Hahahaha, wow, what a throw-back! The nonprofit I help run stopped refurbing and selling/donating these to low income families and schools/nonprofits several years ago because we figured we were doing them a disservice. Thankfully, this is only possible because we have so many generous companies in the area that donate their old equipment to us every few years so we have better equipment to work with, but those old Dell 780 machines (and previous pizza-box models) were always pretty slow. Easy to work on though!
We still have thousands of these at work. They are perfectly fast, its the HDDs that suck. Put a cheap SATA SSD in there and these babies still fly for internet and office tasks.
It's quite impressive really. We have 4 popsicle sticks, one on each corner, each attatched to a string to make them spin. renewable AND energy efficient air travel!
You can find tons of these at our uni's eWaste/trash pile. I salvaged several of these for office use. As mentioned before, thrown in an SSD add a bit more RAM and it is a perfectly good internet machine. I had to go *nix to stay in line with our IT security policy (no XP allowed). Works fine. Gotta keep an eye out on the electrolytic caps and the PSU.
Seing this badboy has two SATA ports (as well as IDE), I'd buy a cheap 120Gb SATA SSD and a GT1030 - and you have got an excellent office pc - even capable of light gaming and streaming.
For some years a Dell 780 was my daily driver at work. Stable and quiet - but man it could have used an SSD at that time.
I still have an old Acer Extensa PC with a Core2Duo E4700, 4 Gigs of RAM, and a Geforce 8600 GS graphics card. That thing still outputs 1080p 60fps .mp4 video with no problem whatsoever. I yanked out the old 120 Gig HDD and used an old 840 EVO 120Gb instead. Boot time in XP 32bit went from 2+ minutes to just 22 seconds. Even though it's only SATA1. That thing rocks old games from the XP era.... :)
I keep my core 2 system around to keep N64 gamesharks alive. It’s a fascinating and complicated method of writing the EEPROM that requires two gamesharks stacked up, with at least one of them working.
Those N64 Gamesharks were notorious for misbehaving lol. But you could do some fun stuff. And I swear Goldeneye was hacked to death by several serious enthusiasts. I used to talk to some of them back in the day. These days, you can supposedly play it online. Just search for Goldeneye Forever.
Sure does. Typing now on a Thinkpad x200 / Agility 3 / 4GB RAM - awesome coding machine with great keyboard.
So far only one PC I saw wasn't supported by Win10 out of the box - an Acer Turion x2 laptop where the iGPU went VGA-mode; even that one worked just fine after manually updating the .ini with one for Vista.
I had very good experience using Winaero Tweaker to slim down Win10 install, specially on old PCs; it's afaik a collection of power shell commands, for those who don't know power shell. It makes the systems snappier. This sort of tinkering isn't as popular nowadays, but if there's demand, would you go for an in-depth analysis?
I've seen similar over the years and realized it isn't worth it as one would be better off with a mobile device (laptop, tablet, phone, Raspberry), being more efficient and/or faster regardless of application, just paying a bit more.
This could be a much faster setup, if you install a Xeon E5440/E5450 (equivalent to q9550/q9650) and a cheap ssd. you can get the xeon for around 10$ and ssd for 15$ or so.
Although for a bit more, you could probably snag a second hand i5, which would be much faster.
dont go for a 8400. get a 9xxx series, they are compatible with the 780, only run $17-20, and have 12 MB of L2 cache (vs 4 MB to 6 MB for 8xxx models). That makes a big diffrence with modern software.
Some motherboard/chipset don't work with s771 xeons (intel motherboards and some oem prebults) Most of the time, you just need to flash a xeon microcode.
Thanks for this article. I do believe, however, that you were ripped off. I recently acquired some Dell i5-6600 machines with 8GB RAM, 256GB SSDs, and Windows 10 licenses from a local IT company for $80 each. What's odd is they wanted the same price for some i5-3570 machines.
The problem with these old/second hand/refurbished PCs from OEMs like Dell, is that the PSU, motherboard and probably other stuff come with proprietary cables and connectors. If they had the standard connectors, they would be fine for typical internet/office usage and they could be upgraded latter.
In any case in a school for a teacher needing to open a word and print it, or a home for someone who needs to open a few emails, it's a good option. A $20 SSD can transform it to a fast enough PC easily. As for media playback, that Core 2 Duo can probably play anything 1080p and even 720p HEVC. Throw in a low end low profile GT 1030 and it can probably play anything.
At that price point, you upgrade by waiting a few years and buying the next $60 offer. On the whole, if what you need is a computer, that's definitely a computer.
(I'd still take an RPi4 instead, but I have a 4K television to plug it into, and a 55" 3840x2160 desktop full of console and PDF-viewer windows is a thing of beauty, makes you feel like you're in Mission Control)
"It even makes it faster than Intel’s best mobile excavator parts"
Bit of a freudian slip there, eh ;)
Also -- DDR3 was pretty rare on Core2 stuff -- most of it used DDR2 -- I bet that helps quite a bit, especially with the graphics stuff. DDR3 also made that generation of stuff a lot easier to overclock as it handled the high FSB's much better with the limited memory dividers available at the time.
Interesting point, actually. The C2D 8500 I ran for years was DDR2. I upgraded RAM, SSDs, video card... etc, and the only reason I *HAD* to build a new computer was the motherboard had a partially fried BIOS, but thanks to a gigabyte dual bios, I was able to limp along.
Then the annoyance of jumping the backup got to me and a new computer happened.
I find the best thing for these older office refurbs is to put Windows XP on them and they are great for retro gaming without jumping through compatibility hoops etc.
I'd just set up a VM. I wanted to play Diablo before it got re-released on GoG, and it wouldn't work on my desktop with a Radeon RX 580. (Diablo worked on my laptop with a Geforce GTX 950M, but I wanted to play on the desktop.) So I set up a virtual machine with VMWare Workstation Pro, with 3D acceleration support and Windows XP virtually installed. Then, Diablo ran like a charm.
(I tried VirtualBox, but its 3D acceleration support is buggy, and Diablo would sometimes crash.)
Very true. Older games are sometimes a huge pain to get working on modern hardware to the point where I've resorted to useingWINE in Linux because despite the tinkering and time, it sometimes is the only way to get something to work on a contemporary PC. However, getting your hands on something like the Optiplex 780 featured in this article and installing the proper version of Windows the game was meant to use in the first place is a better idea. Even moreso if its a cost-effective option due to a reduced selling price.
I used to use Dell Optiplex systems at work, and they were impressive workhorses. They were surprisingly reliable by Dell standards, and would survive for years in the back offices of greasy fast food restaurants without issue.
Dells today are still impressive workhorses for office environments. They might be slow, but they'll keep working.
My new job has HP ProDesk machine. Boy, do they suck. Slow, like to crash, and sometimes don't properly turn on. You have to keep the machine in a place you can easily reach the power cable, as you sometimes need to unplug it and replug it back in to be able to power it on. Garbage.
I replaced my very old Dell some years back with a 3770k and then recently with a new ryzen system. My PCs run 16 hours a day minimum, so the 3770 system had 35000+ hours on the clock, so was time for a new unit. Once systems start to get a lot of hours on them, the chance of a failure starts creeping up, so that's something to be considered, especially if the system is going to be in any sort of even remotely critical application, such as your main work machine, a server etc.
Out of interest, 3 years ago I bought a little Chinese i3 mini PC with 8GB/128GB SSD, the whole thing costing around AU$300, and it has been running 24/7/365 since October 2016, so approaching 28,000 hours of runtime with no issues at all, and that's with a pair of 1TB 2.5" drives crammed into the case (that took some squeezing, with a special low profile right-angle SATA cable).
So, the point is, you have to wonder when it's worth drawing the line on these old systems. Sure, they are cheap, but performance is lacking, the hardware is much more likely to fail soon due to age, and they draw a lot more power (and power costs $). The little machine mentioned above draws less than 20W most of the time, even my new Ryzen (2400GE) draws under 30W for most work. The energy cost savings add up pretty quickly over several years.
We still have 780s, 760s, 755s, and even 320s from 2005 at work. The only ones not worth it are the 320s, which were always junk. The rest keep trucking along, over a decade now, in cabinets with no airflow covered in dust. Still work perfectly.
Cant go wrong with these late C2D optiplex desktops. They are tanks, and if they DO die? Parts are dirt cheap off ebay.
I like to imagine that the person who put this system together reads Anandtech and is currently feeling embarrassed and insulted about the whole RAM thing.
what a great time for CPU market this reminds me of the days when AMD with Hector as CEO were just decimating Intel. and it looks like they are doing it again.... YES
These still work great for a internet browsing machine/office machine. Throw 8GB RAM, a core 2 quad, and a SSD (all available cheap new/off ebay) and these fly with linux or windows 10.
I have one of these, and two HP small desktops of similar vintage at my house doing various dumb tasks like being a DVR for security cameras, or being a simple desktop so that various family members can check their email without breaking out laptops. I bought a batch of Core2Quad Q8400s used off of ebay for less than $20, and had a bunch of old 4GB DDR3 sticks laying around. I've upgraded all of those machines to the following configuration: C2Q 8400 16GB DDR3 120GB SSD for Boot/OS (The DVR machine has a pair of 500GB HD's in a USB enclosure) Low profile Nvidia 630 2GB DDR3 (or equivalent) Windows 10 Pro
Let me tell you, they aren't bad. No, they aren't going to set any speed records, but, they surf the internet just fine. They will play a single youtube stream at HD resolution without dropping frames. There's not much that they can't do if you have even a slight bit of patience.
Interesting that you're getting 16GB of RAM into those systems. I've never had any luck getting any C2D generation boxes to see more than 8GB which is where Intel's ark claims the chipsets max out. In fact, even the somewhat newer Sandy Bridge desktops I've tinkered with were glitchy on 16GB - Optiplex 390 systems if I'm not mistaken.
Q8400's are now down to around £7 ($9) a pop in the UK on Ebay. I bought three last week as I still get SKT775 machines in to work on. A nice cheap boost for a old box.
Q9550 runs at 2.83 GHz (compared to 2.67 for the 8400) and has 12MB of cache (vs 4MB for the 8400) for only $17 on ebay. If I were to put money into an old system, that extra $10 would be well worth it.
My dad is still using one of those dell machines with a Q6600, 8GB ram. I put in a 240GB SSD and an extra 1050 video card I had in it. Runs everything fast along with 4K videos.
So true. I used an old Optiplex GX620 desktop with a 1TB hard drive (back when such capacities in 2.5 inch SATA were massive and fairly new) as a local backup repositry for office systems as they were getting upgraded from XP & Vista to Windows 7. We had access to about the same amount of capacity on one of the company's file servers, but pushing uand pulling ser files across the network was a lot slower than yanking a PC's drive out and plugging into one of the GX620's SATA ports before and after a fresh OS image was deployed.
Wow, that's a throwback. Built an E6300 rig in 2006. That E6500 will clock up to 4Ghz though I doubt a Dell VRM will survive it long. My father still uses that E6300 rig clocked around 3.2Ghz for his email and web browsing, but I used to run a 100% overclock at 3.8 stable with 24/7 voltages. Limited only by the FSB.
These are not worthy purchases. Another 30-40 USD should be sufficient to give you an i5 based on Sandy Bridge, i.e. the oh so common i5-2400 or similar. These will be much faster, will still work fairly well for all games (giving 30 FPS or better) and will consume less electricity. Even Haswell tend to get fairly cheap these days, offering both cheap DDR3 and low power consumption.
Well, what about using the Windows 10 license that comes with it on another computer (perhaps with a call to MS)? I'm guessing that's not possible but I didn't see anything on that.
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CaedenV - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
Hahahaha, wow, what a throw-back!The nonprofit I help run stopped refurbing and selling/donating these to low income families and schools/nonprofits several years ago because we figured we were doing them a disservice.
Thankfully, this is only possible because we have so many generous companies in the area that donate their old equipment to us every few years so we have better equipment to work with, but those old Dell 780 machines (and previous pizza-box models) were always pretty slow. Easy to work on though!
TheinsanegamerN - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
We still have thousands of these at work. They are perfectly fast, its the HDDs that suck. Put a cheap SATA SSD in there and these babies still fly for internet and office tasks.krumme - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
I would like how to see your guys air transport systemTheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - link
It's quite impressive really. We have 4 popsicle sticks, one on each corner, each attatched to a string to make them spin. renewable AND energy efficient air travel!YB1064 - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
You can find tons of these at our uni's eWaste/trash pile. I salvaged several of these for office use. As mentioned before, thrown in an SSD add a bit more RAM and it is a perfectly good internet machine. I had to go *nix to stay in line with our IT security policy (no XP allowed). Works fine. Gotta keep an eye out on the electrolytic caps and the PSU.StormyParis - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
Ecosystems aside, how does the HW compare to a similarly-priced Raspberry PI 4hojnikb - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
It's much faster. Higher clock and higher IPC well makes up for the fact it only has 2 cores.lmcd - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
A72 cores might be closer in IPC than you'd think, but the higher clock would make quite a difference.t.s - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
I'll get RPI4 over these optiplex anytime. Or Odroid XU4/N2TheinsanegamerN - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
Core 2 quads, late model ones, are dirt cheap on ebay, and slot right into a 780.Aditya Khurana - Tuesday, April 7, 2020 - link
Considering the fact that it uses only two cores, it does perform faster no doubt.Evil Mushroom - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
Seing this badboy has two SATA ports (as well as IDE), I'd buy a cheap 120Gb SATA SSD and a GT1030 - and you have got an excellent office pc - even capable of light gaming and streaming.For some years a Dell 780 was my daily driver at work. Stable and quiet - but man it could have used an SSD at that time.
I still have an old Acer Extensa PC with a Core2Duo E4700, 4 Gigs of RAM, and a Geforce 8600 GS graphics card. That thing still outputs 1080p 60fps .mp4 video with no problem whatsoever. I yanked out the old 120 Gig HDD and used an old 840 EVO 120Gb instead. Boot time in XP 32bit went from 2+ minutes to just 22 seconds. Even though it's only SATA1. That thing rocks old games from the XP era.... :)
willis936 - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
What makes it a real treasure is the native parallel port.Ian Cutress - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
Does Windows 10 still support those?? 🤔nathanddrews - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
Yes! I have an N64 memory card reader from 1998 that I use to transfer game saves from my hardware to emulator and back.willis936 - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
I keep my core 2 system around to keep N64 gamesharks alive. It’s a fascinating and complicated method of writing the EEPROM that requires two gamesharks stacked up, with at least one of them working.Thunder 57 - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
Those N64 Gamesharks were notorious for misbehaving lol. But you could do some fun stuff. And I swear Goldeneye was hacked to death by several serious enthusiasts. I used to talk to some of them back in the day. These days, you can supposedly play it online. Just search for Goldeneye Forever.dragosmp - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
Sure does. Typing now on a Thinkpad x200 / Agility 3 / 4GB RAM - awesome coding machine with great keyboard.So far only one PC I saw wasn't supported by Win10 out of the box - an Acer Turion x2 laptop where the iGPU went VGA-mode; even that one worked just fine after manually updating the .ini with one for Vista.
I had very good experience using Winaero Tweaker to slim down Win10 install, specially on old PCs; it's afaik a collection of power shell commands, for those who don't know power shell. It makes the systems snappier. This sort of tinkering isn't as popular nowadays, but if there's demand, would you go for an in-depth analysis?
zodiacfml - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
I've seen similar over the years and realized it isn't worth it as one would be better off with a mobile device (laptop, tablet, phone, Raspberry), being more efficient and/or faster regardless of application, just paying a bit more.hojnikb - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
This could be a much faster setup, if you install a Xeon E5440/E5450 (equivalent to q9550/q9650) and a cheap ssd. you can get the xeon for around 10$ and ssd for 15$ or so.Although for a bit more, you could probably snag a second hand i5, which would be much faster.
plewis00 - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
The Xeon might work with the pin trick but how are you going to fit an i5?jabber - Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - link
I have a mass of SKT771 Xeons and bought some pin change stickers. Never ever got one to work.I even stopped doing the motherboard socket cutting and filed the cutouts into the CPU. Nope
Just get the C2Q. Q8400 are $9 a go in the UK on Ebay.
TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - link
dont go for a 8400. get a 9xxx series, they are compatible with the 780, only run $17-20, and have 12 MB of L2 cache (vs 4 MB to 6 MB for 8xxx models). That makes a big diffrence with modern software.jabber - Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - link
The 8400 is fine. Customers don't care.hojnikb - Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - link
Some motherboard/chipset don't work with s771 xeons (intel motherboards and some oem prebults)Most of the time, you just need to flash a xeon microcode.
hojnikb - Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - link
You're not. What i meant is, if you're in a market for a used desktop, you might as well spring a bit more and get something with i5.nathanddrews - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
Thanks for this article. I do believe, however, that you were ripped off. I recently acquired some Dell i5-6600 machines with 8GB RAM, 256GB SSDs, and Windows 10 licenses from a local IT company for $80 each. What's odd is they wanted the same price for some i5-3570 machines.plewis00 - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
They weren’t ripped off. You just got a very good deal. You could strip the machines you bought for $80 and make good money.yetanotherhuman - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
That's an insane deal. Wow.ahtoh - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
Memory slots are colored for a reason.tipoo - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
But the taste, Ian, how does it TASTE?twotwotwo - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
THANK you, it's time *somebody* asked the important questions here.Ian Cutress - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
https://twitter.com/IanCutress/status/120113146702...PeachNCream - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
That is the best thing I've seen in months! Thank you!Holliday75 - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
LOLZ nice.1_rick - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
Undoubtedly better than a Pokemon Let's Go cartridge.yannigr2 - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
The problem with these old/second hand/refurbished PCs from OEMs like Dell, is that the PSU, motherboard and probably other stuff come with proprietary cables and connectors. If they had the standard connectors, they would be fine for typical internet/office usage and they could be upgraded latter.In any case in a school for a teacher needing to open a word and print it, or a home for someone who needs to open a few emails, it's a good option. A $20 SSD can transform it to a fast enough PC easily. As for media playback, that Core 2 Duo can probably play anything 1080p and even 720p HEVC. Throw in a low end low profile GT 1030 and it can probably play anything.
TomWomack - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
At that price point, you upgrade by waiting a few years and buying the next $60 offer. On the whole, if what you need is a computer, that's definitely a computer.(I'd still take an RPi4 instead, but I have a 4K television to plug it into, and a 55" 3840x2160 desktop full of console and PDF-viewer windows is a thing of beauty, makes you feel like you're in Mission Control)
ken.c - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
I use one of those as a footrest in my office!extide - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
"It even makes it faster than Intel’s best mobile excavator parts"Bit of a freudian slip there, eh ;)
Also -- DDR3 was pretty rare on Core2 stuff -- most of it used DDR2 -- I bet that helps quite a bit, especially with the graphics stuff. DDR3 also made that generation of stuff a lot easier to overclock as it handled the high FSB's much better with the limited memory dividers available at the time.
e1jones - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
Interesting point, actually. The C2D 8500 I ran for years was DDR2. I upgraded RAM, SSDs, video card... etc, and the only reason I *HAD* to build a new computer was the motherboard had a partially fried BIOS, but thanks to a gigabyte dual bios, I was able to limp along.Then the annoyance of jumping the backup got to me and a new computer happened.
imaheadcase - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
Ian trying his best linus thumbnail picture i see. lolDeathReborn - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
I find the best thing for these older office refurbs is to put Windows XP on them and they are great for retro gaming without jumping through compatibility hoops etc.Mikewind Dale - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
I'd just set up a VM. I wanted to play Diablo before it got re-released on GoG, and it wouldn't work on my desktop with a Radeon RX 580. (Diablo worked on my laptop with a Geforce GTX 950M, but I wanted to play on the desktop.) So I set up a virtual machine with VMWare Workstation Pro, with 3D acceleration support and Windows XP virtually installed. Then, Diablo ran like a charm.(I tried VirtualBox, but its 3D acceleration support is buggy, and Diablo would sometimes crash.)
PeachNCream - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
Very true. Older games are sometimes a huge pain to get working on modern hardware to the point where I've resorted to useingWINE in Linux because despite the tinkering and time, it sometimes is the only way to get something to work on a contemporary PC. However, getting your hands on something like the Optiplex 780 featured in this article and installing the proper version of Windows the game was meant to use in the first place is a better idea. Even moreso if its a cost-effective option due to a reduced selling price.ultimatebob - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
I used to use Dell Optiplex systems at work, and they were impressive workhorses. They were surprisingly reliable by Dell standards, and would survive for years in the back offices of greasy fast food restaurants without issue.khanikun - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
Dells today are still impressive workhorses for office environments. They might be slow, but they'll keep working.My new job has HP ProDesk machine. Boy, do they suck. Slow, like to crash, and sometimes don't properly turn on. You have to keep the machine in a place you can easily reach the power cable, as you sometimes need to unplug it and replug it back in to be able to power it on. Garbage.
Alien88 - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
I replaced my very old Dell some years back with a 3770k and then recently with a new ryzen system. My PCs run 16 hours a day minimum, so the 3770 system had 35000+ hours on the clock, so was time for a new unit. Once systems start to get a lot of hours on them, the chance of a failure starts creeping up, so that's something to be considered, especially if the system is going to be in any sort of even remotely critical application, such as your main work machine, a server etc.Out of interest, 3 years ago I bought a little Chinese i3 mini PC with 8GB/128GB SSD, the whole thing costing around AU$300, and it has been running 24/7/365 since October 2016, so approaching 28,000 hours of runtime with no issues at all, and that's with a pair of 1TB 2.5" drives crammed into the case (that took some squeezing, with a special low profile right-angle SATA cable).
So, the point is, you have to wonder when it's worth drawing the line on these old systems. Sure, they are cheap, but performance is lacking, the hardware is much more likely to fail soon due to age, and they draw a lot more power (and power costs $). The little machine mentioned above draws less than 20W most of the time, even my new Ryzen (2400GE) draws under 30W for most work. The energy cost savings add up pretty quickly over several years.
TheinsanegamerN - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
We still have 780s, 760s, 755s, and even 320s from 2005 at work. The only ones not worth it are the 320s, which were always junk. The rest keep trucking along, over a decade now, in cabinets with no airflow covered in dust. Still work perfectly.Cant go wrong with these late C2D optiplex desktops. They are tanks, and if they DO die? Parts are dirt cheap off ebay.
TheITS - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
I like to imagine that the person who put this system together reads Anandtech and is currently feeling embarrassed and insulted about the whole RAM thing.mrvco - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
Clearly this box needs to be water cooled and overclocked.adlep - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
add a 240GB SSD from Microcenter for $25.00 and it will be still a great office PC.Jorgp2 - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
Why not compare it to a modern atom.Pretty sure those smoke even a Q9650
Ian Cutress - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
Don't have one.I had an afternoon to test before flying off to my next industry event.nunya112 - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
what a great time for CPU marketthis reminds me of the days when AMD with Hector as CEO were just decimating Intel. and it looks like they are doing it again.... YES
nunya112 - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
I mean high end, mid end and low end. just flogging Intel, and cheaper and more stock etc. Thank you AMDIan Cutress - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
What? You do realise what this article is about, right?shabby - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
Can i post now?shabby - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
For some reason my messages before were labelled as spam no matter what it said, strange.TheinsanegamerN - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
These still work great for a internet browsing machine/office machine. Throw 8GB RAM, a core 2 quad, and a SSD (all available cheap new/off ebay) and these fly with linux or windows 10.jabber - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
Currently doing a earlier Optiplex 755 right now. Just slapped 6GB of DDR2 800 in, a Q8400 and a 120GB SSD with Windows 10.Works fine.
lightningz71 - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
I have one of these, and two HP small desktops of similar vintage at my house doing various dumb tasks like being a DVR for security cameras, or being a simple desktop so that various family members can check their email without breaking out laptops. I bought a batch of Core2Quad Q8400s used off of ebay for less than $20, and had a bunch of old 4GB DDR3 sticks laying around. I've upgraded all of those machines to the following configuration:C2Q 8400
16GB DDR3
120GB SSD for Boot/OS (The DVR machine has a pair of 500GB HD's in a USB enclosure)
Low profile Nvidia 630 2GB DDR3 (or equivalent)
Windows 10 Pro
Let me tell you, they aren't bad. No, they aren't going to set any speed records, but, they surf the internet just fine. They will play a single youtube stream at HD resolution without dropping frames. There's not much that they can't do if you have even a slight bit of patience.
PeachNCream - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
Interesting that you're getting 16GB of RAM into those systems. I've never had any luck getting any C2D generation boxes to see more than 8GB which is where Intel's ark claims the chipsets max out. In fact, even the somewhat newer Sandy Bridge desktops I've tinkered with were glitchy on 16GB - Optiplex 390 systems if I'm not mistaken.extide - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
You can probably do it on a DDR3 Core2 platform but not DDR2.jabber - Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - link
Q8400's are now down to around £7 ($9) a pop in the UK on Ebay. I bought three last week as I still get SKT775 machines in to work on. A nice cheap boost for a old box.TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - link
Q9550 runs at 2.83 GHz (compared to 2.67 for the 8400) and has 12MB of cache (vs 4MB for the 8400) for only $17 on ebay. If I were to put money into an old system, that extra $10 would be well worth it.jabber - Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - link
Yes you said. But I'm not spending the extra for a customer who doesn't care and owns $50 worth of PC.TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - link
I'm syaing it for everyone else here that may not be aware that there is a better model for not that much more cache avilable.alpha754293 - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
I'd actually be curious how much power it actually drew when running Cinebench.Right now, I am using an Intel NUC as a license server, so this would definitely be a much cheaper alternative.
Shlong - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
My dad is still using one of those dell machines with a Q6600, 8GB ram. I put in a 240GB SSD and an extra 1050 video card I had in it. Runs everything fast along with 4K videos.catavalon21 - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
"The integrated power supply is a Dell unit rated for 235 W, which is easily sufficient for this system although there’s no telling how old it is..."Using a typical Dell date coding scheme, it would likely be May 2010.
khanikun - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
I would love to see like a power usage comparison of this old machine and some cheap machine with today's technology.0ldman79 - Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - link
Honestly, for anyone doing data recovery at an IT shop these things are ideal.Cheap as hell, IDE and SATA, plug the clients hard drive in and run your recovery software. Buy several if you're busy enough.
That's what I was using most of my old hardware for.
PeachNCream - Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - link
So true. I used an old Optiplex GX620 desktop with a 1TB hard drive (back when such capacities in 2.5 inch SATA were massive and fairly new) as a local backup repositry for office systems as they were getting upgraded from XP & Vista to Windows 7. We had access to about the same amount of capacity on one of the company's file servers, but pushing uand pulling ser files across the network was a lot slower than yanking a PC's drive out and plugging into one of the GX620's SATA ports before and after a fresh OS image was deployed.Kougar - Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - link
Wow, that's a throwback. Built an E6300 rig in 2006. That E6500 will clock up to 4Ghz though I doubt a Dell VRM will survive it long. My father still uses that E6300 rig clocked around 3.2Ghz for his email and web browsing, but I used to run a 100% overclock at 3.8 stable with 24/7 voltages. Limited only by the FSB.Calista - Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - link
These are not worthy purchases. Another 30-40 USD should be sufficient to give you an i5 based on Sandy Bridge, i.e. the oh so common i5-2400 or similar. These will be much faster, will still work fairly well for all games (giving 30 FPS or better) and will consume less electricity. Even Haswell tend to get fairly cheap these days, offering both cheap DDR3 and low power consumption.TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - link
If $0.30 in electricity is such a big deal, you probably shouldnt be spending $80 on a computer anyway.mikato - Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - link
Well, what about using the Windows 10 license that comes with it on another computer (perhaps with a call to MS)? I'm guessing that's not possible but I didn't see anything on that.peevee - Friday, December 6, 2019 - link
The price of this PC is much less than the cost of Windows 10 Pro coming with it...peevee - Friday, December 6, 2019 - link
"So perhaps surprisingly, moving to dual channel in CB R15 gave us some ST performance, but not any more MT performance."I bet you've just switched the results by mistake.
peevee - Friday, December 6, 2019 - link
OTOH MT numbers are higher... are they comparable to ST numbers at all?This is very puzzling behavior...
Wolfpup - Tuesday, December 17, 2019 - link
This is neat, but I'd be more interested in what a NEW rock bottom Windows PC gets you, since the prices and config are more stable.That's a riot this comes with Windows 10 Pro though! That's worth more than the hardware lol
Siress - Tuesday, December 17, 2019 - link
If only I had gone to bed at a reasonable hour, I wouldn't have seen an air brushed photo of Ian Cutress.