I bought a PC for $50. Let's upgrade it!

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Thanks to Linode for sponsoring today's video. Visit linode.com/CraftComputing to get your $100, 60-Day Credit!
There's an age-old tradition of turning eWaste into a usable gaming PC, and I always love a challenge. I bought a Dell Optiplex 3040 Compact Tower for just $50 from a local electronics recycler, and I'm going to attempt to turn it into a gaming PC on the cheap.
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Пікірлер: 309

@JasonCrosen 6 ай бұрын

Very nice of Lucy’s dad.

@TheNetGuy 6 ай бұрын

Solid Dell flip! Now I'm kind of sad we didn't have you in the $400 budget build off earlier this year. "This coulda been a contenda!" Great results for such an affordable PC!

@CraftComputing 6 ай бұрын

I'll take on all-comers!!!

@deyeatdapoopoo7582 6 ай бұрын

Really smart and thoughtful choices on this one. I think a lot of people including myself appreciate that you do these kind of budget builds that are a lot more relatable and realistic for someone watching to undertake themselves. Even if there was the setback of the CPU not being compatible, you learned from the mistake and it wasn't a costly one as you could still sell the CPU and at most it's a $10 loss. Great video!

@Azlehria 6 ай бұрын

The only propriety aspects to the more recent Dell PSUs are the modified 12VO motherboard connector, a slot on the side for mounting, and the custom cable lengths. Other than that it's just a TFX12VO unit, and adapters are readily available from standard ATX to Dell 12VO, allowing the use of a standard TFX.

@lucasrem 5 ай бұрын

I own the same DELL Case, ATX size PSU in it, VOSTRO DELL, able to do ATX parts in it, waterblock too

@Pasi123 6 ай бұрын

13:04 v2 Xeons are actually 3rd gen Ivy Bridge, v3 are 4th gen Haswell etc. Sandy Bridge (2nd gen) was called either 0 or v1 First gen Core i (Nehalem and Westmere) still used the old naming. Xeon 55xx and 56xx for LGA1366 and Xeon 34xx for LGA1156

@killingtimeitself 6 ай бұрын

is there some sort of masterlist/cheatsheet for xeon naming? Because everytime i look at them it gives me a brain tumor.

@jacobcrisman6834 6 ай бұрын

@@killingtimeitself Intel has their Ark, that is what I normally check if I am not sure about something with the chip

@wlpaul4 6 ай бұрын

@@jacobcrisman6834 not to be confused with their Arc. lol

@DLTX1007 6 ай бұрын

@@killingtimeitself Wikipedia is the best bet honestly

@killingtimeitself 6 ай бұрын

ik wiki has a decent selection of info, i usually head there for other stuff, but considering the mess that is xeon naming i was wondering if there was anything more accessible, though this is intel so. @@DLTX1007

@johnhudson7055 6 ай бұрын

Actually an SFF PSU fits perfectly and there adapters to make it work.

@Azlehria 6 ай бұрын

Extended-length TFX form factor with an additional tool-less mounting point, Dell's minimized 12VO connector, and cable lengths customized by model to Dell's cases. Semi-proprietary at worst.

@walterlegere1403 2 ай бұрын

I've done this kind of build several times starting back in 2016 and I discovered, using 4th Gen, 7th Gen and 8th Gen off-lease business pre built platforms of various configurations and sizes, that "newer" didn't mean "better" or more capable. In their stock configuration there wasn't much performance difference between the three systems with the 8th Gen only slightly better in synthetic benchmark tests. Lack of power was usually the issue. One thing I'd like to add to this discussion is that one can sometimes "offset" the cost of upgrade components by selling the part that they remove from the system. For example, I wanted to upgrade the 7th Gen Core i5-7500 to the better Core i7-7700 but, like you mentioned, the cost of the i7 was, at that time, just outside my budget so after finding a relatively good deal on the i7 I sold the i5 and offset the expense of the new chip by quite a bit. Even a little bit helps. Thanks again for a great video.

@andersenpeters 6 ай бұрын

The prices on the i7-6700 are wild. I did a very similar build for a friend with an HP mini tower that originally had a 6500 in it. It was actually cheaper for me to get an entire second SFF HP for $40 with the 6700 in it and swap the chips between the two. I was able to home the second computer out as well but it was wild that I could get an entire second computer for less than the price of the loose chip.

@thcriticalthinker4025 6 ай бұрын

Craft! I've never done it for a dell board but if you feel like taking a look into the coffeemod process, you can abbreviate most of the steps and v5 and v6 xeons will work in at least retail 100 and 200 series boards.

@CraftComputing 6 ай бұрын

I was considering looking into it :-)

@montecorbit8280 6 ай бұрын

@@CraftComputing Just a thought.... Did you try changing the BIOS?? Maybe something newer or even something older?? Sounds stupid but sometimes it works.... Thank you for your time.

@ROFLMAOwithExtraCheese 6 ай бұрын

@@montecorbit8280 Yeah after the spectre updates xeons will work in some systems which they were previously not compatible with.

@CraftComputing 6 ай бұрын

I did update the BIOS to the latest. Still no dice. It'll need some tinkering to work with the Xeon.

@jrdoughty13 6 ай бұрын

I may need this because I too ordered a Xeon to replace my 6500 and then saw this video and am sweating now! I'm hoping the fact mine is an HP SFF workstation might mean it'll work... But I'm sweating. If it works might be a good tutorial vid?

@kayakermanmike 6 ай бұрын

Regarding the CPU... FAIL stands for First Attempt In Learning. Well put.

@cafemcyc 6 ай бұрын

Just updated a similar computer for a blue iris server. You can 3D print the sleds if they are missing. There are a lot files for different dell models. They were on printables or thingiverse FYI.

@boneappletee6416 6 ай бұрын

That's great to know, wouldn't have actually considered that.

@dksmar 6 ай бұрын

This video came just in time! This is my work pc and following days will take it home instead of going to the garbage... thanks for the usefull tips!

@Finite-Tuning 6 ай бұрын

Hahaha, well I built a new PC with all top shelf hardware, lets sell it 2 months later for more than it cost to build.... This is the 1 and only time in my history with PC's that I can recall, where if you bought the right parts at the right time you can use the hell out of it and still sell it for more than you paid 2 months later! My GPU alone went up $500! The CPU is up $160, Ram up $30, Mobo up $40, SSD's up $20 minimum x4 drives...... The only thing I overpaid or could have gotten a better deal on is my PSU. I paid $284 and its now $250. I spent $3989 to build a system that is now worth $4500 minimum 2 months later! When is the last time in your lifetime where that's ever happened?

@b0ne91 6 ай бұрын

With old Skylake, you'd usually want to use a Chinese QTJ2 or like you said, find a Q170 chipset board and use the Xeon E3 v5 chips. Keep in mind, the H110 boards in many HP and Dell prebuilts do NOT support the Skylake or Kaby Lake Xeons. You need to add the microcodes and remove the IME from the BIOS to make those work.

@dr.rotwang 6 ай бұрын

FYI for anyone building in a Dell case StarTech makes a 3.5" to dual 2.5" drive adapter that drops right into a standard blue Dell drive cage. It's about $8 at most retailers.

@LifeWithMatthew 6 ай бұрын

15:10 - It doesn't really matter too much here, but by plugging your dual SATA adapter cable into two different plugs on the same wire, you're no different from a single plug adapter. If you were actually drawing enough power to causing heating issues on your wires, then you'd still be in danger the way you plugged in. The intended use is to plug in on two separate 12v rails, or at least two different wire runs connected to the same 12v rail (such as the wire for the hard drives, and the wire up by the optical drive bay). Just a nugget to tuck away for another day, I seriously doubt your 150w GPU is going to be taxing your wires 😉

@eDoc2020 6 ай бұрын

The limiting factor here is the SATA power connector, not the wire. IIRC SATA connectors are rated amps but the cable is usually 18AWG, good for 10 amps. With Molex adapters you can draw more power and then the wire would be more of an issue. Personally I'd cut the cables and use wire nuts, eliminating the bottleneck of the PSU's connectors.

@snake8head 6 ай бұрын

In regards to that low FPS aiming down sights, I found in Destiny 2 that there's usually some depth of field and aiming vignetting that only turn on when aiming down sights (iron sights and scopes) and at least in D2 you could turn it off and performance would recover. I'm going to guess that's a similar issue to the Borderlands games to why it slows down when aiming or when it transitions between hip and sights. Such a fun puzzle to see how to get modern games running on salvaged hardware.

@snakeman567 6 ай бұрын

Agree completely, scrap builds are the most fun! A couple cheap suggestions for stashing the 2.5" SSD's: zip ties or detachable Command Strips! Stick it and forget it w/o the rattle! I would only buy the sleds or drive frames for vibration absorption if making a small NAS.

@KiraSlith 5 ай бұрын

Electrically, you're still drawing 100w down the single 12v wire with that sata power to PCIe power adapter attached to the same ends. I would recommend splitting it between the two sata lines inside the case, just to prevent burning the cable on the proprietary PSU.

@kevincm 6 ай бұрын

One of the big things I recommend with Dells (Lenovos and HP's too), is to head to their sites and get the compatibility lists/service manuals for the laptop/desktop/endpoint. This will show what the motherboard will support. Normally, this will list the CPU types, as well as memory, storage etc. And the service manuals normally are detailed enough to work through some solutions with.

@CraftComputing 6 ай бұрын

Often times, Intel never acknowledged older E3-1200 Xeons as working on consumer boards, so they typically aren't listed anyway.

@plexnbrown760 6 ай бұрын

E3s gave my optiplexs new life on the cheap for 5 years I ran 5 e3-1275v2s, but mini pcs is my game now. Those ellitedesk units are Cheap and I picked up a lot of 9th gens for 100 bucks and rebuilt my plex cluster. I’m playing with idea of mini mode for each media type

@Pasi123 6 ай бұрын

Sometimes OEMs only list the CPUs the systems were sold with. For example HP Z400 Workstation only lists Xeon W3500 and W3600 series but in reality they do support Xeon 5500 and 5600 series and also i7-900(X) series

@TheRealEstate 5 ай бұрын

Thank you for the StarTrek Linode ad!! Loved it.

@nexusyang4832 6 ай бұрын

I just did something similar and made it into a dope retro arcade box. Soooo much fun!!! Respect the power of the quarters!!!!

@boneappletee6416 6 ай бұрын

This video was actually quite surprising... Always amazes me when budget builds perform well! But I love to see it. 😁

@KnutBluetooth 6 ай бұрын

I salvaged an OptiPlex 3060 SFF (i3-8100) that was going to be binned. Added a low profile nvidia GT 1030, 32Gb of RAM, and NVMe drive and a spare 1TB SATA drive to it. Installed Windows 11, put it on a vlan where it can't talk with any other machine on my home network and I play stuff up to Diablo 3 with it. Works great.

@Rangerman9404 5 ай бұрын

I have a Dell Optiplex 3020 that I use as an HTPC. One thing I noticed is that it doesn't produce the 5 volt rails, even the "standby rail" is 12 volts. The 5 volt rail is generated from the motherboard itself. I gave it a pretty bare bones video card upgrade, just enough to give a whopping 2 megs of video RAM and an HDMI output, which the onboard video was lacking.

@Dtr146 6 ай бұрын

The form factor of the power supply is not proprietary per se. Only the power connectors are. They use flex ATX power supplies.

@russhuang 5 ай бұрын

Great video and love the build on the low end side! Continue to upgrade this build as costs drop down! Would be very interesting if someone ever gets CoffeeTime working on these dell OEMs. It would open up the possibilities for hacked xeons and extend a ton of usage onto what ultimately will become another generation of ewaste

@sourcilavise3788 6 ай бұрын

I didn't know you could convert sata to pcie ! Nice video as always and thank you for tinkering things do we don't have to ^^

@utp216 6 ай бұрын

Powering the GPU like you did is something I never knew was even possible! That’s pretty trick for a low wattage GPU in one of these OEM systems. Touché

@unnamed715 5 ай бұрын

It's not really a "trick", and I would NEVER trust doing that with a higher end GPU. Setups like this are known to explode, overheat, catch fire or at the very least cause stability issues. Wouldn't recommend on anything higher than a low end GPU.

@KiraSlith 5 ай бұрын

Definitely should split the SATA power cables on that adapter across 2 separate SATA lines if you're going to do this. Having them both on the same wire is a great way to roast the cable, as SATA power only carries a single 12v 16ga wire, when PCIe Power uses 6/8 runs of the same 12v 16ga wire for it's 200w max rating. It's still not ideal, but 2 wires with 30-60w through each is far safer than 1 wire trying to supply 60-120w by itself.

@AngryGibberish 6 ай бұрын

My father-in-law gave me the small form factor version of that system. I installed a low profile rx550 and 16 gigs of ram and turned it into a pretty decent ChimeraOS box.

@basshead. 6 ай бұрын

Wow.... what an original idea...

@CraftComputing 6 ай бұрын

You should try pulling your head out of your ass. Life is more fun when you're not angry at other people enjoying theirs.

@scottcondie1363 6 ай бұрын

Great timing! I just found a 6700 for $80AUD/$53USD so was looking forward to your xeon results. It's to upgrade a 7100 so glad I didn't gamble with xeon compatibility

@Qosmio1955 6 ай бұрын

Great video! I have just gotten back into video editing after a 7-year sojourn. Technology has slipped right by me. So, I was wondering if you would accept a challenge to come up with the best-bang-for-buck video editing machine? What I would like to see is something that gets respectable rendering times using a graphics card that does not require you to take your bank manager along to the computer store with you, when you buy it. I know that 8k video is a thing but, to be honest, I don't think that a lot of home users will be punching out 8k stuff, consistently, any time soon, so 4K would be enough.

@ScullyBrewing 6 ай бұрын

Look up the Precision 3640 too. we bought them at work in our laboratories in 2019/2020 and were able to select intel x550-t2 10 gig nics straight from Dell. They are going to be out of warranty soon and businesses will replace them. An opportunity for a heck of a deal if you can find one with those nic’s.

@JamesSmith-sw3nk 6 ай бұрын

Dell often used thicker heat sinks on their i7's than their i5's or i3's. The fan/mounting is the same.

@noir-zz5te 6 ай бұрын

Look into Lenovo p520 with w-2135 xeons and w-2145 plus 900w power supply.

@mamdouh-Tawadros 6 ай бұрын

Thank you for an interesting video.

@perrymcclusky4695 5 ай бұрын

LOL, the Linode commercial was great!

@frankshaw2057 6 ай бұрын

A couple of years back, I picked up a Lenovo M725s SFF desktop for $125 with 8GB of ram and a Ryzen 5 2400G CPU. I ended up putting in 16Gb of Crucial DDR4 and a Ryzen 5 2600 that I picked up for less than $50. I picked up a Radeon RX 6400 low profile GPU that required no added power connection. The PC had an NVME slot on the motherboard, so I added a 500GB P3 and later added an additional MX500 1TB as a game drive. The thing runs really well and can play most FPS games at medium settings and many at high. I was happy I went that route as an OEM PC with a AM4 socket sure makes things a lot easier.

@pete8475 6 ай бұрын

1:45 - Ah good ol Juan shows up again.

@AtlassGaming 6 ай бұрын

I've been tinkering with an Optiplex 3050 I picked up on ebay for £35. It must have originally come with an I3-7100 but the previous owner replaced that with an I5-6400. I swapped in a 6500. The Kaby Lake board in this one has an NVME slot so that makes for a much more modern feeling system. I dropped in a spare blower style GTX 960 with a sata to 6pin adapter which just fits in the case, the front of the card is pressing against the front of the case with the sata cables stuck in between. fun little project would like to be able to drop in a 7600 or 7700

@frogslayer4849 5 ай бұрын

i started with a 3050 MT that came with a i5 7500. i case swapped the motherboard into an open box montech meshify x3 and put a i7 7700 and 1660 ti in it and built out a barebones 3050 sff for my nephew with the 7500 and an rx 550.

@Prophes0r 6 ай бұрын

I'm surprised you can't just mod the BIOS with the Xeon microcode. That is often all it takes if the chipset will actually work with the CPU. And remember, what we learned with the Coffee Lake chips... Just because Intel claims something doesn't work, doesn't mean it won't ACTUALLY work with a few tweaks. One of my dumpster PCs came with a B250 chipset claiming support for 6th/7th gen CPUS. It is chugging along with a 10th gen Coffee Lake Xeon right now.

@thcriticalthinker4025 6 ай бұрын

Haha I just posted about it. Yes it works swimmingly for 100 and 200 series boards.

@b0ne91 6 ай бұрын

The Q170 chipsets support them. For the H110 boards you need to remove the IME AND add the Xeon microcodes.

@leondeco4835 6 ай бұрын

@@thcriticalthinker4025link?

@szabidoki5750 6 ай бұрын

How can you do that?

@sweden669 6 ай бұрын

Cool! I have a gen 7 cpu.. i5 7400, i think it is .the mother board is a prime H270 plus...is there anything to do to make it take newer cpus?

@brianmccullough4578 6 ай бұрын

I love these builds

@CASPYBXL 4 ай бұрын

Nice video, FYI, at first I was not sure if I had my old build still around, after checking it, I had done a similar thing, Dell Optiplex 3040 and I managed to make the E3-1240V5 work inside this. I did have to upgrade the bios to the latest version first using the older i5 cpu. Also its not possible your XEON E3-1275 was a V5 as listed on the Intel website the V5 has a base of 3.6 and a turbo of 4.00 GHz, and you mention something about 3.8 in your video so i think you have a E3-1275v6 wich has a base of 3.8GHz. PS : that beer looks so awesome !

@markowens5446 6 ай бұрын

That was a ride.

@soupwizard 6 ай бұрын

3:46 especially since a 150W card will pull 75W from the pcie slot, so it only needs 75W from the adapter!

@tinkerphill 6 ай бұрын

A couple of things about those SP sata SSDs. I have had 2 fail in less than a year in two different systems. RMA went fine and I got 2 new ones, but still. Second, I had a new system that I built where I used one of the 2TB SP sata SSDs as just extra data horder storage. The system had issues waking up from sleep and blue screening if I left it sitting for a while. After digging in threw debugs, I was able to determine that it was the SP SSD not able to handle sleep. I removed the drive, no more problems. So, I am steering clear of SP for now.

@JalapenoPrime 5 ай бұрын

This is my main build, used with chimeraOS for casual gaming under the living room TV, I souped mine up with a 6700k & 6600xt, great 1440p60 machine.

@ShadeAssault 6 ай бұрын

I did something similar 2 years ago for my workbench/3D printing PC. $40 HP ProDesk 400 G2.5 w/ i3-4170. $60 AMD WX3200. Wanted to throw the top i7 in it but they were like $100+. Decided to go Xeon and on a hunch got a $9 E3-1225 v3 to test before spending another $60 on a higher model. Was a good choice. HP BIOS sees the processor but on boot says, "Xeon E3-1225 v3 installed. This processor is unsupported. Please install a supported processor." Dunno if it's a platform limitation or a locked down BIOS. Being HP, I suspect artificial BIOS lock. The system still works great to do light CAD work, run lightburn with my laser engraver, slice files in Cura, and control my 3 printers. Even play a little Master Chief Collection from time to time. Love seeing this old stuff get put back to work for cheap!

@haikutoru 6 ай бұрын

I recently picked up an office PC from Fujitsu, LGA 1150 H87 Chipset. I was about to purchase a Xeon but I would have been in the same situation you bumped into if it were not for my brother. I am restricted to low profile GPU's and a core i7 4790 to max it out. I ordered the very same RAM kit you got and the same SSD from Amazon. I am waiting on the GPU, it will go paired with an intel ARC A310, it was the best bang for the buck for a new low profile GPU. Let's see how it comes around.

@la_creatura_fea_y_bella 6 ай бұрын

love how everyone in the techtube space has the "I'm gonna use this computer TOTALLY in the way it wasn't intended." energy. It's contagious because I just bought a mini pc with an 8 core i3 that's small enough to fit in a 3.5" bay to put a tiny nas inside my pc case

@milescarter7803 6 ай бұрын

8 core E3? Or 8 Thread i3? I'm guessing 4 cores 8 threads. Only options with 8 cores are i7: 9700, 10700, 11700. Is it a NUC or an ASUS Mini STX board?

@la_creatura_fea_y_bella 6 ай бұрын

@@milescarter7803the i3-n305 which is Alder Lake-N, it's 8 12th gen e cores. The big version of the N100/N200. It's in a CWWK... "X86 P5 Super Mini Router" It's pretty hard to find a mini PC that's

@ytguy2010 6 ай бұрын

1. The Optiplex 3040 only supports 6th gen and not 7th gen. 2. The Optiplex 3040 only comes in 3 form factors: micro, desktop, and tower (which is what you have). There is no larger chassis than the tower.

@milescarter7803 6 ай бұрын

I don't think he specifically said 3040 came in full desktop. The T1700 and whatever replaced it do.

@typerightseesight 6 ай бұрын

a few years ago I bought a build exactly like this. And then tore it down to build a "gaming pc" styled case with the psu mounted on the bottom. The performance was like the same but it just felt less professional. I wish I wouldn't have.

@PapaSorin954 6 ай бұрын

It's funny, that starting build is my current gaming build in an Asus flavor. M32CD. Got the base system free with no storage. Upgraded the cooler, ram, power supply, added an ssd and a R9 280x and recased it into something bigger at the beginning of covid for $50 total. I'm listening to this as I build my new system.

@greenprotag 6 ай бұрын

Optiplex referbs are so much fun 😊

@treyriver5676 3 ай бұрын

For SSD I have used Double Side Mounting tape.. They do not way much, they have no spinning bits.. most pcs did not get moved around all that much.

@JoshuaBoyd 6 ай бұрын

It would be a cool video for you to try to BIOS mod this system for Xeon support.

@imag187 6 ай бұрын

They make 24 pin adapters for these machines. This allows you to add an actual power supply, so a modern GPU isn't exactly hard and you can skip the SATA adapters. This also means you can transplant the parts into a better case. The only thing you may have trouble with is the CPU cooler. HP, and Dell both like to screw their heatsinks into the metal motherboard tray instead of a backplate. They also use non standard sizing for them as well so you have to keep the cooler. You'll have to find some bolts that thread onto them to keep the heatsink in place and provide tension. This would also allow you to use the half size units as they like to charge a premium even used for a full width tower machine.

@kaufmann2003 4 ай бұрын

I did this same thing for a friend to an old slim optiplex with an i5-3570 in it. I actually managed to stick a $150 ultra low profile 1050 ti in it. I went to autozone and got some flame decals that i slapped on the side because that would also obviously make it faster. Sadly the motherboard decided constantly providing 75W through the pci-e slot was too much and died a few months later.

@richardw5761 6 ай бұрын

Thanks for leaving the xeon stuff in, I have learned stuff that way too. Has anyone ever tried stacking those cheap intel coolers?

@chromerims 20 күн бұрын

19:49 -- 6th-9th gen outperformed by first gen Ryzen AMD. Great video 👍

@DJSammy69. 6 ай бұрын

I like this new trend of tech tubers reviving these old office pcs.

@gamefragments 6 ай бұрын

I picked up the optiplex 7040, added 64gigs of ram, a gtx1060, and had to hack a 6pin connector into the cpu 12v. The mobo has good performance, but the case thermals are bad. I also swapped the rear fan for one an inch and a half in depth which holds the cpu and gpu around 60c. The only drawback of the system is boot times using sata.

@Orsthos 5 ай бұрын

At first I was like theres no way this would run Baldur's Gate well. And then the very first example you proved me wrong. Looks like we both learned things from this experience.

@danc4046 4 ай бұрын

The HP EliteDesk 800 G3 or Lenovo ThinkCentre P320 are also competent equivalents, with the Lenovo actually being able to accept either Xeon or Intel Core. If you're thinking about throwing together a similar build, check out some of the other options on the market. HP makes a PSU that is the same form factor as what's in the office PC at 400W with a PCIE supplementary power connector. Buying one of those at around and selling the 250W or 180W one that came in the PC might be a decent upgrade with minimal net costs.

@JoshuaBoyd 6 ай бұрын

The sata power connectors are only supposed to be good for 54watts each. Hopefully the card is pulling some of its needed power from the PCIe slot rather than getting 120watts from just the 8 pin port in this case.

@criostasis 6 ай бұрын

The pcie slot provides up to 75 watts

@JoshuaBoyd 6 ай бұрын

There have been some Dells in the past that only supported 35w or 25w on the PCIe 16x slot. I don't know if this is one of them.@@criostasis

@robandtyria9094 6 ай бұрын

80 mm fan fits in lol great vid

@threesixtydegreeorbits2047 6 ай бұрын

3010 optiplexes where the last one with "'standard" power supply connectors that can take a different motherboard. 3770k are quite old nowadays though

@SmokinGoodd420 6 ай бұрын

The last time i used a xeon on consumer oem motherboard was haswell. But awesome to know its not the same going forward.

@star5328 5 ай бұрын

yepp, haswell is where it ended essentially. Without mods anyways. Intel figures if they stop you from putting old xeons in off lease office pcs you'll have to buy their new consumer platforms. Really though they'll probably just be pushing people to buy used AM4 stuff instead. Dumb idea on their part.

@tylerbenrich 6 ай бұрын

It's the making it rain iconic on the video for me 🤣

@kliniktech2485 6 ай бұрын

Wow thanks ... going to upgrade my pc now

@DavidAshwell 6 ай бұрын

If I may make a recommendation: the Dell Precision 3620 on a 6th or 7th generation processor can be had for very similar money. The motherboard is likely a 12VO, but you can swap the PSU and get a cheap (~$10) adapter cable. 4 memory dimms available, a nvme slot available, and a roomier case to work in.

@CraftComputing 6 ай бұрын

The recycler didn't have any of those 😉 Part of the video was the challenge of using what's in front of me.

@DavidAshwell 6 ай бұрын

@@CraftComputing makes sense on the recycler front. Just wanted to toss out the recommendation for anyone building with similar era items / budget constraints.

@SvDKILLSWITCH 6 ай бұрын

As soon as you pulled out the Xeon I knew exactly where you were headed... There were a bunch of gaming/consumer (i.e. not workstation) oriented boards from several manufacturers using the C232 chipset for these Xeons; ASRock had the Fatal1ty E3V5 Performance Gaming/OC, ASUS had the E3 PRO GAMING V5, and MSI had the E3 KRAIT GAMING V5, to name a few. Most of these boards should support both regular consumer Skylake and Kaby Lake processors as well as Xeon E3 v5 and v6 processors. However, unlike the consumer 100 and 200-series boards, the C232 boards had no integrated graphics support. Interestingly, because they're based on C232 chipsets, these boards also support ECC unbuffered DIMMs operating in ECC mode... as long as you're using a compatible Xeon E3, Celeron, Pentium or Core i3 CPU. Still, this was something the consumer chipsets lacked. This sort of "Xeon for gaming" thing only stuck around for this one chipset generation. By the time Coffee Lake and Coffee Lake Refresh rolled around, there were no C242 or C246 gaming boards to be seen, as far as I'm aware of at least.

@andrewmcewan9145 6 ай бұрын

It's more just xeon for consumer. Im like oh he's going to find the harsh reality of 1151 intels most scummy socket. There are some normal boards that work but you have to break intel me. Coffie time also allows using es/laptop cpus and 8/9th gen on older chipset 1151 boards.

@SvDKILLSWITCH 6 ай бұрын

@@andrewmcewan9145 You're right, there are definitely some hacks and workarounds. I was only referencing official support.

@JamesHalfHorse 6 ай бұрын

Just for the sake of it did you try updating all the bioses and firmwares? Dells of that legacy usually have 20 revisions out there but they sometimes fix a lot of issues when adding upgraded parts. I usually throw a windows install at it and let dells utility go through updating what it thinks it needs to then install whatever os I am going to use. Do it for servers too. Also 3m double sided automotive tape is great for adding SSDs to dells without sleds. I upgrade tons of them.

@awetisimgaming7473 6 ай бұрын

I did this with a free hp z400, and stuck my 3080 in it while i waited for my 7950x system. I upgraded to a 6 core w3690, which did help, but it was also on linux, so gaming sometimes was amazing, and others totally unplayable, and it was hard to tell what was causing the problem. Still super fun to push that old platform, unfortunately it unexpectedly died, and I haven't gotten around to lookong at the board or cpu to figure out why it won't post.

@Kyanzes 5 ай бұрын

The two SATA power connectors are supposed to go on two separate rails, otherwise you can leave one unconnected. I get that you may not have two rails with SATA.

@NotKR-10z 6 ай бұрын

I have my 6500 on a asrock ddr4 board with a 1050 hosting my jelly fin server, didn't know it has this much life left in it!

@SP-ny1fk 6 ай бұрын

I would like to see you mod one of these old PCs into a useable homelab / homeserver Perhaps the older Intel Xeon Processor E5 v2 Family workstation PCs? Best bang for buck taking into account electricity consumption and core count / efficiency.

@charlesgi5058 6 ай бұрын

you should check out hardware haven

@QrchackOfficial 6 ай бұрын

E5 v2 is equivalent to big boy 3rd gen i7. That's ancient. I started out my homelab with a 1st gen i5 only to see it idle at 100W. 4th gen / Haswell is when they started to care about idle power efficiency because laptops with battery life longer than an hour or two were becoming the new hot thing. In 2023, the bare minimum you want is Haswell, on Xeon that's E5-2600 v3 or Dell Rx30 for a server frame of reference most homelab people could relate to. That said... skip workstations and servers. Unless you have determined you can't live without 384 GB of RAM in your server, an used business PC like the one mentioned in the video, with 4 sticks of 16GB DDR4 gets you plenty of horsepower for server-like use. As we speak, I'm running the i5-6500 in a 2U Supermicro case that I grabbed for $75. Gutted the Supermicro X8 motherboard out, and the pair of Xeon E5620s (that's 1st gen Core) that came along with it, stuck a cheap H110 mATX motherboard ($1.50 and half an hour of bending a couple pins back), tons of storage, and volia. It's running just shy of 60 different services in my homelab now. Best part of all, it's ~30W idle, once put into that server chassis with a SAS HBA and drives added it's closer to 50-60, but still nowhere near 100W on 1st gen Core, or even worse 200W+ that you'd get with a server or workstation of this age. Consumer hardware all the way until you no longer can get away with it.

@DAVIDNEENAH 6 ай бұрын

psu adapter cable+an SFF psu annn yes U can actually upgrade the psu in these....tho given the limitations of the gpu thatll fit an NOT be botlenecked..not to mention roasted by the lack of airflow itd be pretty silly to do so.....

@lonelypotato3001 6 ай бұрын

By using the coffe lake mod for 1151v1 sockets (specifically coffee time), you may be able to program the xeon micro code into that bios - or that of coffee lake and use an i5 9600 or something

@krillinbaldhead9863 4 ай бұрын

He would need to get modified bios to do so and program it with ch341a bios flasher. Not the easiest thing ever. The modified bios would need to made specifically with that oem mobo. The coffeetime mod has been done on consumer boards but not sure about the oem board.

@lonelypotato3001 4 ай бұрын

@@krillinbaldhead9863 Coffeetime offers a fully fledged GUI that let's you specifically choose which microcodes to add or delete. I'm pretty sure, as long as the unmodded BIOS is old enough, you can mod them onto any board.

@1leggeddog 6 ай бұрын

I have to admit, i never realised that sata to pcie adapters existed. Thats neat. Also, you can get 400w dell psu for cheap

@michaelpetrarca5451 5 ай бұрын

When it comes to Dell computers always check Dell documentation for CPU compatibility. While I doubt a Xeon would ever work in a Dell consumer PC, a BIOS update might be needed in other cases (i.e. going from a 10 Gen Intel to a 11th Gen Intel in a Dell XPS 8940).

@fxandbabygirllvvs 6 ай бұрын

you could replace the core i3s microcode with the micro code for the xeon and get it to post and function that way but thats alot of modding and digging around to find what you need

@vespasian606 4 ай бұрын

I'm wondering if the .1% lows are down to the mismatch in CPU and GPU performance as that was also the scenario with the previous example. My old 1150/4790/1060 6GB setup seems to fare better but it also has a 450W PSU so who knows. Turning old office PC's into low cost gaming machines is very old school but the first stop for me has always been to try and get the beefiest PSU possible. That 240W model made it very hard.

@glubrix 6 ай бұрын

Often on these desktops you can't see the PCI video card, you have to turn off the power and remove the battery then put it back in and start again

@skyebynes612 5 ай бұрын

Run Stoney, run!!

@milescarter7803 6 ай бұрын

A friend has one of these. Still the only system I have ever seen in person with Skylake and DDR3. I did a double take. I think DDR3 is better on the latency front, so even though bandwidth is reduced the latency is OK or better than cheap DDR4. I am curious about this Xeon Coffeetime hack. Would love to be able to use some of these V4/V5 Xeons. Thanks for the E-Waste Intel. Edit: local deals for RX5700 are hitting the $100 range. That would be my go-to for this kind of build

@tomaswrtacka5257 6 ай бұрын

Xeon e3 v4 is Broadwell LGA 1150. Not compatible

@anarcy7777u 6 ай бұрын

Im curious where the figures on the RX 580's power draw came from. Simply because I have put those graphics cards in office pcs this this for years and i don;t think i have ever seen one go above 160 watts or so? Those are the single 8 pin models, to be clear

@sodiumchlorid 5 ай бұрын

i used a newer used hp elitedesk 200€ i5 6500 and 16GB 2400 ram a old evga 1080 watercooled (own) with a (old hp psu 500watt psu for this model 70€ aliexpress) and a m.2 1T memory build with some fancy RGB and a acrywindow in the sidepanel. the only Problem was the bios that not recognized the psu as original beacause of a id cable that has wrong pinout (need to press a key every time i boot the system) but it runs good for my 8 years old son for playing lowend games and emulation .

@kevinvanneste2500 6 ай бұрын

Almost 2years back i bought a 7040 sff sold i5 for a i7 6700T kost me 30euro after I sold the i5 and 32gb ram and rx6400 for my son he is still happy with the cheap pc ! You're pc the ddr3 is a problem I think 🤔 that's why I only wanted 5040 or 7040 no 7gen for sure I know someone who tried it!

@gdjaybee742 5 ай бұрын

I know this is already an old video, but I was wondering if you tried updating to the BIOS revision and tried the Xeon afterwards?

@ZsSkyar 6 ай бұрын

Yesterday i was confuse about should i get my friends PC for $50 which is not optiplex so no room limitation and have i5 7500 ,8gb ddr4, gt730 4gb, might have more than 250watt psu and upgrade ram to 16/32 gb and gpu with 1660 super or rx 580. but your video came just in time so i'm getting it. Thank you for making my decision so easy!!

@chanm01 4 ай бұрын

I'm surprised this isn't one of the first comments, but at those prices, if you're just after a cheap gaming experience you might be better off buying a used Series S. Electronics recycling is a fun hobby all on its own, but you can't deny how efficient these little consoles have become.

@JordosTechShack 6 ай бұрын

My oldes two kids daily drive this model optiplex. They have RX 6400s in theirs because one has the low profile slim model optiplex, and I can't give one a better GPU than the other without a fight. My 8 year old has been spending more time Parsecing into my main PC for RDR2 though since she noticed how mich better it runs on my PC.

@wolfeman781992 5 ай бұрын

I love the intermission from who Im assuming was your eldest

@wlpaul4 6 ай бұрын

Oh dang. Xeon compatibility got messy for a bit. I have a Broadwell Xeon that just flat out wouldn't work in a few boards.

@JVBNorway 7 күн бұрын

Using CoffeeTime I have been able to use a E3 1230 v5 in my 1151 mb, with modified bios. 4c and 8t for $30 isnt too shabby:)

@woe2you2 6 ай бұрын

SATA connectors are only rated for 54w each, they have a very small mating surface compared to any other sort of power connector you'll find in a PC.

@CraftComputing 6 ай бұрын

Motherboard delivers 75W. The SATA will only need to pass 40-50W through. Well within spec, especially doubled up.

@linux42069 5 ай бұрын

I was looking to upgrade my i5-7600 with a xeon and noticed the same limitation. It's a bummer considering the only hyper threaded option is the i7 series. But honestly, 4 cores 4 threads is still fine if we aren't doing big kernel compilation