Dell Optiplex 960 MT

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crosscourt
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Dell Optiplex 960 MT

Post by crosscourt »

The two HP pcs I got from the property were a bust, too many issues. The former president of our board gave me a Dell Optiplex 960 micro tower. It has a e8400 core 2 duo 3ghz cpu, 1gb of ram, but no hard drive. It has a pcie slot so I can install a video card with no issues. Nice open design with 4 memory slots. Ill add 8gb of ram, a 512gb ssd, and a dvd-rw drive. It has the ability to house 4 hard drives which will come in handy.Its in excellent condition but still needs a bit of cleanup. Ill be installing Zorin on it and will be using it as a Linux gaming system.
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crosscourt
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Re: Dell Optiplex 960 MT

Post by crosscourt »

This pc uses BTX a form factor I really like where the cpu is farther forward in the case and benefits from the better air flow. The location of the cpu also creates shorter pathways with the different board design.
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Re: Dell Optiplex 960 MT

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BTX was a nice idea. It's unfortunate that Intel designed it, made it far more expensive than ATX, then was like "noone wants to buy the double priced parts for this standard!!" and gave up on it.
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Re: Dell Optiplex 960 MT

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Dell was one of the big promoters of BTX and I have to say I like this case design better than any of my other desktops including my Ryzen system.
Back to the 960, it runs Win10, Win 7 and Zorin really well for a 10 year old system. The machine I have was actually made in 2011 and the most recent bios was 2019. Its strange as I cant get a newer bios than 2018 for my Ryzen system. Fastest cpus available are the E8600 3.33ghz/65w and the Q9650 3ghz/95w.
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Re: Dell Optiplex 960 MT

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System is running great, and I just picked up a Geforce gt 740 gddr5 as my video card. Had some ram issues so picked up a matching set of 4 Kingston ddr2 2gb ram thats running great. A friend had a e8600 3.33ghz cpu lying around so Ill install that as well. Im mainly running games from 1998-2009 so should be fine.
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Re: Dell Optiplex 960 MT

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Decided ot give the Q9550 quad a try. Gpu is using 65w and the cpu 95w and the pc has a 305w psu. One ssd, one dvd drive, 8gb ram and the gpu is using gddr5 so Im not so sure it will use 65w. Things should be fine bvut will be curious to see how hot the quad runs. BTX design should help quite a bit.
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Re: Dell Optiplex 960 MT

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Just picked up some of the plastic ssd 3.5 to 2.5 holders so I can use the more convieniently placed 3.5 drive slots. Im going to put them in my Dell, 960.7010 and Ryzen towers.
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Re: Dell Optiplex 960 MT

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Installed the Geforce 740 GT and its a great card so far. 15-20% better performance than the 640 GT, uses a bit less power and still very affordable.
Q9550 Ill install this weekend and see how it goes.
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Re: Dell Optiplex 960 MT

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That's surprising that it uses less power since it's literally an overclocked 640GT (GK107 cores both). I know they're both anceint at this point, but that's neat that they managed to refine the process so much they were able to re-release it overclocked yet using LESS power. Wish they'd do that stuff nowadays with these GPU's...
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Re: Dell Optiplex 960 MT

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Its not a huge drop in power usage but it does use less. Its ancient by todays standards but with the increased cost of hardware, many people are looking to older systems with affordable hardware they can use for gaming, even if those games are a bit older. The somewhat retrohardware craze is really hot right now. The Dell 9020 Optiplex is very popular with a stock i7 cpu and more recent video cards that are slightly behind the curve and much cheaper. In my case Im running Win7 and playing games from 1998-2008. Over the years there were so many games I never got around to playing and now I can go back and play them. I still have my Ryzen system for recent games, but the combination of video card prices and a lack of updated bios has pinned me into this configuration with no hope of upgrading. Ill use it to play the games from 2009-2020 and see how it goes down the road.
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