OptiPlex gets Second Life for Backlog of Games

[@RamonHernandez]

"I don't need virtual challenges in my life..." Truer words have not been spoken.

[@ChrisFredriksson]

Weekend starts when Phil releases his video for the week ❤

[@TheGameBench]

There are Dell options that are drop in that have more power and PCIe power, like the XE3 SFF (300 watt) and the XE3 MT (360 watt) power supplies.

[@zoomosis]

There's also the OptiPlex 7060 which from what I understand is identical to the 5060 but also has a PCI slot on the system board and serial port & PS/2 ports on the rear.

[@blairlohnes8103]

I just picked up an old HP elite SFF PC for $80 with a Ryzen 2400G, and 16GB or RAM. I put a 2TB Nvme, and a 1TB of SATA SSD. Loaded windows and archos on the nvme, and batocera on the sata. It's a pretty great computer for traveling. It's like a small custom home console.

[@ronm6585]

Thanks Phil.

[@Dukefazon]

I got a DELL Optiplex 330 (the slimmer version). It was thrown out, it was standing next to the trash containers in front on my place. I picked it up, wiped it down and it didn't turn on at first. It was giving all kinds of weird beeps, but not a normal beep error code. One day I was talking with my colleague and mentioned the machine and though I should take out the RAM sticks and try one at a time, maybe it's a RAM error. Turns out, both RAM sticks work fine, but when I switch them up, the machine works without any issues. I put in a hard drive and since it had2 PCI slots and one PCIe x16 slot I got a small for mactor Nvidia video card for it. Now it's running Unreal Tournament 2k4 like a dream! Last december I played through You Are Empty and Sin Episodes: Emergence on it. It's such a capable machine despite being a regular office desktop computer - with the right video card it instantly became a WinXP era gaming PC! I her "Adel", since... it's "a DELL" :D

[@peterharband326]

Thanks Phil for saving it from the landfill.

[@PaulMetalhero]

Great selection of games!

[@Digibot88]

Thank youuu 🎉🎉 and happy new year Phil !

[@ricardobarros1090]

And God bless you Phil !👍🏼👋🏼

[@philscomputerlab]

Thank you 🙏

[@detalite]

Recently I came across an HP Workstation Z230 MT with a 400W power supply, i7-4790 CPU and 32GB RAM for about $100. The power supply has a 6-pin plug for the graphics card.

[@peterilling1627]

Awesome video Phil keep up the great work.cheers from Turkey mate

[@csh9853]

Say"GET TO THE CHOPPA" 😂😂😂

[@babbaloerie]

Dishonored is amazing. I love the freedom it gives you. Don't want to kill anyone? That's fine. Want to play stealthy instead of guns blazing? Also fine. I play through it yearly and still find new paths to take or ways of doing things. For example, there is this character who speaks propaganda throughout the city's loudspeakers, and at some point you encounter him in the game. If you kill him, then in the rest of the game that voice will be replaced by a woman who is voiced by Carrie Fisher.

[@scotthaggard]

Another thing about Intel 8th gen, last time I checked, that's where Windows 11 support starts. There are ways around this minimum CPU spec, but still good thing to know.

[@Txm_Dxr_Bxss]

That's probably why they are more expensive than 6th and 7th gen.

[@ShrineOfLife]

phil, I did modd my dell oem machine with a water cooled gtx 1060 - with one sata to 6 pin adapter and it works flawlessly! the cpu is old, but its a nice fit non the less, i7 3770k - its just perfect combo for the psu it came with, which is also rated 80+ heavily modded, awesome little computer! scythe katana cools the cpu. its such fun, all cramped in that little case :D

[@GalileudoLinux]

Cool, this video ! Thanks !

[@peterwstacey]

Some excellent games there Phil! My personal favourite is Dishonored, but all of these are top-draw :)

[@Warbob11]

A $80 Alienware is my recently acquired windows GOG & physical disc gaming pc since it has i7-8700 & GTX 1070. Also it is a backup computer incase my main system goes down, a kit of RAM I picked up last year for free at a E-Waste place the kit is 32GB of RAM 2666mhz DDR4 so I have one upgrade for that system.

[@captainwasel8377]

That is an amazing selection of games but i am more used to seeing Phil check out some much older games on a Pentium computer 😛 Keep up the great work 😁

[@infinity2z3r07]

I don't know how modern games continue to be made and sold at regular price. There is so much competition from the backlog

[@RetroPcCupboard]

Some excellent games there. I too am building a PC to put my GOG backlog on. I will dual boot between XP and Windows 7. I plan to keep it off the internet so windows updates can't mess with my system and to keep it safe from viruses. I am hoping that none of the GOG installers require Windows 10. I've found that quite a lot of their library doesn't work on XP, as many have dependencies from newer OSes. No doubt they will stop support for Windows 7 and Windows 10 over time. That's the beauty of being able to get offline installers and keep them. My system will have GTX 980 Ti and i7 3770k. Hopefully should be good for 2001-2015 gaming.

[@danton2949]

Hi Phil. Happy new year.

[@ricardobarros1090]

And God bless you Phil !

[@tagesvaterpatrick8780]

Nice one. There is a nearly perfect graphics card for those older systems with power limitations: the PALIT StormX GTX 1050 ti with 4GB of VRam. It has no additonal power connections so it runs around 65 W. 😊

[@retroboby007]

Cool video, man. I love the dell optiplex too. I have Optiplex GX1, GX100 and 755. Solid machines good for retrogaming. But the powersource is very weak, not much power left to add more powerfull video cards.

[@DimasFajar-ns4vb]

wow and peace be upon you sir from me

[@drPeidos]

I have an OptiPlex 3060 with the i7 8700 for work since it came out and I'm extremely happy with it. The only problem is the case is smaller, so it doesn't take normal size GPUs, I have to rely on the CPU's integrated GPU :( But I can take it between work and home due to it's size easily.

[@freesiu]

really good CPU and nice machine. are you planning to game on it?

[@abunk8691]

Do you mean the Micro version of the Optiplex 3060? The one that uses laptop style SODIMM DDR4 ram? I got one of those myself with the i5 8500T. Plenty happy with the CPU performance, but integrated graphics is a bit lacking.

[@drPeidos]

@freesiu It's from work, so I've never tried gaming much there. Just Doom and Minecraft. Linux Mint and Windows 1x. It's very silent (except when the stupid anti-virus my company choose starts running), even when compiling code and running servers.

[@drPeidos]

@abunk8691 No, it's not mini nor micro. It's about half the thickness of a tower and two thirds the height of one. It uses a laptop DVD drive and only has the CPU fan and two normal DDR4 RAM slots. For storage, it has space for a 3.5'' drive and it has an M2 SSD, nothing more. It also fits two half height PCIe cards, but mine doesn't have any installed.

[@r4z4m4t4z]

nice case for opening it up. great selection, the near cream of the crop of third party playstation games.

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

Dude your getting a repurposed Dell!

[@fatrabbit007]

I remember my Pentium 4 dude sold me

[@TestOverload]

I just "upgraded" to an Optiplex 5060 i7 SFF, coming from a gen4 CPU. Thanks for the review. I am thinking of re-pasting, adding more ram and maybe getting a low profile Radeon RX 6400 (50W) to keep the stock PSU.

[@DeViLzzz2006]

I still haven't done a project with one of these prebuilts. I would like to get one on the cheap and load it up with OSes and games and give it to one of my nieces, my brother, or my son. I would not want to leave the case looking as it originally looks. Got to figure out what I would want to do with it and whether or not I'd be capable of doing what I'd want to do.

[@neopolaris]

Look into the Lenovo P520.

[@DeViLzzz2006]

@@neopolaris that definitely looks better than the options I have always seen for these sort of PCs. Thanks for the information.

[@Raptor3388]

Time to upgrade...that's a bit newer than my main rig.

[@vardekpetrovic9716]

the fastest machine i personally have managed to run XP x64 on is the dual Xeon E5-2697 v2 (48 threads at 3.5ghz) and 256gb ram. But the 8x Xeon E7-8895 v2 (120 cores/240 threads) should be the maximum in that series.

[@FiveFiveZeroTwo]

Two rather than four memory slots and/or only one PCIe slot might not be any issue in practice.

[@HoldandModify]

I also like that modern adventure action games are finally offering separate settings for combat and puzzle difficulty. Much like you, I often play games on easy to avoid stress and time. I might have 30-min to an hour for some gaming. These newer games allow for fun flexibility to enjoy the story the game offers without overbearing gameplay. I know. That sounds very "boomer." It's a game! Play the game! Well...here we are. ;)

[@philscomputerlab]

I couldn't agree more, it's nice to enjoy the story without stress!

[@kafarske123]

Im using a hp sff something something as a dos box machine, i do prefer playing on original hardware, but some times, the hassle is Just to much, Even for me, Who grew up whit it 😂 So its Nice to have a backup. Its a 4th gen i5, and it has a propper vga output, so i can play it on my crt. Its always hooked ip to my kvm switch, so its Just a matter of turning it on, and switch omg. And im stil using all the same periferals 😊😊 Good video, as always. Keep it up ❤️

[@retrokvlt]

I've got a stack of 2nd/3rd Gen Intel Dell's that have been perfect for WinXP. With SDIO installer, they are super easy to get up and running. I had one running GTX 950 2GB GPU, destroying all the games I wanted to play, up to 1600x1200. \m/

[@RetroTinkerer]

Nice idea! I wonder how much time it will pass until Steam deprecate Windows 10.

[@Agoz8375]

I use a HP Elite it's also awesome 😊

[@fierelier7691]

the bad part about some of these dells (as well as other OEM machines), including this one, is that the PSU is proprietary. so should it break, it won't easily be replaceable, unless you get an adapter kit.

[@necuz]

RIP OptiPlex branding, you were so very googlable.

[@piecaruso97]

tbh those modernish systems with m.2 are good candidates for a linux build

[@Super123456789Kuba]

Optiplex 5060 thanks to new NVIDIA's RTX 5xxx series is starting to sound weird... Now we'll need to differentiate the Optiplex 5060 from GeForce RTX 5060 now. 😅 18:02 I also play most games on Easy if available... I can get into some Game Challenges (E.g. NFS MW 2005 is so weirdly designed, that the beginning of the game is more challenging than the second half of it.) but certainly but I don't seek those "Veteran" CoD-Like Difficulties. I like that list of games you've tested from each year. Makes me wonder I could try some of them, since never the chance to play Dishonored or Oblivion or whatnot. And in terms of OEMs... As much I'd like to own at least one of them... Their PSU is a bit limiting, if I wanted to get any 4 GB VRAM Card... Instead of looking for those specific ones. Tho I kinda want to build myself like 8Gen Budget Ultimate Windows 7 PC or something like that... Because for me... 6Gen or 7Gen kinda aged like a milk... So having 8Gen for me is a minimum for anything to do. Since something like Minecraft (Despite being a older title... And nothing else came to my mind in terms of CPU Taxing... Excluding awful PC Ports.) is really taxing for CPU, so having that extra power would be a benefit as well.

[@filipetmarcal]

Amazing

[@kendrickdiego6654]

Have you seen Windows XP Integral Edition? It's amazing, runs buttery smooth on an old 478 1.7Ghz Pentium 4 with 1 gb of ram (a bit too much maybe) and a 128mb Nvidia FX5600 and a SATA II drive

[@philscomputerlab]

I haven't heard of this one!

[@kadircelikYT]

​@@philscomputerlab WinXp integral edition work with modern systems thanks to integrated usb 3.0 and ahci controller/sata drivers. it is indeed works like a magic

[@ENB2002]

I've always liked OEM machines like this too, since they're what I service at work they just feel more familiar to me. Plus, these are easier to service than even PCs you can build yourself. The only difference is that I usually like buying the Dell Precision workstations, because they usually have bigger power supplies that can handle high power graphics cards for gaming. What resolution were you running these games at? Also, if you're looking for a backlog gaming PC, you're going to be seeing A LOT of 6th and 7th gen based PCs on the secondhand market because businesses are going to be getting rid of these since they don't meet the official processor requirements to run Windows 11. If you're looking for a backlog gaming PC that you're going to keep isolated from the internet and keep running Windows 10 to play games, then I would say get a 6th or 7th gen PC, especially if it has a power supply big enough to power a dedicated graphics card with PCIE power connectors. Otherwise, if you're looking for something you can daily drive, then I would say stick with 8th gen or higher since you can run Windows 11 officially.

[@middle_pickup]

I've been using an optiplex 790 as my home server for the last 10 years, and I'm replacing it this week with a new AM4 build. Thinking about using the old Dell as a new XP gaming system. What GPU should I use for it?

[@ShrineOfLife]

I would go for a passiv cooled 750 ti or a 960 - but i heared 970 and 980is can also be used with certain drivers in XP. me, I have a 750ti kalmx from palit and its just uber awesome, honest opinion! what cpu does your 790 have?

[@Redmage913]

Is this the era when Dell moved to proprietary PSUs?

[@MrModamanReviews]

That happened quite a few years earlier.

[@Armgedown]

Windows XP can even be installed on 14th generation Intel

[@ericanderson85]

There are a lot of great games in your backlog. Tomb Raider 2013 is one of my favorites.

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

BUT! Can it play Second Life? And Crysis

[@scattered_rain]

only if it runs “life is strange” other games suck

[@knghtbrd]

What I don't like about these machines is that for a time Dell stopped with what could only be called "the highly-proprietary for the sake of it BS". You'll never use a non-Dell motherboard in this chassis (not that you'd want to) and you'll never use this motherboard in another, less garbage chassis (something you might want to do!) They come as a set, forever. When the motherboard is dead, the case is scrap. If the case is damaged, the motherboard is e-waste. And the chassis is likely to be damaged if you try to do things to it that would result in, say, enough airflow to keep the thing from having the literally boiling hot CPU temps Dell is known for. I can't say HP or Lenovo is much better, leading me to industry-wide advice for these machine: DO NOT BUY A BRAND NEW ONE, EVER. For our retrogaming purposes, they can be kind of interesting, however. Parts for the older machines are easily and readily available even years after the machines are consigned to the e-waste pile, and they're cheap because while there is demand for them, it's a relatively small demand. If you could open up the airflow and improve the power supply, a better CPU cooler and a modest GPU that'd be absolutely "budget" today … it'd be an amazing gaming machine for even relatively modern titles. Since you can't … games that are a bit older work great still, and the price is pretty good for these things.

[@ricardobarros1090]

Hi Phils, I have Dell GTX 1050 Ti 4gb VRAM model MS-V35, same PCB card But have more Power, it's right ???

[@spitalul2bad]

Hey Phil. Please normalize and check audio gain in videos. The sound at 5:55 and then at 6:00 was so different in volume (loudness), that I had to check my speakers.

[@kyles8524]

nice when I saw the video card, I was like yup its a gt 640 but I was wrong, but they look identical.I just slapped together a windows XP machine with a gt 640(despite only being able to run dx9) on a inspiron 530 but I think Im going to swap out its core 2 quad q6600 with a core 2 duo E7500 or something cause for XP gaming I think the core 2 quad is a wasted and could be used for something different than an xp machine.I cant think of any XP game that even takes advantage of 4 cores.Even crysis, if you go into msconfig and disable 2 of a quad cores cores the game gets better fps cause it was optimized to run on 2 cores

[@ricardobarros1090]

PCB is Lock like, But another card And another Power

[@eusebiosksipolitos2524]

But can it run Crysis???

[@MrModamanReviews]

The GTX 1050 ti doesn't require external power.

[@ShrineOfLife]

some do

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

This is the worst Beige Tower i have ever seen. Even comes with fake ports like USB...3? Where's the serial? How do I put my AT keyboard in this? Worst Windows 98 PC ever

[@CrypticWritings89]

Too bad Dell/HP/Lenovo OEM desktops are infested with proprietary parts and locked BIOS, limiting upgrades and making replacements more expensive or even impossible. Same with Alienware and likely Omen as well.