Lots of comments about adapters being available so why bother like I did in this video? I checked prices of the front i/o and power switch adapter kit, would cost me $57 AUD to get those connectors shipped to Australia. I pick up the whole hardware itself cheaper than that a lot of the times....

Bry man, thanks so much for all the excellent content the last year or so. I used to build 2 or 3 pcs for general sale each year, until the pandemic hit and the market went haywire! When I watch your content, it scratches that price performance itch by proxy. Really appreciate it dude. All the best and Merry Christmas!

Great video Bryan. I've converted a few optiplex sff in the past. They are tricky things to get going but fun to troubleshoot, and rewarding when you get them running in a shiny new case

These are great value for money boards! These also work with E3 Xeon chips, so I have found E3-1220 (i5-2400) CPUs for $15 USD or less. Pair it with a nice 2GB GPU and you have a custom gaming PC for around $200-$300 that will play all major eSports games respectably.

Thanks for making this video. Very detailed n most importantly, it solved my headache regarding the power button issues where other videos failed to do. Bless u mate

THANK GOD BEEN WAITING FOR A CLEAR GUIDE THX

I love this video you can still use these great Dells for music productions, i5 and i7s are plenty of processor power for it. Power supplies are also cheap now non modular of course. Thanks Brian you did it again, I bought a HP Z600 and OptiPlex because of your videos. Cheap is my middle name.

Cool to watch these transformation vids. Have done a few recasings. Usually end up having to swap out the power supply in adding a proper gpu anyway.

Thank for this vid bud actually doing similar build right now helped a lot mine ended up bit lower end mid you with 260x and only 11gb ram but still holds up for esports with that i7 👍

Dude I look up tp you like crazy, thats why I started my own channel and this is literally gonna be a life saver!! Thank you Tech Yes City!

what a great video TYC managed to help me with many issues I've had in past

man I love these videos I want to see a lot more use/budget builds for techtubers

Great guide Brian! The pin bridging was new to me, but l've dealt with censor and fan before. Maybe a future video on finding good motherboard power adapters (24 to x pins) with the various newer OEM machines?

This video is so helpful!!! I had to keep the old front panel because of these connectors on the motherboard. Now I can get around that!! Thanks!!!

THIS IS THE VIDEO IVE BEEM WAITING FOR! I've done so much looking around for videos on how to get around the connectors and such and this has saved me! Thank you Mr. Yes Man!

I want to see a lot more use/budget builds for tech-tubers, please keep up the good work.

Thanks for the video! Have been living with those 4 errors for the last 2 years. Might be time to actually fix them next. Cheers

Dope vid I have struggled with this in the past - v. useful tips and knowledge. Thank you

Absolutely love it man!!! Such an amazing complete guide!

Like father Xeon was saying, there are adapters available, but depending on where you live they can be kind of costly. Also, there tend to be different boards even used in the same product line, so some of these are very easy to transplant and take almost no work, while others need a fair deal of troubleshooting… So this video is a godsend for anyone looking to put together a budget PC with a pretty thorough guy. Thanks for the video!

I did this a few years back. For the power switch, I spliced in the power in and led connectors then used heat shrink tubing. The front audio/usb cable I zip tied to the bottom pci slot to keep from moving.

Awesome video Bry 🥰👍🤩🤯🏆! This was a time when “pc tinkering” was an art form of the more technically inclined with pc’s as was the traditional overclocking 🥰🥰. Ahhh, the good old days 🥳🥳

I did this conversion recently on a 3020 small form factor, currently doing it on a 9020 haswell sff unit. Like what you said, adapters are good if youre willing to pay, not feasible if you're not in the US (the only place that makes the custom mini boards for the power and front panel adapters is Harbin in Georgia, USA). I learned a lot from the work arounds you had to bypass the boot warnings. These 2nd/3rd gen Intel optiplexes are the last time Dell used a regular ATX PSU connector, the Haswell and later optiplexes need an additional PSU adapter if you're doing a case swap.

Love the vid Bryan. Did almost the exact same with my girls rig a couple years ago down to even the add in sound card, only thing I did different was I wasn't sure how to short that 34pin connector, so that ugly front I/O hung out till her upgrade recently! Those sff optiplex can be some used bangers

thank you so much for this video, cause i moved my old pc in a new case and had to use the old power button and it was kinda wiggling up on the case ports, and now i could use the normal case cable

Audio upgrades are underrated. They just make the pc experience even better.

Thanks for putting up this video. I just got the motherboard for one of these (the MT model) to make a decent low end gaming pc for my nephew. I can stick an i7 2600 or the K variant in it and pair it with a gtx 750 ti or 680. As long as it can play Minecraft, Among Us, Fortnite and some emulated games, he is happy.

This is awesome, I picked up an optiplex from my neighbor who was just throwing theirs out earlier this year before the snow fell. Been sitting in my room and I've been meaning to clean it, but I just never knew looking at the parts what I'd end up doing with it. Thanks for the inspiration, I'll see if I can flip this.

Tips and workarounds around Dell motherboards are great. Not a lot of people are touching this subject, i hope for more maybe with higher Dell models. Workaround with fans could be great in those bigger 2 socket towers.

man good deal! i been wondering what to do with the fan case lol great place and thanks for the idea!!!!

thanks for this Brian it was much needed.

Love your videos mate, have done a heap of these from 9010 sff, I just rewire everything, no adapters

Nice one dude, thats pretty much what im gonna do, ive took pictures of your fixes por el power switch and the other stuff, Cool!

I would like to thank you for the tips, it worked very well on my pc, thank you very much

new member to the tech yes loving ,hi all. love the work. been following for some time . just was lazy lol

You can "jump" the data wire over to the next fan connection so both connections read as connected even though only 1 actually is, eliminating the need for a fan placed flat on its back doing nothing.

So cool you came with this one out ✌️

Great work mate! I do really hate this Dell to convert in Gaming Case, but now I'm confident! Gonna try this soon! Thanks Brian! =D

Great work on all the Dell proprietary stuff!

personally love these kinds of builds the extra problems experienced with proprietary connectors is all part of the fun but in the instance i don’t have a or can’t afford a case swap oem case modding is just as fun

I've done a few of these. Surprisingly capable machines.. and they look pretty good with RGB bling.

Bryan your knowledge with this pc's are incredible man

Crazy you got that working. Well done.

Fantastic video, thanks for posting this. Subscribed 😊

love this sort of content, tech yes city you are the goat thank you for the video

Happy new year Bryan and everybody.

tip: there are two pins in the proprietary dell power button header for blinking error codes, you can plug your HDD activity light front panel wire into those two pins to keep your error code functionality

Jumpers were the only way to configure hardware addressing back when I was a kid. The juggle of "old ex upgrade" hardware was mostly forcing it to work together as platform compatibility was still in its infancy. It was referred to as bridging the pins, not shorting.

Brilliant vid! So many people throw these out for vergeside pickup. I think I might have one lying around and already have the adapters needed :)

Great video! Thanks for all the info! Long Live The OptiPlex!🤘

Brian, the man of miracles. Man loved the video and the PC

DLM Tech garage (precision/optiplex build guide) has a video that covers all the adapters you needed for this build and avoid all of those error messages and annoyances you went through with the front panel. It will make this a cleaner build.

Thanks TYC, been working with OptiPlex 990 MT's a while (and lately some 9010's and 9020's) and done a few case swaps, never knew it was that easy to get rid of the Front I/O error as well as the power button error so I'm definitely going to try that. Keeping the temp sensor is easy enough but as for the system fan I'd rather not keep the original since not many cases accept fans of that size anymore so I'm gonna see if I could just cut the connector off and short some of the pins to get rid of the error Also, connecting a standard front power button connector directly to the left most pins of the 5 pin is what I've also done, but I've found it's not a very secure fit and can come out easy but I assume this will vary from connector to connector because of slightly different sizes. One last thing, the OptiPlex 9010 MT motherboard has a USB 3.0 header but the fit is slightly different (Dell used a locking USB 3.0 cable, which I have no problem with as those things are too fragile standard) but it does work I believe for standard case 3.0 cables. This combined with the fact that the 9010 still uses a standard MOBO 24 pin power and also has rear USB 3.0 makes it the ideal OptiPlex board to use for case swaps in my opinion since pretty much any case you buy now-a-days will have front USB 3.0 and having 3.0 speeds is very useful for things like flash drives or connecting drives externally. Can of course use a PCI-e USB 3.0 adapter but this makes it easier

Nice guide. I didn't realize these Dell motherboards were such a pain. The HP Prodesk 400 boards are way less work to mod in my experience. You just have to solder a bridge wire on the USB ports and cut a little piece off of the case fan header plastic then they work like a standard ATX board.

I have an Optiplex 790 and the on board audio is actually quite good. Better than what many mainstream boards have.

the old jumper pins :O havent seen them in forever, when we use to use them to set a hdd as master or slave... forgot about them. thanks for that trip down memory lane lol

Jumper plugs to the rescue ;) I did this very same thing with a Dell optiplex 790 board. Jumping pins 3+4 on the power port fixes the power cable issue. the front usb header errors can also be bypassed by jumping the 4th set of pins from the left. can then use a PCI-E X1 slot to add a USB 3 card so there is a header for the new case front I/O. Dell fan header adapters are cheap luckily.

I have done the 4th gen conversion before. I kept the motherboard ends of the dell case cables and wired standard layout pin blocks to them so that you could just plug in the new case connectors into those as extensions. The extra pins on the 5pin power button header are the power buttons leds, so you can wire it up as a power led and a power switch header for the requisite case cables. These adptations removes the errors and still allows you tto use the on board usb, hd led, power switch, power led and sound facilities. Less to add, more profit to gain.

Your a clever little duck! subbed immediately Bryan, you know way more than me bro and that's heaps ;) G'day from west QLD

I don't know if you celebrate Thanksgiving in Australia but Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow or today their its really important to feel gratitude in your heart have a wonderful day.

I love Optiplex builds, I usually keep the stock case though, I kind of like the “sleeper” look with them. Good video man 👍

I remember I did an experiment on the Optiplex once. The power button jumper (5 pins one), 2 pins are designated for power button, the other 3 pins is designated for power LED. The LED is dual colour, if not mistaken, having 1 common ground and 2 inputs to signal the system is switch off, standby or hibernate in amber colour and the system is switch on in blue or white colour. And as for the Front Panel IO, it is possible to use the existing Front IO port, and you can cut those cable and solder jumper pins so you can just plug in the USB cable from the case into it, but you need to check the connection. Anyway, As for Dell desktop system (Vostro or Optiplex or Precision) up to third gen Intel Core i series can actually move to a new case with a few tweaks, but most of them uses standard stuff.

TYC you are the magic man!

Definitely my favorite kinds of vids! 👍 I’ve got a similar computer with a Xeon e3 1241v3 ($45 i7 4790) on a Lenovo m83 ($19) with 16gb of memory half of which I took out of a dell on the side of the road. It’s also got a gtx 770 but it’s a bottle neck unfortunately.

My first PC was an Optiplex 790, and after bouncing around various junk gaming PC parts around I've returned to it and gotten some surprisingly good performance with just an Nvidea Quadro and 16 Gb of RAM. Games run pretty well if I tweak the settings a bit, and I've yet to run into any issues with the hardware. I even managed to pull a 2nd-gen i7 from a burned out machine and the processor was so much better than the old i5 it came with. If you can sneak into a recycling center and have the time and patience, building a hacky machine based off of an Optiplex can be pretty rewarding. EDIT: I've come back to this video to put my Opti in an old ASUS gaming case I got, and I've been using this as a reference for how to get stuff to stop working. Soldering is necessary, but I've got power and HDD LED's now. And for anyone wiring power and getting errors, solder the red and yellow wires together. Stupid Dell, crappy failsafe right there.

There’s actually some pin outs online and a guide for Optiplex conversions. There’s a Reddit post as well stating which boards use the same IO assemblies, etc. I’ve built two 990 systems a couple years ago having picked up the boards for $10 each. The 790 and 990 are very similar even among the SFF models. Of course, the older Optiplex boards like the 380, 745 and 755 are fun to mess with as well because there are modded BIOS releases for them to use socket 771 Xeons. People dump on Optiplex, but I love using them. I have two 380 MT found on the curb for bulk trash pickup. I modded one, tricked it out with replacement fans and RGB, and then threw in a descent GPU to make a pretty good XP retro machine. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure 👍

I have done this in the past... i even tore out the front io on the dell optiplex and did EVERYTHING i needed to do to get rid of ALL the errors.

My absolute favorite builds to do. TechYes=BudgetKing

This video is EVERYTHING!

I recommend doing this to an Optiplex 3010, as it's much more easier (Don't get an SFF, else you need a PCIe extender cable and it comes with just two PCIe slots, x1 & x16 ) . Front IO header are standard, got the case front IO to work with the proprietary motherboard (with a few slight modifications on the connectors) , Front Audio works and the two front usb 2.0 works as well. The only problem is the fan error which only disappears if the fan is running. I didn't think about using extra jumpers on the power switch. Great tip on using those motherboard jumpers LOL.

It’s definitely fun to do this stuff. In 2019 I turned my 2014 HP Envy (GT 640 and i7 4770) into a gaming machine. I started with my older GTX 970 paired with a new i7 8700K, but since then its had parts swapped every now and again. Today it has a RTX 3060Ti paired with a i9 10850K running 5.1GHz.

love the videos, look what people can to if the give it a shot

Great stuff!

Wow really good job!

Would love to see you trying working magic on more modern Dell pcs

Thank you for the video

Ty sm 4:15 been trying to fix my pc for days was about to hang omgg

I have done an optiplex case swap two times in the past, was an absolute nightmare without adapters

Did this recently with an optiplex 3020 and an RX 570. Needed a 24-pin ATX to 8-pin Dell PSU adapter, but that was 14 Canadian bucks shipped. Got it sold within a day. These are a great option regardless of the GPU. An RX 550 will do you just fine for gaming on the cheap.

a bit late but im working on an optiplex 9010 that im pretty much doing the same with except Ive been meaning to dabble with it for about a year now but i had other projects to do. the mother board is similar minus the 34-pins connector. if you want, before i get further into it, i can provide some details on it and you could make a video on it

Yes, time for some Tech Yes loving.

Great video as always! Tho my Lenovo TC M17 works as it is, out of dumpster(with FullHD monitor btw) thru CPU/RAM change/slap-in a 1030 and voila! Enough for some GTAV/APEX.

Regarding rewiring power button connector (at 8 min position in the video), you can connect Power LED of your new case to 3/4 and 5 pins of the MB power button connector (check the polarity).

Thanks for the data on the jumper pin positions! I will consider this If I want to do a case transfer I followed The Game Bench instructions for a gaming pc build on a Dell 7020. However, If i did a case transfer, how did you get the fans to follow the cpu fan speed. My build I added the front aigo fan but it runs at full speed just plugged into the sata power connector. Is there a pc fan controller that works with dell opti's permits fans to slow down automatically rather than using a resistor or mechanical switch?

Nice build! Loving these videos - they stimulate the need for tinkering. Inspired by the Tech Yes man, I've been building some systems and flipping them (X58 is still ok cheap here

I have a Dell Optiplex with an i5-4590, R9 Nano and 12gb (4x4gb) ddr3, it's excellent for a budget build and the R9 cards are still relatively cheap due to their bad rep, but with a bit of undervolting and a sturdy 500/600W PSU it'll run fine given that you buy the PSU adapter for a proprietary Dell board. If all you play is ~5 year old games or esports one of these builds are great.

Amazing. Love it!

Very very very good. Thanks

This is the best video i have seen thus far.. can this also be done with the dell optiplex 9020 i5 sff 4th gen?

Another adapter that may be needed if the board came from a USFF (Ultra Small Form Factor) model would be a miniPCIe to PCIe x16 (or x4) as for the USFF models the spec sheet (for the Optiplex 790 & 990 for example) shows the only expansion slots is a microPCIe instead of a x16 (& x16 wired x4) of the larger form factor models.

I found the lenovo motherboards to be the best standardised oem boards. The only thing that needs an adapter is the usb 3 connector. You can work around the hd audio connector by removing a pin

Holy shi I just bought a dell precision and a gtx 1050 ti for $220 on Craigslist and look who uploads while I’m making a list of things to buy to upgrade it 😂

What type of heat sink did you use I'm doing a build with the SAME mother board an having a hard time seeing how I'm kinda new to this stuff , finding the right type to uses I xan put the board in another case any help would be great thanks great video

These are my favorite videos

This is my bread and butter. great video

to get around the fan error just jumper the speed signal wire from one fan header that is used by an actual fan to all fan headers that need to see a speed signal. the other pins aren't needed to be used just the speed signal pin jumped to any fan header that needs to see an rpm signal. temp signal bypass is simple as a resistor jumpered in place of the sensor to act as a bypass if not needed.

Love Dell PCBs , so cheap to convert god one mate Andrew

HAHA!!!!! YEAAAAAHHH!!!! I LOVE When the B man does budget builds...This is what Tech Yes City is all about!!!! But you should check out the case swap videos from DLM Tech Garage and Tech 215!!!!!

How did you know in the proprietary power switch which were the pins to turn on the pc ?

Nearly all of these headaches can be solved in a couple of seconds with some front panel adapters. Not sure if you're aware of them, or just wanted to show people how to bypass all the crap on the cheap. I keep the temp sensor... but the biggest issue with these systems is the fan controller. It's stupid levels of picky. Still can't seem to find a pattern of fan that will and won't throw an F1 error.