Testing a Dell Precision 3630 (2019) + my spicy thoughts on Windows 11

[@vwestlife]

I wonder if it still has an option for an internal speaker, like Dell Optiplexes had for many years.

[@themaritimegirl]

Oh right, it DOES have an internal speaker! I totally forgot to say something about it because I found out after I finished taping the video.

[@vwestlife]

If I wanted to need to use the command prompt to set up an operating system, I would've used Linux!

[@maxtornogood]

Especially something like "Arch" Linux!

[@DrCassette]

The funny thing is, with the right Linux distribution you never see the command line anymore either. Installing Linux Mint by now is faster and easier than installing Windows, mostly because there you don't have to go through and disable tons and tons of telemetry settings...

[@kendoty2463]

. . . Microsoft Cadences for Windows has a wonderful NEW ! ! ! Feature, frequently derided as a BLUE 🔵 SCREEN OF DEATH , is actually an absolute wonder for us to get expedited access to the Command Prompt . . .

[@cdoublejj]

After switching to PopOs I. I longer need a command line, just point and click plus so far I have not had to install printer drivers. Though I did I have copy and paste one command from hp for a scanner. Also I get updates for the OS and apps and I can choose not to install them

[@TooManyInterests775]

Reliability problems with my old laptops and Windows 11 finally convinced me to upgrade to a Macbook Air just over 2 years ago now. I had an Asus, 2 HPs, and a Thinkpad that all broke down or needed service within 2 years. I never abused them, never dropped them, but they all had significant failures. The Asus motherboard died 3 days after the warranty ended, both HPs lost their hard drives, the second one under warranty, and the Thinkpad needed a warranty repair within 4 months because of a defective motherboard. Knock on wood, my M1 Air is still running strong and isn't showing signs of slowing down. A friend suggested I consider Apple when I was looking for a new computer because I told him that I wasn't a fan of Windows 11. I'm glad they have changed it a little bit to make it more useful, but I wish they'd include the account bypass and correct some of the other problems. Either way, I still have the Thinkpad as a backup computer, and I do anything that requires Windows on that (though the SSD is getting ready to take a dump), and I use the Mac daily. Anyways, I'm glad you got this rig going, and I hope it lives a good long life in your organization.

[@Jon-hx7pe]

older thinkpads are very robust and repairable/upgradeable. macs on the other hand are designed for the dump with everything soldered into the board.

[@aperson1181]

@@Jon-hx7pe exaclty, everything is soldered

[@WalterKnox]

The idea of those being retired is nuts. I work with Surplus machines that have been retired, and those are generally 2nd-6th gen machines, and even the idea of retiring those seems a bit premature. When I was in elementary school, they were still using some Pentium 3 machines up until around 2014, when they "upgraded" from XP. At that point, they kept their old Pentium 4 IBM thinkcentres and put Windows 7 on them, they were still running those Pentium 4 machines in 2021 when I graduated high school, and when I went to get some papers last year, there was at least still a couple of them in the office running Windows 10 now, so they just keep them until they absolutely won't work anymore.

[@Jon-hx7pe]

this is the way to go. there's so much waste of electronics it's not funny. we'll be kicking ourselves when the resources needed to make electronics are depleted due to so much waste just to create an ongoing market.

[@circleinforthecube5170]

@@Jon-hx7pe plus theres something charming about those 2000s era machines

[@HIDLad001]

I have a Lenovo ThinkStation P330 there is a year older than her computer, and would’ve been comparable in performance. It also had a premature retirement (was probably retired last year), and I was able to get it at the surplus store for the low low price of $50.

[@JackStavris]

My high school was still running Celeron D systems with 512MB of RAM until 2010 shoehorned with Windows 7, and even once they were retired I actually got to keep one as payment for assisting the IT team in setting up a new lab. I kept that one going in some form or another with a Core 2 Duo upgrade and more RAM until 2016.

[@WalterKnox]

@@JackStavris I got to keep one of my school's Dell Latitude D610s when they "upgraded" from XP in 2014. I used it in elementary school, throughout middle school, throughout high school, and a few months ago I completed a 2 year course at a community college and used it throughout there. Best laptop I have ever had.

[@CatsGamesWhatever]

What Microsoft has done with the system requirements for Windows 11 in shameful. The fact is that Windows 11 can run flawlessly on unsupported hardware. It will lead to massive waste as people and businesses discard perfectly good computers. It angers me more than it should honestly.

[@Mirra2003-f9s]

Both Pro and Home have the same bloatware. The only difference between them is that Home does not support as much ram as the Pro and it won't let you change stuff in regedit either. If you have a company and want a non-bloated OS you need to get Enterprise LTS or Education versions of Windows. They can't be obtained in legal ways by regular consumers or small businesses though,and they also use way less system resources because they don't have any extra processes running anymore,clean as 7 and XP,not even the MS store is installed

[@aperson1181]

so, no way of installing a "clean"/debloated Win version at home?

[@nelizmastr]

Windows 11 (Pro) does not require a Microsoft account, you can still bypass it by telling it you want to join it to an (AD) domain. I do this regularly for customers that still refuse to pay for Microsoft Intune, saving hours of setup, and rather have us do everything manually :P

[@chinesepopsongs00]

Yeah also my job, it's not a battle at all to join to a domain. Works as in all previous version.

[@aperson1181]

join it to an (AD) domain? How do you do it?

[@jamescollins6085]

Dell did a nice job with this machine. I'm surprised to see only a single audio line out socket on the back, but those a prone to noise anyway, and most people are using USB DACs now.

[@DrCassette]

As for the Dell computer, it is a nice design with quite a few good ideas, as one would expect from Dell :)

[@DrCassette]

I have never liked the idea of having to have an online account in order to use a system. On Android it can't be avoided (at least I have separate Google accounts for different tasks), on Windows the online accounts are something they introduced only after seeing how Google is able to make money off it. I refuse to link my Windows installations to a Microsoft account, and Microsoft making it harder and harder to have a local account only means it is time to slowly but surely move on. I am getting better and better in Linux, and I have used Linux in most of my recent computer projects (NAS with OpenMediaVault, Software Defined Radio running on Ubuntu Server, for example). I don't think I can replace Windows completely, but the aim is to not have it involved in anything important anymore in the future. And this is for Windows 10. I have never even considered moving to Windows 11 as I find the task bar totally unuseable. I don't want windows grouped together, and I do want text telling me what the window is...

[@bob-rogers]

The power supply /is/ standard. I replaced mine with an EVGA 750 Gold so I could upgrade my video card. But the built in DVD drive has a non-standard connector, so I had to cut the old one off and splice it in. Here's a nice feature of windows: If you have a windows 10 PC that won't upgrade, you can put the HD into a PC that will, and it will upgrade itself and run. I just migrated an employee from a Dell T3500 (circa 2011) to a 3630. Just copied the drive (for safety) and stuck it in the new machine. Took a few hours of upgrade and restart, but now it's running great and I didn't need to reinstall any of her applications. So some of the bloat is very convenient in some situations. I've done the same thing with four other computers in the recent past. They all just work.

[@andrewparis5712]

This made a ridiculously good platform for my kid's gaming machine. Was about to start working on a 5700g build when one of these with an i7-9700 landed at work as a decommissioned unit. Grabbed it, swapped in the dell 90W heatsink kit, front fan bracket, a 3060 Ti FE, a 500gb nvme, a 4tb 2.5 ssd, a Bluray drive and a PowerSpec 850W sfx PSU.

[@44CT232]

The inherent issues with Windows 11 and the weird direction Microsoft seems to be going in with Windows in general these days makes me seriously consider finally going over to Linux when Windows 10 is no longer supported anymore. And that's coming from someone who is not a fan of Linux as a daily driver desktop OS (although I do love it for server use).

[@themaritimegirl]

I've been running Linux on my kitchen computer for a few months now, and I've settled into it pretty well, since all I do on that machine is email and web browsing. I'm running straight Debian with the MATE desktop environment, although I recommend MX Linux too. Not sure if I'll ever get there on my desktop PC since it would require switching to another video editor.

[@44CT232]

@@themaritimegirl Linux Mint is usually my go-to distro if I need to use Linux for something, although MX is pretty cool as well. I recently tried Zorin OS, and I really like the design.

[@aperson1181]

@@44CT232 I though also about Mint

[@wabbit234]

USB 3 backwards compatibility is pretty iffy and you can run into all sorts of weird issues with older devices that disappear once they are plugged into a USB 2 plug. Also if you "burn" your installation media with a current version of rufus it will ask if you'd like to disable all the stupid installation roadblocks that Win11 likes to throw up.

[@blooder81]

i bought hp pavilion 510 few days with amd a10 9700 bristol ridge apu from 2017. While updating the bios it ask to clear tpm stuff that i denied i decided to install windows 11. everything goes well but the igpu is not compatible

[@Stjaernljus]

the reason for USB2 ports is that while it has gotten much better USB3 still has compability problems with some USB1/USB2 devices. also they are cheaper and works well for most things.

[@jamescollins6085]

I believe these machines tend to share the same controller for all front USB ports anyway, so the bandwidth can only go so far.

[@Healcraft]

i have ran into this first hand with some of those nano sized wifi dongles, basically not working or working badly in a usb3 port due to interference

[@foamyflightmaster9385]

Enjoying the content😊

[@philiprobar]

Why would you switch to RAID mode from AHCI when you’re not creating a multi-drive pool?

[@themaritimegirl]

I would assume using it in RAID mode would garner higher performance, no? I feel like AHCI is a sort of fallback compatibility mode, but maybe I'm wrong. But also because then if more drives are added in the future and you do want them on an array, then you don't need to reinstall your OS.

[@aperson1181]

how do you get the pro license? do you have to pay to upgrade from home?

[@kyoudaiken]

I'm also saving up for a MacBook Pro with the M4 or M5 chip that will eventually come... I also switched to Linux where I could. Only my main PC due to Topaz Labs applications and Visual Studio keep me on Windows on my main PC...

[@Dygo784]

I have one that crash and we change the mother board and processor but it's still not working, how to fix?

[@themaritimegirl]

@@Dygo784 Bad RAM? Power supply? If it's getting past the POST but not booting the OS, then corrupt OS.

[@Dygo784]

It's keep going to power saving mode. The cemos batter is good and have the 3v . The power supply is great, and the ram. Can it be a mother board since it's a new mother board and CPU?

[@Ronnocbot]

The comment at 13:30 had me rolling.

[@kyoudaiken]

Have you disabled VBS and Core Isolation in Windows 11 prior to doing the tests? It might skew the results a lot.

[@aperson1181]

dell 3630 desktop computer front fan failure, how to fix?

[@SavMansVHSChannel]

Interesting design for a 5-year-old computer. As I mentioned in my comment on your community post about this Dell Precision, I got a new computer for myself. Lenovo Thinkstation D20 from 2009, I believe. Just needed a new HDD and an OS. I chose Windows 10, as opposed to Windows 11, as I do not care for it whatsoever.

[@trollingtime1234]

Kinda weird how these things are getting retired already! These things are basically new machines to me ngl. They have TPM 2.0 and Windows 11 support and they’re made in 2019, which i think is too new for something like that to be retired. We’ve gone to a point where a decently specced pc from 2011, hell even older is fast for most modern tasks provided you give it an ssd upgrade boost. So I think it’s very premature for an 8th gen i5 to get into retirement. Ive also found a lot of optiplexes with like 8th or 9th gen i5s in e waste btw, too new for it to become e waste ngl.

[@zeroturn7091]

One of my biggest complaints with this PC is that the CPU cooler is right under the PSU. I wanted to get one, and cut out the fixed rear I/O plate for a motherboard swap. I just can't justify $80 for a barebones case.

[@eDoc2020]

I'm sure the power button is lighting, just very dimly. This style of Dell case is known to have fading power LEDs. As for Windows 11, I agree with much of what you're saying. One thing I do _not_ like is the new Notepad. It automatically opens with the last opened file and if it autosaves it's even worse. Maybe it's xkcd 1172 but I often use Notepad when I specifically want to leave no traces of my activity.

[@themaritimegirl]

Oh yes, the Notepad thing catches me off guard once in a while too.

[@dmcintosh1967]

My main PC which was costume built by me had windows 11 on it until something went wrong and some my software and games would crash when starting. Inorder to fix the problem I would have had to reinstall windows because they had to make system restore useless. So instead I jumped ship to Ubuntu 22. Which has same apps that I used on Windows. Since steam has proton I was able to run my small library of games like Ratchet and Clank Rift a Part. I was able to run the game on the highest settings but that should be expected as my PC has an RX6600 GPU and I5 12 Gen CPU. Give me windows Vista or ME over 11 any day.

[@BLASTIC0]

if windows 11 doesnt run on your machine... microsoft actually did you a favor. ITS AWFUL! Stick to 10

[@Healcraft]

have to use win11 for work and first thing i did was find out how to change the context menu back, luckily you can! lol Agree the new context menu is redonkulous

[@johnhudson7055]

It does have an m.2 over by the sata ports.

[@themaritimegirl]

As pointed out on the screen.

[@johnhudson7055]

@@themaritimegirl I posted that right when he first mentioned it and I wasn’t able to watch the entire video.

[@kyoudaiken]

They added Tabs to Explorer and Notepad after thousands of people pestered them to do so in the Windows Insider program. It's nice that they do listen, but this was requested back in 2015 for Windows 10 and it took them this long... They even had the idea and a beta implementation of making it possible to group any windows into one with tabs but then dropped it again...

[@jacobmar2797]

Some usb2 devices don't work in usb3 ports, regardless what the specs might say.

[@EastAngliaUK]

windows looks funny on that 4 by 3 screen

[@ROMCat1952]

I'm a bit baffled with the CPU Mark of 13342.8 on your personal desktop. Is that with some extreme overclocking? You mention it's a 4th generation i7. The average scores for the 4th generation i7 CPUs at stock speeds is in the upper 7000s, and that's with both Passmark versions 10 and 11. OK, I just noticed you have version 10.2 on that machine, 11.0 on the Dell; I wonder if that's the difference, or if something's amiss with the scores in 10.2

[@ROMCat1952]

Nevermind. My bad. Just went back and rewatched the video on your desktop. You've got an i7-5960x which is a 4th generation, just not an i7-4xxx that I was thinking was 4th generation. Your score is in line for a 5960x

[@Shnick]

All they want is your usage data.

[@EastAngliaUK]

nice pc good the password is easy to clear aswell

[@kyoudaiken]

The taskbar is almost unusable in Windows 11 as well...

[@DrCassette]

Yes! The main reason I never even considered upgrading...

[@kyoudaiken]

@@DrCassette I have to use Windows 11 due to my Raptor Lake Intel 13900KS. It needs the new scheduler. I simply use ExplorerPatcher to get the Windows 10 taskbar back. But on my work laptop I refrain from using third party tools and it's just horrible...

[@johnjakson444]

+ves, I always like the Dell Bios that supports mouse and keyboard and its the same on most all PCs, -ves, non std parts

[@lolkthnxbai]

Windows 11 just feels like ass speed wise, I'm a long time linux user on my laptops and secondary PCs and using 11 on my gaming pc until recently, now it's Linux every computer is now linux. No plans to go back.

[@philiprobar]

You could upgrade to an I3-12100 and increase your single core performance by ~50% and almost double your multicore performance over your current i7.

[@whatevercm]

I just did the bypassnro dance on a brand new Windows 11 Pro machine. It let me set up a local Windows account (as desired) but a week later it nagged me AGAIN to set up a Microsoft account after a reboot (updates). It let me "Dismiss" but made it clear that it would be nagging me again soon. Grrrr... This is BUSINESS computer operated by a small team solely to run some wide format plotters. A Microsoft account, geared to a single device-hopping user, is NOT appropriate in this case. If our RIP platform was available in Linux or macOS we'd definitely consider jumping ship. However, being a "Mac guy" from almost Day 1, you'll still hear me cry out in anguish after almost every macOS release, "WHY, APPLE? WHY?!" Which is to say, I don't just blanket recommend ANY computer platform these days. I always ask what platform (if any) the person is already invested in because the cost of switching is often far from zero (in dollars, time and effort etc.).

[@golimonkey]

Stupid win 11 XD Can't disagree...

[@Gany1701]

It'd be pretty funny if they made you ask copilot to turn itself off

[@jjohnson71958]

like it already

[@EastAngliaUK]

on rufurs tell it off line account

[@paulwarner5395]

Noce video. You should have used Rufus to make a USB stick that doesn't require a M$ account. Bye he way what is the Northern Telecom box beside the monitor??

[@themaritimegirl]

Yes, I'm learning now that that's something you can do :) Thanks! That's a Norstar 6x16 KSU. There's a few videos about it in the "Landline Telephony" playlist on the channel.

[@paulwarner5395]

@@themaritimegirl Thanx . I'll have a look. I used to work on NT SL1 and Meridian systems back in the bay..

[@LeeMaiden]

It will run WinBlows 11, but you should run Linux Mint, either the 21.3 Cinnamon, Ubuntu based or their Debian based edition LMDE 6. Don't even bother with the Windows these days, it's full on spyware. My main rig is a 3620 Precision with 64GB DDR4 RAM, two 4TB SSDs, and two 2TB SSDs, runs like a champ. Mine is one step older than yours and has a seventh gen CPU i7-7700K. Oh, don't use the M.2 2280 NVMe slot for a boot drive, it will work but will cause problems eventually.

[@themaritimegirl]

A work machine running software to control specialized video equipment isn't going to run Linux.

[@WafflePanB]

Yeah, with all this microsoft "enhancements" i just upgraded to linux, much better so far, i play games and surf the web, thats all i need my os to do

[@CoronadoStudio]

Idk why this got promoted to me, but I use this machine as my unraid server.

[@kyoudaiken]

All your questions towards Microsoft and their malpractices in / with Windows 11 can be answered with just one word: Corporate greed. That's what we get with this free market. We really need better observation of companies...

[@lightshark8562]

It's not really a free market when you can't use most of the programs on other systems (Mac, linux). It's a Monopol, and that's bad...

[@kyoudaiken]

@@lightshark8562 I'm talking about the economy with "Free market". Companies can basically do whatever the f they want without facing much of any challenge by law.

[@peabody4217]

I use linux mint, screw microsoft!!

[@aperson1181]

no way Macs, you can load Linux and not worry about Win. By the way, I have this station and I do not have an account too.

[@walterlegere1403]

So this PC testing video morphed into an ax grinding session against Microsoft? If you don't like the OS don't use it. Load Linux or something else. Microsoft is a "for profit" company like any other.

[@themaritimegirl]

Yes, that's exactly what I'm in the process of doing. Thanks.

[@stoffes]

windows being worse each year nowdays :( i love to pay for it but i wanna choose myself what to have in it and im old (decent old 43) and why i cant have start panel like before 🥸