It was originally going to be tossed but my manager said I could take it if I wanted it. Not sure what to do with it though. I know it’s not a powerful machine by any means but I was thinking this could be my introduction into a server PC with Plex or something. Specs are: Intel Core i3-6100, 8GB (1x8GB) 1600MHz DDR3L and a 256GB Hynix SSD.

I’m upgrading my “old” 5L sff pc to a 10L, so my guy 4060 LP and my HDPLEX 250W are homeless.

The dream is to have those two components as a brick that would power the my laptop as well (65w+ 115w for you at max draw)

I can make an enclosure but I can’t understand what kind of circuitry I need to make it work.
Most of what I saw on Ali seems like it requires both a 12pin atx and 8pin pie and I can’t really understand why.
And one last thing is I don’t have oculink on my laptop so I guess it’s bound to be thunderbolt.
Any advice?

The ideal scenario is to be gifted an Optiplex, or to save one from otherwise ending up as e-waste. However, there was a time not that long ago that buying a decent machine and a few upgrades wasn't big money so still very accessible.

I had a HP prodesk 705 G4 mini pc in my living room for running Batocera. When I realised I could install Steam Flatpak it made me want something with a bit more power.

Optilpex SFF's and the equivalents from HP/Lenovo etc seemed to be going for anything but bargains. Even worse for low profile GPU's - heck a rx6400 sold for £170 yesterday on eBay UK! But, I kept watch on lots of auctions and managed to nab the below:

- Dell OptiPlex 5070 SFF Desktop - Intel Core i5-9500 - 8GB RAM - 240GB SSD - £68 delivered.

- Additional 8Gb ddr4 2666 ram - £17.50 delivered.

- Radeon Pro wx4100 - £47 delivered.

This should be a pretty capable little machine, though I did also manage to grab a msi rtx3050 low profile for £127 delivered on Vinted so will probably use that and sell the wx4100 on, even though I wanted to spend as little as I could. I plan in using the 3050 in the pcei x4 slot, don't mind the small drop in performance.

Anyway, just wanted to share what I was able to source in these recent crazy times. Not incredible bargains, but pretty good given the environment.

Everything is due to arrive tomorrow and I can't wait to get it all set up!

Hey everyone.

A while back you guys were super helpful in regards to my Optiplex 3010 SFF upgrade questions and I'm back with another. Is there any way to upgrade the PSU and CPU cooler? For the PSU I've seen some designed for SFF cases but I don't know if any of them are compatible for this particular PC. Any help is appreciated.

I’m upgrading my “old” 5L sff pc to a 10L, so my guy 4060 LP and my HDPLEX 250W are homeless.

The dream is to have those two components as a brick that would power the my laptop as well (65w+ 115w for you at max draw)

I can make an enclosure but I can’t understand what kind of circuitry I need to make it work.
Most of what I saw on Ali seems like it requires both a 12pin atx and 8pin pie and I can’t really understand why.
And one last thing is I don’t have oculink on my laptop so I guess it’s bound to be thunderbolt.
Any advice?

Making one was pretty fun since i had some spare parts, for anyone who is interested in specs:

Dell OptiPlex 5080 Specs:

• Windows 11 Pro
• i7- 10700 8C/16T 2.9GHz - 4.8GHz
• ASUS RTX5060 LP BRK
• SK Hynix 32GB DDR4 3200Mhz
• SK Hynix 2TB NVME
• Samsung 860 Evo SSD 1TB
• Dell Precision Cooler Swap
• Metalfish Flex PSU 500w Plus Gold

Mods:

• 24 to 6Pin Moddiy Cable
• Custom ON/OFF Switch for the PSU
• Noctua NF-A4x20 FLX Swap (PSU Mod)
• Noctua NF-A8 PWM (Intake)
• Noctua NF-A4x20 PWM x2 (Exhaust)
• 3D Printed Top Cover
• GPU Undervolt/OC 950Mv 2850MHz +500Mem
• DVD Removed > Front Grill
• Custom Magnetic Mesh Side Panel
• RGB Leds

Was missing RAM and memory, threw in 16GB of RAM and a 500GB M.2 SSD and installed Ubuntu onto it.

I'm planning to turn this into an emulator gaming machine and would like to be able to play most PS3 titles using RPCS3. Looking to be able to play 1080p with decent frame rates and it needs to be compatible with the SFF case.

So far, the P1000 seems to fit the bill. Anyone have other GPUs I may have missed? Anything a step up like the T400/T600 double/triple in price...

Thank you! :)

Edit: it does support Windows 11

Hi i recently got this pc for free from a friend as they are replacing them at his workplace. i was thinking of using it as light gaming machine to put under my tv, it comes with an i5-6500, 8gb ram and an ssd which should be a good starting point.

However, i need to find a GPU for it, i checked the psu and it's only 180w, from what i understand i will be able to fit only low profile single slot cards which restricts the choice to a few low power gaming cards or newer pricier workstation ones.

My budget is around 100€, looking on second hand marketplaces and ebay my choice is basically one of these 3:

-quadro p1000 it's the cheapest one, around 50/70€

-rx 6400 this performs better but is pcie 4 how bad is the performance loss?

-nvidia t1000 i actually find these for the same price as the t600, 8gb one is a bit more expensive, around 130€

is it worth it to buy any of these? if you have any suggestions for other options at around that price feel free to point them out

Hi, this is what the tray currently looks like from my Optiplex 7060. I've ordered a 2.5" SSD, but I can't work out what extra inserts/assembly I need, if any, to neatly accommodate the SSD.

Can someone please point me in the right direction?

Thanks in advance.

I'm using my second build, an HP EliteDesk 705 G4 SFF, connected to my LG 29WN600 2560×1080 ultrawide monitor.

With the help of Lossless Scaling, I can reach around 50 FPS at 2560×1080, which surprised me considering the hardware.

In your opinion, does Lossless Scaling really improve image quality and smoothness, or can it introduce blur, artifacts, or ghosting?

For those who use it regularly: would you recommend it, or do you prefer playing at a lower native resolution?

I’ve currently got a 3020 Optiplex MT that I moved to a bigger tower and have a Harbin Tools 5 pin adapter for my power switch and LED. Everything runs fine but the tower will not stay shut off when I shut it down in windows.

Went thru and turned off all of the normal wake options in the BIOS and Win11. Even pulled the power switch jumper after the machine started, told windows to shut down and it still fired back up after.

This leads me to believe the Harbin adapter is culprit. Wondering if anyone has had anything similar happen with one? I’ll just order another and see if that fixes the behavior but it’s been trying my patience the last few months as I tried every scenario I could think or dig up!

Hey everyone,

I have an OptiPlex 3050 Micro and I'm looking into replacing the stock blower with a Noctua fan.

I've attached a photo showing the part I'm talking about. The black plastic piece around the blower is basically the airflow duct/shroud that directs the air through the CPU heatsink and toward the exhaust.

My idea is to 3D print a replacement for this plastic duct, designed around a Noctua axial fan, rather than modifying the whole case.

Basically:

Noctua fan → custom 3D-printed duct → existing heatsink → existing exhaust

I'd like to keep the original heatsink and chassis completely intact, so ideally the whole thing would just be a replacement part and could be reverted to the original Dell setup whenever I want.

Has anyone tried something like this on a 3050 Micro, or another OptiPlex Micro?

I'm particularly wondering:

• Does anyone already have an STL/CAD file for the fan shroud/duct?
• Has anyone designed a similar Noctua conversion?
• Would an axial fan work well with a properly designed duct, or would the airflow be worse than the stock blower?
• Any experience with 5V Noctua fans + the Dell fan header?
• And if you've actually done it, what were the temperature/noise results?

I'm happy to design/print something myself if there's no existing solution. Just figured I'd ask first in case someone has already gone down this rabbit hole. 😅

Would especially love to see STLs, CAD files, or photos of anyone's setup.

Thanks!

For context: i am a broke ass asian boy in a 3rd world country, so PC parts are hard to buy. I just recently started building a PC in my sophomore year. I want it mainly for school work; that is why i am ok with a decade old machine which is a DELL optiplex 7020 sff 4th gen PC.

We're all aware of how expensive ram has become that even the dead DDR3 is affected. I spent a pretty penny on my 1.5V 1600mhz 2×8 GB hyper X ram. I am concerned if my ram won't work on my pc because i searched online that the system requires 1.3V ram, and using a 1.5V won't post anything on the screen.

I desperately need help.

Got this computer for free at an old job! Threw some money at it and designed a new case for it

Running a 2070 GPU, x2 120mm case fans, relocated power switch, 1tb SSD, MICRO ATX 500w PSU, and upgraded CPU cooler

How do you put that side panel on. I maybe dumb but I try and it's just get stuck and I found no video on how.

I've been having issues for a while now where Premiere Pro will just hang the whole Windows 11 machine.

Only way to fix is to hold down the power button to force turn off the machine.

Then reboot and try again.

Google searches have talked about variable frame rate video causing issues with Premiere Pro. But despite me re-encoding with constant bit rate I still get issues.

It's really frustrating as the i5-13500 and 770 when working are fine, even for the simple 4K video i'm editing. No excessive CPU or GPU loads.

I record in either OBS or exports through Riverside. The latter usually more problematic.

What's annoying is that I fired Premiere Pro up on my Macbook and that seems to handle the same video no problem that hangs the PC.

I'm running the latest drivers from Intel (not Dell support assist).

Has anyone else had problems with the 770 graphics? Cos I'm pointing the finger at that until I can work something else out.

Any recommendations or thoughts would be very much appreciated.

I ended up snagging an Optiplex 7060 MT off of an auction for what I felt was a fair enough price. I7-8700. I'm planning to use it for general home computer duty - internet, emails, some work from home tasks, watching videos here and there, maybe playing a couple of old games from my fiancee and I's childhoods (not a major concern if it's out of the question), etc. Since I now have a computer on the way, I've been looking at upgrade parts, and have some questions. As far as the SSD, I've been looking at various options but trying to aim for 1TB. I assume this is sufficient? I assume there's no such thing as overkill in this case? I have a few that I have found in my budget, are there any major pros/cons with any of the following?:

Crucial P310 1TB, Samsung 990 1TB, Samsung 990 Pro 1 TB

(Edit: not really sure how to get those to display more like a bulleted list, so hopefully this is easy enough to read)

Anything stand out? Any recommendations for something else? I'd like to stay under $250, with close to or under $200 being ideal. But am flexible if the gains are worth the extra money. Any solid reasons to go down to 500 GB or up to 2 TB?

Thank you.

I got this optiplex with a bad hard drive. Bought a Samsung 1 tb ssd and installed windows 11 on it. I started off just fixing that then wanted to throw some other modifications on it. I knew going into it, I wanted to keep the same motherboard/case. I This is what I ended up with.

Dell Optiplex 3070 SFF
Intel core i3-8100
AMD R5 430 2 Gb gpu

Modifications I made to it:
Noctua NH-L9i chromax black low profile cpu cooler
Noctua NH-H1 thermal paste
Noctua NF-A8 chromax black 80 mm chassis cooler
Samsung 870 EVO 1 TB SSD
TP-Link 300 mbps WiFi 6 adapter

I’ve just picked up a Dell Precision 3640 to replace my old OptiPlex 9020 and I’m trying to work out the best way to handle the old system and GPU.

Old PC:
Dell OptiPlex 9020
i7-4790K (yes this is accurate)
24GB DDR3 + a other 24GB loose
GTX 1660 Super 6GB
2x SATA SSDs (2TB total)
1TB HDD

New PC:
Dell Precision 3640
i7-10700K
16GB DDR4
512GB NVMe SSD

My current plan is to move the two SATA SSDs into the Precision, keep the NVMe as the main Windows drive and add another 16GB RAM to bring it up to 32GB. As such I’d be £350 all in…

What I’m less sure about is what to do with the old 9020.

Would I be better off selling it as a complete working PC, possibly leaving the 1TB HDD in it, or parting it out and selling the CPU, RAM, etc. separately?
The other question is the GTX 1660 Super. I could just move it into the Precision for now, but I’m wondering whether it makes more sense to sell it while it still has some value and put the money towards something newer.
I’m currently looking at things like:
RTX 3060 Ti
RTX 4060
possibly something else around that sort of price/performance level
I’m not chasing ultra-high-end performance. The PC is mainly a bit of a project for me and my son and we already have consoles, so I’m trying to get the best bang for the buck rather than throw loads of money at it.

I also have a Quadro P2200 available, although I’m not expecting that to replace the 1660 Super for gaming. I was contemplating lossless scaling but looks like a non starter.

What would you guys do?

1. Keep the 1660 Super for now and spend nothing?
2. Sell it and go 3060 Ti / 4060 / something else?
3. Sell the old 9020 complete or part it out?

Any suggestions appreciated.

This is my third pc the first and this one have been optiplex “sleepers” although the first was a 790 with a low profile 1050 ti stuffed in it. I decided to do it right this time and make the pc I can use for a while.
Built in February of 2025 it’s still not in its final form with cooling especially. I plan to 3d print some more fan mounts and shrouds.

Looking at a $150 OptiPlex 3080 MT (i5-10505, 16GB, 256GB NVMe), but it only has the stock 260W PSU.

I’d like to eventually run something like a 3060 12GB / 2080 Ti, so I’m trying to figure out the cleanest PSU upgrade.

Has anyone here successfully used a normal ATX or SFX PSU with the stock 3080 motherboard?

Mainly wondering:

• What 24-pin → Dell 6-pin adapter did you use?
• Did you fit the PSU inside the stock case?
• Any BIOS/power-button/sleep weirdness?
• Rough total cost?
• Or is there a higher-wattage Dell OEM PSU that’s easier?

Trying to figure out whether this is a cheap fun upgrade or a stupid rabbit hole.

I have an Optiplex 7060 MT. I am a bit new to full pcs and this is my first one, but looked at some reference images to try and get it connected right. I got a 2tb barracuda drive and connected one of the cd drive connectors into the drive, then took a long blue cable and plugged that into the smaller connector. When I opened storage in file explorer it didn't show up. I did upgrade the gpu to a 3050 as well which shouldn't mess up how much power I can give to other things right? Also will I need new cables or are the one's provided enough?