Dell Optiplex 7040 Microtower Review with Arch Linux

[@pedrohqb]

Those tiny pcs are delightful. And even if they get old, you can use them for other stuff, like a media center, an emulation machine, a server. You can use them to make your arcade work. I use myself as a daily driver a Lenovo M93p tiny with a i5 with 4 cores and 12 GB of ram.

[@briansrcadventures1316]

One of those would make a great Home Theatre PC / Streaming box for Netflix, retro emulation etc.

[@edalder2000]

I got a refurb ThinkPad x250 with Win 10 Pro/ i5/ 8GB RAM/256 SSD from Amazon. 300 bucks. I needed a lighter travel laptop and 3.1 lbs of x250 sounded great. It has worked great in the 4 months that I have had it. I literally powered on my machine and installed Linux Mint Cinnamon immediately. I still have the Windows Product Key if I ever need it for any reason *insert snark here*

[@DacLMK]

I also bought a x250 last month from a store that sells refurbished computers (and thinkpads) for around the same price. Mine unfortunately had some problem with the display cable. Whenever I moved the screen while it was on, the whole laptop shut down. Thankfully they fixed it at the store for free and now it works great, but I'm going to replace the crappy TN 1366x768 screen that it came with a 1080p one soon. I also put LM on it and it works great.

[@JohnSmith-tw8wd]

x250 is an awesome laptop to get used. Even cheaper now at about 150 bucks. Got one the other day and loving it, even if they CPU is 6 years old.

[@wackzingo]

Now you can buy the HP EliteDesk 800 G2, i5-6500T, 16G DDR4, 240G SSD for just $100 these days. It came with Windows 10 Pro and Installed Jellyfin and a Minecraft server and it runs them both fine at the same time with no issues. Pretty sweet machines at that price range.

[@TheRealFrankWizza]

Windows licenses stay with the hardware. You can reinstall windows without needing to enter a code, and it will activate automatically. Specifically, due to the digital entitlement activation available from Microsoft servers.

[@canadianswine4696]

Not if you remove the installation. You end up with new UUID's. Say you install another OS.

[@TheRealFrankWizza]

@@canadianswine4696 Having the same tower since 2012, I have gone through several reinstalls, new disks, other operating systems, dual boots, graphics cards, and it activated every time. The only issue I have had was when replacing my motherboard, I needed to call a hotline and do a phone activation. Even my laptop, after a broken linux install, I decided to put in a larger ssd. New disk, post different os... Automatic activation was successful.

[@canadianswine4696]

@@TheRealFrankWizza I think I know what you are saying. You aren't talking about the activation key. No that'll stay registered to the original hardware. But yea you'll still have to lunch in the activation key.

[@canadianswine4696]

@@TheRealFrankWizza But changing hard disks will automatically or changing any hardware will require at least a phone call.Best buy got in legal trouble for using generic activation codes on recovery jobs so the keys had to be updated.

[@canadianswine4696]

@@TheRealFrankWizza It is fundamentally against a technology against UEFI windows made a huge deal of it after windows 7. Your Filesystem will always generate new UUIDS for a clean install. Only on select prebuilts with the recovery built into the BIOS will do this. Acer with some versions of the HYDRA bios comes to mind. How ever after windows 7 if you want to install Linux you have removed the windows recovery tool. Or it will always boot into the recovery.

[@russellbrooks3622]

I did this with a refurbished HP EliteDesk from tigerdirect, on sale for about 130. Has 8 gigs of RAM. Runs Linux distros with Cinnamon desktop very good. It had windows 10 on it, but I erased that garbage real quick.

[@FinalVibes]

The odd power cord you mentioned in the video only affects the micro form factors. The slim form factors or mid towers have an internal PSU, so they use a standard PC power cord.

[@Foche_T._Schitt]

"Refurbished" for some companies is sending out the same defective product without inspecting it. If it gets returned a second time, dispose of it. I got "refurb" motherboards from newegg years ago and before I removed them from the anti static bag I could see the capacitors had ruptured and leaked.

[@peterjansen4826]

I am with you, refurbished is generally quite bad. Where I live you get like 5% discount for 2nd-hands, no thanks, way too risky and way too little! Basically shops shove their problems to us when we buy refurbished stuff.

[@Foche_T._Schitt]

@@peterjansen4826 As long as the RMA's aren't a hassle there's things I'll take a chance on. I did get a pretty nice deal on a tripod and light stands from amazon. If anything was wrong with them it would be more apparent.

[@rlosangeleskings]

I know of one or two places that do refurbs that not only fixed what was wrong but also improved it by removing the Windows virus and replacing it with Linux...

[@mpw621]

the Dell 7010 SFF are a good deal as well. I got a couple of i7 3rd gen for 150.00 off of ebay. they work fine............

[@agenttexx]

I have these at work. I used an old one as a set top TV. Its running Windows 10 Pro, 16GB of RAM, and has a 500GB SSD in the SATA caddy. I want to turn one into an NAS, but haven't settled on a SSD capacity yet. I was leaning towards 8TB, but am waiting to see in the price will come down a bit more. I have a 256 GB NVME to run the NAS software. They are pretty robust machines. The i7 is a 7500T, I believe. Dell will ship the 7050 Micros with 1TB SSD and 32GB of RAM.

[@kencreten7308]

I bought a micro OptiPlex 7050 recently and put Linux Mint on it. It's performing flawlessly and wonderfully.

[@SwitchedtoLinux]

That is close to what I am using for my multipurpose PC. I have the 7040

[@kevinkirkby1484]

Bought 2 gigabyte brix a few years ago second hand with i3s and 8gb ram both where worth the $156 I paid from them, in fact if I sell em they're worth $250 odd now. The kingspec SSD is okay but not the fastest -had it for a year now.

[@macinman]

That's a nice little computer, what was going on with the graphics ? That jitter would drive me crazy. I hope it doesn't do that in normal every day use.

[@C6438911]

I think, but not sure, it is only with capturing a video, somehow the capturing is creating these jitters, but it is not visible to Tom. Only if Tom would review the video before uploading then he would notice the graphical jitters.

[@LEO-xo9cz]

Thanks I just bought one for £140. What WiFi Bluetooth card do I buy. Is it an A Key slot?

[@jsparlin1]

i paid 109.00 last week. buy used dells lots.. only downside is no dvd driver, but good so far.

[@warthunder1969]

I bought a HP elitedesk that is the same size (and generation) but the AMD A6. With 16GB ram and an SSD It still runs pretty good. Instialling Manjaro on it now to see if it runs better than Ubuntu

[@peterjansen4826]

Arch (I prefer to install it myself but I do take a look at other people their scripts to possibly learn) on that OEM, I approve. Too bad that most OEM-computers suck performance/price wise but cool!

[@piratedragon703]

i just got a couple of these, and I am wondering where that small m.2 slot goes? can you put another hard drive there? Im replacing my old docked ThinKpad with a 7040 MFF and it runs very well for its size. performance is a nice upgrade. I just don't know much about m.2 short slot drives... I never had any before, so I don't know what drive to look up for that spot.

[@stumblinzz]

Thanks for the teardown. I wanted to know if it had an m2 ssd slot ~ need something that can run for long periods of time with linux but have a low power draw. This is great.

[@JamesWoodard1222]

FYI. The 2242 M.2 slot is for a WiFi/BT card.

[@Mythologos]

I could really use the keyboard & cable, if they haven't been claimed yet! We're in the same state, too.

[@segaprophet]

I was looking at those AcePCs too, but then I realized I could pay $40-50 more for a Dell Micro 7050 tower with a better CPU in it

[@mlTS7626]

13:14 Glitches noted ! Is that a hardware issue? I also noticed such glitches in my screen recorded videos while using manjaro kde

[@pakistanigamer6525]

I also noticed on Android device

[@anarita-15]

Tom you sir are giving me ideas for my Entertainment Computer for the living room as I was going to buy me a raspberry pie but maybe a small factor desktop tower will be the best choice as it is a bit more powerful so you can do more such as watch You Tube videos other then just streaming humm ideas are now flowing in my head now so I just hope it passes the wife test so I can open the wallet without sleeping in the dog house :)

[@SwitchedtoLinux]

If you setup API keys for Google, a Pi will stream KZbin just fine actually. I have done it before but let the keys expire because i am usually at the computer for YT stuff. LibreElec on Pi4 will do all that.

[@amilalakshan8849]

Recently I had serious update issues with linux mint and pop os switched to arch.

[@drishalballaney6590]

is it just me or when he shows the endeavor part, the screen is flickering a bit? I am pretty sure he is using xf86-video-intel instead of modesetting, which is the recommended one

[@LEO-xo9cz]

Please explain more.

[@linuxbytes6212]

You get the best value with refurbished. runs forever.

[@kevinkirkby1484]

Yip I go with the garbage bit on the acepc, bought one and it's now being used for downloading only.

[@ChadWilliamson]

Might have to go shopping soon!

[@dougdug817]

Good luck, looks like a pretty good deal, If you got that from Amazon Basics be aware of serious defects with electronic items, reports of injuries with defective cables & power supplies catching fire and other similar hazards. Kind of rare but seems to have been more than a few reports of extremely bad merchandise from there. Win 10 is getting very sucky/annoying with bugs AND aggressive promotions. I never wanted or needed "News & Interest' on taskbar but got it from clicking on a SECURITY? update. Sketchy. You're pretty much right in criticizing MS and what Windows has turned into. Your mini looks kind of like my Mac Mini, same size, pretty much does everything necessary for day to day computing.

[@jsparlin1]

mine had a win 11, didn't like and an antenna. ssd was odd, had to add a drive . nice .

[@vikashv1]

Got one of these coming to run Batocera for retro gaming, it should run up to Ps2 well. Fingers crossed.

[@pedrohqb]

I am looking after a Lenovo Tiny with a Ryzen processor... They are out of stock here in Brazil

[@goldensound1]

Thank you very much for this video. Wondering if you could help me with the following; I have a Dell Optiplex 7040( dimension 11x11x4; not the smallest:), Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6500 CPU @ 3.20GHz 3.19 GHz, 16 GB Memory, my question is Could I upgrade to 32 gb of ram?. This may help with the lag I experience on Zoom. Thanks so much for your kind help!!!

[@SwitchedtoLinux]

Off the top I don't know, but if you look up the computer with the service tag you can find the specs on the motherboard which will tell you the max amount of RAM the computer can support.

[@xowishuwereherex]

What company is the keyboard from?

[@kitsunegiblaze8022]

14:32 -- What's all that screen flicker???

[@SwitchedtoLinux]

Bad graphics in this particular computer.

[@pedrohqb]

Tip: you may use your OEM key with virt-manager qemu

[@PIayboyNike]

I Got the 3040 the 7040 the 7050 and 7060 micro

[@malawisupasoldier7478]

Can you tell me if 64gb ram can work on this

[@DavidAlsh]

Can it fit a 3.5" HDD?

[@SwitchedtoLinux]

Nope. Laptop hard drive. It might have an M2 slot, but I can't remember for sure.

[@matthewaufdemberg9823]

May I have the keyboard? Haha

[@SwitchedtoLinux]

Someone already snagged it!

[@matthewaufdemberg9823]

Hahaha 😁 any wired keyboard is a handy tool lying around, loved your review of the optiplex!

[@canadianswine4696]

Aren't you the type who is concerned about security? Why the I5? With all the exploits like Zombielan, Spectre and meltdown(some unpatchable). Intel cheated with preprocessing code and that's how they were winning for years.

[@SwitchedtoLinux]

I prefer AMD, but this was a computer for a specific use case that I could not find an AMD version.

[@kitecattestecke2303]

@@SwitchedtoLinux the AMD Variante of those is pre ryzen so only weak apu... The GPU is weak useless for gaming on both versions... Is dell behind with BIOS updates on these? Most vulnerability might be bios patchable and my experience with HP is that their elite series products get supported very very long

[@keithrichardson1]

Kingfast is bad

[@debeeriz]

l have bought cheap ssds, and the only ssd failure has been the most expensive samsung 860, when l returned it to the retailer he told me samsungs are the most common to fail, but they do sell more of them than the other brands

[@rlosangeleskings]

@@debeeriz I've had nothing but trouble with their entire Black series line... All the other color series worked out fine... I usually go either green or blue and had very good results with them...

[@CommodoreFan64]

Agreed, but because I'm cheap I would still use it till it dies, if he's not doing any critical work with it, for cheap, and reliable SSDs I've been a big fan of ADATA as I've only had one bad OTB 120GB out of over 2 dozen(120GB to 500GB models with 120GB being my most common) I've bought from them over there last few years either for my personal builds, work repair job/upgrades(I work for a small non profit so we have to do things on a tight budget at times), and client builds/repairs I've done on the side. having said that I filled out ADATA's warranty rigamarole on the OTB dead drive, sent the old one back, they got me a new one no problem(a slightly upgraded model of 240GB as they had no 120GB in stock at the time so bonus!!), , and it's been solid for a few years now. Sandisk have given me the most trouble far as SSD go of the ones I've tried, so I avoid them like the plague. Having said that on anything that can take more that one drive on my personal builds I always use the SSD for the OS boot drive, and use cheap spinning rust drives(have had overall good luck with both WD, and Seagate over the years even WD Green a lot of people complain about being junk) of usually 500GB to 4TB depending on my needs for all my other storage, and gaming off spinning rust in Linux really is not that much slower when your main drive is an SSD.

[@tekwova]

okay....are we reviewing the computer or your face...??? I'm seeing less computer and more face...

[@skashax777x]

Dell are a bad compy and have terrible practices and imho they should be boycotted, all the major tech YTers are covering them atm and since I was mis-sold a laptop by them I refuse to purchase anything with dell branding good vid tho and good for reusing something that could of become e-waste

[@peterjansen4826]

Have you seen Steve (Gamers Nexus) his videos about Dell? Yes, it is really bad these days.

[@skashax777x]

@@peterjansen4826 I have, it is brilliant! and I'm sure a few other tech tubers have touched on the poor practices of dell

[@rlosangeleskings]

Watch out for their triple warranty charges and extended McAfee hard sells...not only over the phone...but also on the net...

[@flowmotiongraphics]

@The Handsome Life For IT work I have a Latitude 5400 i7 w 32g ram and have have zero issues abusing it 8 hours a day. For graphics work I have refurb'd or used 5540, 7520, T5600, and a newer precision tower...the precision line is legit for graphics and engineering work is all I gotta say. Can't say I'd buy one new, but I have zero complaints otherwise. EDIT: also got my hands on a 2014 T5610 for my kiddo...added a 2nd xeon and now he has a 64g ram dual xeon gaming machine w a decent card that keeps up w his buddies for pennies on the dollar and is nearing a decade of age.

[@rlosangeleskings]

There's your problem... You own a Dell...

[@DCM777.]

Nope, Dell is one of the best around.

[@Shadoww-lv5bj]

Dell is to be avoided.