If I include a HDD, I put them in the 5.25" bay under the optical drive. You can get adapters for like $10 or you can just use screws on one side to secure the drive. This was one part of a series, that I did a terrible job of communicating, and I show how I add a HDD in the completed build video. There's a link to it in the description of this video.

While most 1650's are entirely slot powered, there are some that require 6-pin supplemental power as they can consume up to 100 watts. It looks like the MSi Gaming cards do require the 6-pin power, where the Aero and the Ventus do not. However, if you end up with one that does, the 7010's power supply is adequate to power the card using a dual SATA to PCIe power adapter.

It's the factory power supply, which is 290 watts, which is fine with anything up to around 120 watts using the adapter. If you don't trust those, or you need more power, the XE2 power supply will drop right into these systems and are 365 watts. They also have a 6-pin PCIe power connection that can be adapted to 8-pins.

@@TheGameBench i have optiplex 990 mt version, i am thinking of a cx550w M power supply upgrade. Its length is 140mm(5.5 inches). Do you think it will fit. The 990 has 265w stock psu

Any particular reason you're leaning towards the 6500 XT? Also, 4GB or 8GB model?

​@TheGameBench because according to PC bottleneck calculator, the RX 6500 XT has a 0% bottleneck with the i7 4790k, which is the best CPU I could put in my PC

@@leocorfield Well, the first piece of advice I can give you is to never look at those bottleneck calculators. Their information is dubious at best, and is very misleading. They're trying to boil something that's rather complex into a single percentage figure, and it doesn't work. Also, there are videos on KZbin that show how their figures don't make any sense. It's best to just ignore them. As for the 6500 XT, it's not a good idea to pair one with a 4th Gen CPU, and not because of any bottlenecking concerns. The 6500 XT is problematic in a Gen3 slot due to so many corners being cut. It only has four PCIe lanes, a 64-bit bus and 4GB of memory. So, if assets need to be swapped from the video memory to system memory, you end up with stuttery game play. There is an 8GB model now that helps a lot with these issues, but at it's price, you can buy an RX 6600 and not have any of those issues. People try too hard to avoid CPU bottlenecks and they overthink things, which can cause them to look at things like the bottleneck calculators, and buy a GPU that's just not a good idea. As long as the CPU isn't always at 100%, which can cause stuttering as well, you're simply not getting all of the performance of the GPU. Depending on the game and setting, it not avoidable. In highly optimized games, CPU bottlenecks are a norm. With bottlenecks, you just want to avoid spending too much on a GPU that's going to give the same performance as something cheaper, and this is going to matter with what games you play and at what settings. You might have a heavy bottleneck in one game you play, and next to no bottleneck in another with the same GPU. Anyhow, I wouldn't even consider the 6500 XT. It's a bad value and a bad pairing for the 4th gen CPU. Since you're upgrading to the i7, I would suggest the GTX 1070 or 1080 as being very good pairings at 1080p. Though, I think the RX 6600 is the best deal at around $120 on the used market and isn't a terrible pairing with the 4th Gen i7, while costing about the same as the 1080.

The GTX 1070 is pretty much ideal for the 4th Gen i7, though you can get away with a 1080. Zotac has a dual fan 1070, 1070 Ti and 1080 model that will fit without any modifications. There's an MSi Aero and Gigabyte single fan 1070 model. I'm sure there are newer cards, near that performance level that will fit as well and TechPowerUp's GPU database can give you an idea or relative performance, as well as gives you the length of just about every card. You just want to make sure you stay under about 9.5 inches. It's also worth nothing that leaving the drive cage in can make it easy to nick the motherboard with the I/O bracket of the GPU and could result in a dead board, so jut be careful when installing it.

Thank you

Something along the lines of the GTX 1070 is pretty ideal for a 4th Gen i7 at 1080p. You can get away with something around the level of the 1080, but bottlenecking becomes more of an issue in a lot of titles. Going with something on the level of the 1080 Ti is only really useful in some extreme CPU bound scenarios, or going for entry level 1440p.

@@TheGameBench ya thanks. I have one question, I want to replace my cpu for something more powerful for fortnite, but i dont know how to get the right motherboard and cpu for the computer, im thinking of getting a new case, then a new motherboard, then I want to get a new cpu, but i dont know if that will work.

@@user-eq1rb9xk6v If your thinking about a new case and motherboard, you're really just at the point of building a new system, and if that's the case, I wouldn't put any money into the Optiplex and just sell it. If you're considering putting a different board into the Optiplex case, I wouldn't unless you're up for a little bit of a challenge, but it's certainly possible. But if you want something newer than 4th Gen for Fortnite, it's hard to argue with the value of something like a used B450/B550 motherboard and a Ryzen 5 3600, or maybe even the 5600/5600X.

Not much different from the results here. I imagine if I tested the 4770 against these results, they would be within margin of error of the 4790. So, maybe a percent or two difference.

Nope, I've been out of it for a while. I lost all motivation thanks to the PC market being a complete crap show during the last mining boom. I'm trying to put some new stuff together right now, but it's a bit of a slog since a lot of the games I'm testing are new and I have to get to a good place to benchmark.

@@TheGameBench Of course, I understand. I enjoyed your videos more than most. Your style was great, and when you were making videos, I was inspired to buy my first PC ever, an Optiplex 3020. I upgraded the CPU to an i7, below the K variant, but I installed Batocera Linux, so no GPU card. I also upgraded the PSU. Since then, I just picked up my Optiplex 5060, which will likely be for Ubuntu and Windows 11. Macs have become too expensive and closed for my taste. I prefer expandability. Thanks for the videos you made; I’m sure it was a ton of work and money for you. Maybe one day. Cheers, my friend.

Well, for my suggestion of the 7020 or 9020, the i7 4790 is really the best chip that you're going to find in these. You can install something like the i7 4790K in these, but the benefit is dubious, and I have a video on that. There might be some desktop Xeon models that you can install as well that might be a touch faster than the 4790. However, at this point, I'd only suggest getting an system this old if they're super cheap, otherwise I would look to something newer and if you are going to go with the 7020 or 9020, I wound NOT suggest even considering something with an i3 or an i5.

As far as I know, getting digital output from the Yamaha YM2612 chip is impossible since it has an internal DAC. I'm sure adding S/PDIF to the model 1 Genesis is possible, but it would likely be incredibly complex, which I imagine is why we've never seen a mod for it yet. As for the model 2... I'm not sure, but I'm not able to find anything.

Since this system has no dedicated slot for WiFi, any version is compatible with this system. It just needs to be a PCIe x1 interface.

@@TheGameBench I'm using a thumb drive type thing for connection plugged into the USB in the back, could I get a higher WiFi for the board like that or would you use something else?

the processor is 4 core 8 threads and got it for 130 dollars

I'm thinking of rx 6400 or gtx 1650 without power supply change and rx 6600 or rtx 3060 after power supply change. Please tell me about your options which would be better fit in this system.

With the 365 watt unit, you can run pretty much any GPU that only needs a single 8-pin. No need to limit yourself to the RX 6400, which I wouldn't suggest in this system for other reasons, or the 1650... as either of those will run just fine on the 290 watt unit. All you will need is a 6-pin to 8-pin adapter, which is perfectly safe as a PCIe 6-pin connection is rated exactly the same as the 8-pin. The real limiting factor would be your CPU. Generally speaking, something on the level of a GTX 1070 is the ideal pairing with the 1271 v3/4790 at 1080p. Something on the level of the GTX 1080 is also an option, but bottlenecking due to IPC limitations becomes more of an issue, though you can still get a marked improvement over the 1070. If you want to look at a newer card, the RX 6600 is a good option and you can find those for near $120 on the used market. I think the RX 6600 is about the limit of what I would suggest with a 4th Gen i7 level CPU. The RTX 3060 would be fine on the power supply as well, and the 12GB might be appealing, but the GPU costs between $200 and $250. The 4th Gen i7 will be a pretty significant bottleneck, and the 12GB of VRAM isn't very useful useful at 1080p. There are games like The Last of Us or Resident Evil 4 that will benefit from this, but aren't advised for a 4th Gen i7 due to core limitations. If you're planning on playing at 1440p, the 3060 is an option. The only reason to upgrade the power supply is if you wanted to run something older, and more power hungry, like the 980, 980 Ti or 1080 Ti, which you'd just be better off going with the RX 6600 in the end.

First of all I really appreciate you for taking out your time for answering my question. I have a 1080p 165 hz monitor and I play only fortnite in 1080p resolution in performance mode. Furthermore, my usage is only web browsing, watching videos and playing fortnite on weekends. Is it safe to use rx 6600 without psu upgrade which I am getting for 100 dollars in used market. I read some reddit threads, they warned me about spikes in GPUs and could potentially fry the GPU. So is it possible to use rx 6600 without any power supply change. Mine is a dell OEM psu with 80+ gold 365 watts.

It really depends on the GPU you're using. I decided to add a fan because I was flipping these with some RX 480's and they were hitting throttle temp. Adding the fan, the GPU was still getting into the 80's, but they were no longer throttling. However, the fan proved kinda' unnecessary with a 1060 6GB. I still always add a fan when building these, and it's worth noting that I cut the material out in front of the fan now for maximum airflow and reduce noise.

@@TheGameBench that’s my stage 3 if you will. I think with some simple fab tools adding more venting should be possible. This one is for my use, I really don’t play any aaa games and I’d rather build than buy. Nothing wrong with buying just not my first choice.

Sure, but you realize how old this video is right? There were a lot less LP options when I made this. Also, I wouldn't go for an LP option in systems like this because they generally cost more. It's just cheaper to buy a full height model and they're for easier to find because they're made in higher numbers as well. Only deal with LP cards in you're dealing with a SFF system that can't house a full height card.

Unfortunately, I didn't make it clear that this was part of a series of videos, and that's my bad. I answer that in the final build video, but I don't connect it to the board because these Optiplex systems are sooo finicky about fans. Instead, I opt to use a SATA to fan adapter. This will cause the fan to spin at full speed. If the fan is too noisy, I use a resistor cable to slow the fan down.

​@@TheGameBench thanks for the quick reply! yeah i saw that final video, but i still wonder if there was a specific SATA wire that i should connect to? do i just use one from the new power supply? I saw you had 2 wires in a link from Amazon - so I'm going to order them. thanks for any more advice ;-)