Dell OptiPlex gets second life as Retro Gaming PC

Yes, another video about Dell OptiPlex Small Form Factor OEM computers! But this is one is for Windows XP Retro Gaming! For modern gaming these machines struggle to keep up, but for Retro Gaming they are fantastic, great value, easy to setup and excellent performance.

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[JRose-zniw]

My older customers love these little Optiplex "bricks" for basic web-browsing and such, they're affordable and easily upgraded. I've never had a complaint from any of them in the years I've sold them.

[jamezxh]

I pulled a heap of these out of the bin at the local school I work at. All equipped with i7-3770’s and 16 gig ram. I threw a 1tb ssd and a gtx 1650lp In One of them. Quite a good little gaming pc.

[The_Wandering_Nerd]

Hearing a computer with a Haswell i5 and 8 GB of RAM described as a "retro Windows XP machine" makes me feel ancient, man

[joelcarson]

I use adhesive backed Velcro strips to mount SATA SSDs wherever convenient inside cases. Cheap and effective. Can also be used to help route cables.

[sirtanon]

I literally just sold one of these to a customer of mine. They're such excellent little workhorses.

[annihilatorg]

Better teardown directions than Dell's own!

[benaires]

I've been watching his channel off and on for many years. I LOVE this guy's accent!!! he's a cool GAMER dude!!! I like how he breaks down the components of each motherboard and PC. He keeps it simplified and quite clean. His narration is whacky, yet informative down to a SCIENCE that ANYONE can understand without pulling out a Dictionary!!! Do your thing Phil!! Love your accent brother!!! LOL!!!

[WareNetwork]

I recently got a Dell OptiPlex 780 Small Form Factor from The Salvation Army for $10.75 USD. It works fine and it even came with a working 500GB hard drive and its power cable. I'm very exited about all of the things that I can do with it.

[nilz]

Thank you for using "silky smooth" instead of "buttery smooth". I've stroked both butter and silk at various ambient temperatures, and butter, while pasty, greasy and oily, can not ever be described as smooth in my experience. Silk can.

[roger.monitor]

I bought a lot of these Dell, HP and Lenovo for the office workers. Second hand a couple of years ago. All are running Linux Mint Mate with Libre Office, perfect no OS or office pakket to pay. On PC runs win7 with Libre Office for accounting but that's it. For sound you can use a USB sound card, works well.

[JohnSmith-xqpz]

"Dude you're getting a Dell!"

Couldn't resist

[DarkLordValmar]

I got 4 optiplex 790 (i5 2400, 4GB Ram) rigs given to me for free, dropping in the low profile Radeon 8570 with 1GB of ram (cost $9 each) along with the low profile Audigy SE (SB0570) sound card for EAX ($15 each), makes a decent little XP retro gaming box, keep up the great work Phil!!!

[TheRobD]

I have my work FULL of these things. I nearly have everyone switched over to using them. Also have a couple of the larger form factor ones so I can install bigger GPU's for the CAD guys. Optiplex's are great and once you get them going they never give any trouble. In fact, my current work PC is an XPS Studio; another great value for money modern machine. A lot of people like to give Dell flak but after having used their stuff in the real world for years now I won't ever have a word said against them. My original slim XPS13 laptop still going strong at home too!

[mariastevens]

I love how you leaned in with "But does it run Crysis?"

[greenprotag]

This is an excellent use case for Haswell SFF optiplex! Well done. IF you want to use this system for more modern titles or higher end emulation, I recommend possibly using an i7 OR an E3 v3 Xeon. Many of these haswell units can take something like an E3 1271 v3 which is on par with the i7s of the same family. Although you are limited to a single slot video card, you could buy a GT1030, RX6400, or even higher end Turing Quadro like the T400, T600 or T1000. Pascal quadros have also come down in price and can still game. Also, you may notice that this particular Haswell DOES have a PCIE 4x slot with a slotted hole. You can fit x8 and x16 dual slot cards with limited bandwidth. I have used x8 cards in the x4 slot and the performance isn't bad at all. My low profile GTX1650 could still perform well even in x4 mode.

[mesterak]

Happy Friday Phil! Thanks for another great video. Lots of people loath SFF or USFF but I have a few of them even some IBM ones from around 1999-2001 and I think these small machines are awesome. A little limited on graphics options but it can be worked around in many cases. 98 and XP dual boot are possible as well with some of the older Dell SFF systems.

[solarstrike]

Great job! I did some repurposing of a similar Precision workstation from 2014 for XP a little while back with a 750 Ti! Crazily, it has a regular PCI slot - managed to stick an Audigy 2 ZS in there and it worked great.

I've since turned that into another experiment box (card went elsewhere), but it ran games like crazy with no or very little issues whatsoever.

[julianstechsation]

We have those PCs on mass at my workplace- every time I see on of those I have think about work 😂

Great machines 💪

[ivanromashkin]

Beautiful Dell design, small form factor, enough win xp performance - one of the best platforms for retro gaming. Thanks for the video. The best as always!

[lucasntch]

While I was taking my final exams in senior year of high school back in 2019, I knew for a fact that these PCs would be perfect for retro gaming emulation.

I'm glad I was right.