gaming machines. Nice Video. Cheers.
I got a mid tower one of these for my dad to do his office work and web browsing on.
Much better than the low end new builds he used buy, not just in quality(those things have a real longevity problem, they rarely work for more than two years) but performance and price, too.
I have a 7040 that I added an Radeon 1GB gaphics card running Win 7. Runs Quake I and 2 Enhanced, Doom 3 BFG and Quake 4 with no problems. (GPU fan does seems to run at full spead when doing so.) I like the idea that these are available.
Haswell is the best! :) I'm still rocking Haswell i7 on my daily driver work/home Linux workstation.. no need to upgrade after all these years.
I love all computers. I just can't help but see how much I can upgrade everything. I have several high end PCs but these old optiplex's are fun. I always throw an I7 in them and a R7 250 or GT 1030. Unless the PC has everything soldered on and is impossible to upgrade. In that case I toy with it and salvage anything usable or install emulators on it.
I still have a two or three of these along with some core 2 duo/quad variants. I sold most of the Sandy bridge and above units I had as office pcs from 2017-2019 after getting 25 or so from my brothers workplace. Made quite a few dollareedoos off of what was going to be E-waste.
My main Windows XP machine for 2005ish and below is still a 2600+ with a 5950 ultra, she's not as powerful as one would think, but It's still a cool piece of history having the card. I built a newer unit using a phenom 2 x4 with an HD 5770 that I think is going to replace it fully in due time.
Socket 775 should also work well for XP retro gaming.
@@philscomputerlab They are as well as any of the first gen and above but I wanted to try something a little different with the phenom II line. You rarely see them get any love in the retro gaming scene. The phenom IIx6 is my next snag for the collection, have a 975 IIx4 and 720 IIx3 so far.
@@IronArmPanda I've done a few Athlon II and Phenom II projects on the channel. But at least what OEM machines are concerned, it's all Intel it seems.
Great video! We used Optiplex 3010 in our LAN-Party room. They were able to operate dual slot low profile cards. CPU support was only ivy- and sandy-bridge but this should not be an issue with retro gaming.
Look closers, dual slot ? just one slot in use, blank space ?
I have a minitower Haswell OptiPlex as a living room PC and a micro Skylake OptiPlex as a server and they have both been champs.
Perfect for running a Sega Genesis emulator? 😍
My main gaming pc is a precision t1650 (same thing as optiplex just with xeon support) with i7 and gtx 1070. Runs awesome and I’ve gotten all of my friends on similar upgraded dell machines because of their reliability and price to performance.
My next pc will probably end up being an 8th-10th gen intel optiplex once they come down in price lol
I also run a T1650 with a Xeon E3-1240 v2, 16GB DDR3 and a 1050ti…easily the most reliable system I’ve ever owned (and my PC journey goes back to 1996)
As a Russian language speaker I approve of your pronunciation of "sturmovik"....👍 lol
😀
Actually the nice thing these days is you can just get an external optical drive which would allow you to expand the Internal storage without giving up access to optical media.
This is hilarious.
I bought one of these for 10 with an SSD, a solid gpu and such stuff in there 😊
I think its cool to use the old PC playing a good old Command & Conquer Remastered.
Nice unit... but I love my GTX960 too much for xp gaming. A must have in my opinion. Still, nice to see what the inside of the dell looks like. Too bad there's not more room for video cards.
GTX 960 is a BEAST in Windows XP 🙂
@@philscomputerlab Yes it is... :D
@@philscomputerlab To me, the ideal xp system has both high performance and is cost effective. As such, a z77x motherboard and i5-3570k are perfect for xp gaming. No need to go haswell either. Just disable 2 cores on the 3570k and overclock to an easy 4.2ghz. Add a GTX960, GTX970 or GTX980 and youre ready to shred any game on max settings. I run mine with a GTX960 and its a joy to experience... 🙂
If you love your 960 then you could go for a mini-tower instead. Look for the MT designation of the product e.g. Optiplex 9020MT.
The worst thing about these SFF computers that work with Windows XP is that I still cannot find any sound cards with a gameport that has low profile capability. However, throwing a Quadro K1200 4GB and then modifying the GTX 750 Ti drivers to be Quadro K1200 drivers and you have a beast in Windows XP!
What do you need game port for? USB joysticks and gamepads. They work since Windows 98.
I am still running a Haswell-EP with 18 Cores on Linux. It still runs modern games just fine with my Vega 64 (if you squeeze every juice out of it with compiling a lot of packages from source).
Another great Video Phil! Question though, how do you deal with Windows XP activation issues? AFAIK you still have to activate online/via phone, do you do that? Or is there a way around?
Look for Volume Licence versions of XP.
That 3.5" bay looks a little jealous. Maybe an update with a multi-card reader?
Got a similar item recently but with a Core i7 and strangely hyperthreading was disabled in the Dell bios so watch for that.
These machines make a great plex server, etc as well. You can get some nice small GPUs that will give you a lot of simultaneous streams. All those tv subscriptions are getting expensive!
Using on of these as a HTPC in my living room.
Looks like martrox is going to release a few intel ARC videocards in low profile configuration soon, would like to test it in them.
Ohhh flatout 2. Haven't heard that name in a long time
I know what I'm doing this weekend 😊
Pretty crazy how
F.E.A.R. still gives that thing a run for its money.