Dell Optiplex 7040 Microtower Review with Arch Linux

I purchased a refurbished Dell Optiplex 7040 microtower with a core i5 6500T processor. The computer comes with Windows 10 Pro, but I wiped that out and installed Endeavour OS (Arch based) and ran it for a week. These are my results.
#Dell #Arch #MicroTower

Computer:

EndeavourOS:

-----------
Support Switched to Linux!
💰 Patreon: /TomM
-----------
Social Media:
🐦 Twitter: @switchedtolinux
🐸 Gab: @switchedtolinux
💡 Minds: @switchedtolinux
Reddit: /r/switchedtolinux
-----------

[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.

[briansrcadventures]

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

[edalder]

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*

[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.

[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.

[icollided]

I just won an ebay auction for one of these for $80! woo hoo! It is the i5, 16GB ram, 500GB SSD. Going to use it as a pihole and NAS. Maybe mess around with Apache server stuff.

[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.

[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.

[russellbrooks]

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.

[kencreten]

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

[mpw]

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

[jsparlin]

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

[kevinkirkby]

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.

[LEO-xocz]

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

[peterjansen]

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!

[warthunder]

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

[JamesWoodard]

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

[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