Were they that bad?? Exploring some e-waste 'Entry Level' PCs...
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 ธ.ค. 2024
- PCs have always a focus in the race for the best tech - always trying to upgrade to the latest and greatest.... But what about those entry level PCs you would see on the shelf at your local Wal-Mart? In this video we will go over 3 'Entry-Level' e-waste PC's that have been dropped off to TheRetroRecall and ask ourselves the question - Were they really that bad?
#retro #nostalgia #retrocomputing #ewaste #retropc #vintage #entrylevel #hp #dell #inspiron #pavilion #dimension #intel #amd #pentium
i really like when people give mundane machines like these the time of day. things that aren't high powered or rare, or are in the awkward spot between just being old and being retro. good video 👍
Thank you!
@@TheRetroRecall do u have any knowledge of pcie bifurcation such as x8x4x4?
if yes, can u explain to me how x8x4x4 works, thanks ?
Unfortunately I do not, but from what I just googled it seems neat. I would rely on the community here to help answer your question. Also, I found a lot on google about it if that helps.
@@jirehla-ab1671 a pcie lane is a dedicated high speed bus from your cpu or chipset, with cpu lanes being highly preferred. Typically speaking theres at least one ×16 link to your cpu, intended for a ultra high speed card like a GPU, however those lanes can be redirected via hardware either on board, or off board on some sort of expansion card, and with cpu and bios support, so you can have more devices, in your case, youd have one card running at x8 speed, and two cards running at x4. It is important to note however that even if you arnt using them you cant do x16 to x8 alone, the number of lanes on both end have to (8+4+4=16). On top of that there is usually a decent latency bumb, as the single has to be run a physically longer distance, and through a separate processor so its not ideal if you need maximal performance, but is great if you just need tons of cards, like in a server or a workstation
@@mercuryrising9758 so in order to utilize an x8x4x4 , i need to have a quad pcie expansion card?, if yes, how will i know the lanes each slot in the expansion card is getting?
I remember web browsing being the biggest reason entry level systems were so derided, plus companies selling them with bare minimum specs, like Vista with 512MB RAM.
Very true.
Totally agree with you, this sort of practice should've been a criminal offence. Many end users wondering why there new computer was so slow not knowing a RAM upgrade would've made a world of difference.
Especially with Vista.
@@johnphillips4783 Especially on a Walmart wage (Federal Minimum), saving every cent was important. Getting a $298 Dell with the bare minimum for Vista, applying the employee discount, and slapping a $50 XFX GT 240 into it after leaving the store was quite a bit better than my old 3rd hand dual slot Pentium III 600Mhz Windows 2000 Pro workstation. I went from AGP graphics to PCI-Express, and the main upgrade I would do to it later was install a Core 2 Duo E7500. Upgraded it on the cheap to 8GB of DDR2, and a SATA SSD, and it is currently running Windows 11.
@TheRetroRecall vista still was ok tho...
I have a soft spot for entry level machines. They are the machines we used back in the day, and likely the ones we had our first computer experiences on. They also make good canvases for later upgrades.
100%ll
I don't think OEM old devices make for good upgrade platforms because OEMs do stuff to make it harder to just change components etc. Old custom systems are much better platforms for that.
I think that's a fair point, however they did have a level of upgradable features to them that weren't all that difficult.
@@SIPEROTHfrom P4 to Haswell is a decent canvas to work with.
I used to build sleeper PCs out of those Dells, since there were a ton of Dimension 2400s and similar models that people would just give me for free back in the early 2010s. The cases were constructed very solidly, although the front I/O stuff needed to be rewired and the fan replaced if a case fan was desired. Despite that, a relatively modern mATX board would drop right in.
Lately, though, I've been trying to preserve any that I come across. I have a 2400 that's bone stock other than the RAM being upgraded, even still has the factory install of Windows XP on the original drive. Other than installing a Pentium 4 as an upgrade, I'm going to keep it as-is.
That's pretty great to hear! I live when people keep these systems as is and find some pretty cool retro uses for them.
A hole saw for the plastic front panel and a cut off wheel in the angle grinder will let you put a 120mm fan in the front of most of these. Add a $4 sheet (6"x36") of black "gutter-gaurd" behind the hole, or replacing an original plastic panel and you can get quite a bit of performance from these systems. It's even easier now that we are using NVMe, don't even have to relocate the hard drive.
I came to the same conclusion, something about the Control Panel and Windows Media Player from XP brings a smile to my face.
Thing with Dell’s of that age, especially the 530, replacing the CMOS battery will do wonders. I have a few Dells from that era and that has always done the trick.
I thought that and forgot to mention it on the video. I replaced it thinking that was holding it in reset unfortunately it didn't work. It's going to be fun to see if we can get this working! :)
Yep, and immediately changing the stock power supply won't hurt, either. Can't tell you how many 530 machines I worked on for people, usually within months of initial purchase. I got about ¼ of them working eventually. Almost always an issue with CMOS, memory, or the PSU. Lots of times the stock PSU would send wonky voltages to the rail and damage chips on the motherboard.
That being said, the few I have seen run without issue ran decently for what they were. Would probably be a good candidate for a lightweight Linux distro these days, because all the ones I came across shipped out with Vista stock and I assume a Linux distro with XFCE would run far better on it than Vista.
@@TheRetroRecall Not with my 530, but with another machine, I had very similar symptoms after the CMOS battery died, and simply replacing it didn't help. There was a jumper setting to put the BIOS into diagnostic mode, and that fixed it. Does that board have anything similar?
@@TheRetroRecall I didnt see ATX 4/8pin connector. So does it have only ATX20/24 pin connector?
This video is right up my alley, because I love entry-level prebuilt pc's (and have a few myself). And yes, you hit the nail on the head; different machines for different needs. Grandma didn't need a blazing-fast processor and hot rod graphics, she just needed the ability to do stuff like email, pay bills online, etc. I love the case on the HP--I'm a sucker for piano-black finishes lol This was a fun video, thanks
Agreed and glad you enjoyed!!
I used to work at the University of Iowa surplus, they were getting Dell Optiplexes -- I think this Dimension is like a Optiplex GX240 or possibly GX260 equivalent or so. I probably personally refurbed like 10,000 of these things. (The main difference on the Optiplex was Dell would guarantee fixed hardware for some number of years, so places like the University hospital who wanted to make an image and just keep using it.) I mean, they were solid and reliable, and did have PCI slots in them (and later on PCIe) so you could pop in cards if you wanted.
I will note regarding the video -- the BIOS says 1MB, but that's just what you get preallocated so if you were running DOS or had no video driver it'd show up as a 1MB card. Both Linux and Windows, the 865G driver would give it up to 128MB on demand. The 3D was slow as hell on them though even for the time. In modern era, this GPU is too old to have gotten ported to Linux "Gallium" -- barely. Mesa Gallium's Crocus driver actually supports back through the 965 and GM45 still (4th gen Intel GPU) while this 865G is 2nd gen.
"Mesa Amber" has the old driver that does support 865G still, but (at least on a Core 2 Quad my Dad was running until recently with a 3rd gen Intel GPU) the GPU was actually slow enough that leaving Amber off and letting it do software rendering was actually faster than having the GPU do any 3D (luckily, he was not trying to run anything 3D on it and the 2D and video scaling and whatever compositing support a modern desktop might use all run fine even on modern Ubuntu. He even ran Zoom conferences on it -- CPU and power usage were brutal, 200% CPU usage and it's a 110W chip so it was sucking down like 50W+ just running Zoom... but it did run smooth. He now has a Coffee Lake so it's sucking down about 1/20th the power now.)
Yes, I have a few optiplex systems here from the era and they seem almost identical. Yes I had cut out the 1mb mention in one of my edits but seemed to have left one in. It occurred to me after filming :).
I used to have a similar HP (bought refurbished @ Staples in Canada) to the 1 in this video however mine had a i5-3470 CPU, 12 GB DDR3 1600mhz RAM, 128GB SSD & a 2TB HDD. I added a MSI 1050 ti (4GB) low profile GPU, upgraded the RAM to 16GB, upgraded the ssd to a 500GB to play light e-sports on & took the HDD right out. Mine also never came with a sd card reader but really didn't need it anyway. It worked quite well for a while 'til I sold it a couple years ago & bought a full on Gaming Pre-built PC.
Sounds like a decent build for an off the shelf system!
i used to have a dell dimension 4400 with a 1.4 ghz pentium 4 and some amount of RDRAM... it was my tradition to have pcs with hard to source ram. my first pc had hard to source non-parity edo ram in the time of sdram. and then i had this dell with rdram in the time of ddr. but the dell did have a 4x agp slot, which i did populate with a radeon 9550. i played san andreas on that dell... or maybe i started there and then got a cheap hp pavilion with an athlon 64x2. it's all a blur.
Haha yes. Usually these videos will start to jog the memory of stuff we had in the past. I actually came across some of those Dell's with RDRAM which was surprising. I never had a lot of experience with hat ram as I tended to always run I to DIMM ram. Good Memories haha.
I have and still use a Dell Inspiron 530 for messing around with Windows Vista. The only upgrade I did with it was upgrading the RAM from 1 GB to 4 GB. That made a big difference in the performance.
Awesome that you still have it going! It's funny how much 3gb of ram can make a world of difference in machines of this era.
I grew up with entry level systems back in the 2000s and I've never had a problem with them. My main PC during that era was a Gateway 310 S (I still have it, too) and I played a ton of games on it without a GPU, browsed many websites (including classic TH-cam), and messed around with various software and it still served me well.
Exactly what they were meant for! Nice! And if you wanted to tweak them a little you still could!
@@TheRetroRecall I did end up upgrading the Gateway with a Radeon 9250 PCI (due to the lack of an AGP slot) and a Creative SoundBlaster sound card.
Ahh man, this brings back memories. Back when I first got into computers, I had PC number 2 here. An identical (albeit later model) Dell Inspiron 530 with like... A roll of toilet paper for a graphics card. It was curbside-rescue; I slapped a 2TB hard disk drive in it and installed Windows 7 Ultimate on it. It hardly ran most games AT ALL, but I played the crap out of them anyway until that thing died from -- big shock (quite literally) -- a PSU failure in 2018.
Hahah not a PSU failure lol. I used to do similar things with my hardware (even though I never had oem systems, just custom). I would run it hot for as much as I could until I could afford an upgrade. Fun times!
I have four of the second system cases in all black instead of grey and white. The I/O area is proprietary for one motherboard layout; a half-hour of careful Dremel'ing and filing fixed that problem. Socket 775 is nostalgic so three systems now have q6600's, 4GB DDR2-800 and a mix whatever old gpus I've kept.
If your looking for gpu's, those scam 1050ti's (actually GTS 450's) work quite well for WinXP sibling LAN partying.
Hah that sounds like a fun project and thank you for the recommendation!
The Dell Inspiron 530 Power Supply is the Bestec, one of the worst power supplies that can make the computer not work, it is one of my power supplies i hated, i recommend getting the different branded power supply that is compatible with the motherboard on this computer as a replacement and hopefully it'll work again.
I will try another to be sure and do much more troubleshooting. I'm determined to fix this system :)
Ive still got an old dimension 8100 still workd to this day. The date inside i believe is july 2001 spent many a nights msning and downloading on it as a kid. Its got a really cool case design a bitton thr front and the side hinges upwards to lift away and then the power supply is on a actual hinge so swings out to allow access. Im guessing it was a more mid range pc had a upgraded sound card aswell. Bought off a friend whos family werent short for money and were musical i believe had a studio in the basement so im guessing this maybe what the pc was originally for.
Ah the good ol days, lots of great memories.
I picked up a Dimension 2400 for $200 in a clearance sale from Dell Small Business. It had a 40gb drive and 256mb. I couldn't upgrade the video card because it lacked an AGP slot soldered on the board. I added more memory and used it as a headless games server and to learn linux with.
Nice use case!
Awesome retro PC video!😊
Thank you!
I used an Inspiron 530 for years. I bought it from the Dell Outlet as a return, I picked on with a Core2quad, 256MB or RAM and IIRC a 240GB HDD. I immediately upgraded the RAM and added a 500GB HDD I already had. Eventually I did add an AGP Video card but have no idea what it was. It really a workhorse of a PC. I believe at one point I Had to replace the PSU, but back then a standard PSU worked.
They can last quite a while if you maintain them.
Indeed, I have seen countless 530's need PSU and CMOS replacement. The stock PSU was not stable and sometimes sent too much juice to the rail which would cook chips on the motherboard. Unfortunately, that's one of those things that just happens before you actually get any indication that it COULD potentially happen. Can't tell you how many of these things got hard bricked because of that
I used to rebuild towers and sell them at the flea market. I would put Linux and load them with games and apps to have everything. That middle pc from Dell was one of my best sellers. My Debian based machines would get so many compliments. No complaints and every app I'd add links to TH-cam videos on how to use them. Yeah those machines were awesome.
Yes, even entry level PC's could gain longevity from a little bit of love. Linux and SSDs have make a world of difference in that regard.
love those dell dimension p4 's great chassis , great for retro computing , solidly built , still have two working examples.
Nice and agreed, they were built rock solid.
i have the middle inspiron 530 a mid tower version and the sff version , i ended up putting the 1156 motherboards in both of them , the dell inspiron 580 board fits in them all you have to do is put a piece of electrical tape on the io plate where the hdmi was on the original board
Nice!!
Honestly I feel like upgrading is a mindset that gets compulsory and never ends so Also I look to see when others do builds with the low minimum or a few updates to see what they used like what games and what os, in the end it's all part of the user personality.
For example I never saw much videos of using os2 along with dos for retrogaming and stuff. Or some people choose windows me or 2000
Yeah I know what you are saying for sure. It never ends to your point. Sometimes it feels good to be the underdog :)
These PC's were designed to sell fast and burn out faster. In the Tech community HP stood for Horrible Products even hough they were just ok. Usually the only part still working in these designs was the CPU, the MB, PSU and Ram usually the first to go and all together in most cases. These were heat boxes and while the CPU had cooling the MB VRMS and other components often slowly cooked to death. These were the bread and butter for Techs back in the day and these PC's kept steaks on the table to the unfortunate experience of the owner. I still have a stack of old working parts from these units and a few cases as well. Even made a retro build from one using an nVidia 550ti lol. Great look back, these were very basic but did serve a niche part of the market.
100% - and to your point kept the tech in business, spawned many computer companies and definitely had their place in the market. I also think they inspired enthusiasts to build custom PCs when they saw what the OEM's were putting out :)
Dell stood for Don't Expect Long Life. The power supplies and motherboards would often kick the bucket in just a few years.
I've never had this experience. As for now, many years later doing what I do for this channel, of all the Dell's I have only two PSUs have stopped working. I am not convinced the 530 is dead yet as a result of the PSU failure.
@@bibasik7The Dell 9000 SFF PSU's had a known design flaw, frustrating but at least replacement PSU's you buy online have the offending component removed.
Ugh, another video with Dull's...I mean Dell's? Just kidding 😊 Amazing video as usual dude! ❤
Haha, did you catch the little reference to you and Majenko in the video? :) Thank you for your support as always!!
The only one of those systems that I would personally call "That bad" would be the HP, In my opinion HP hasn't made anything good since the early 2000s. Those old Dimension systems are some of my favorite desktops from the Windows XP era. I have worked on hundreds of those, and that is not an exaggeration. What always gets me is that people seem to really hate those systems, they say that they are unreliable and not upgradable, both of which are false. As far as unreliable, I have only seen 1 or 2 dead ones. As far as not being upgradable, some of the lower end models didn't have a spot for a graphics card, but you could still upgrade the CPU, RAM, and storage, and it was all standard parts. Look at lower to middle class desktops today, most of them have soldered on CPUs, and either take laptop RAM or just have soldered on RAM; some of them even run off of a laptop power supply, those are truly junk. The Inspiron 530 was also a pretty popular machine which could be configured as a lower or middle class machine. Those aren't as solid as the old Dimensions, but are by no means bad.
Great write up and insight, thank you! You are right about today's machines.... Future us will look at today's machines as throw aways as to your point - they are soldered and have limited upgrade capabilities.
To be honest that HP is running slow, because avast is on it, Win 10 doesn't help also and those A4 are kinda slow now a days so, good video !
Thanks and yes, I agree with the above. I think a clean Linux distro with a dual boot to windows for games would be ideal for it.
@@TheRetroRecall You can use even Win10 with it, just replace HDD for SSD. From Windows 8, Microsoft OS is extremly slow on HDD.
Yes amazing how an SSD makes all the difference.
that inspiron 531 still my daily driver, that celeron chip holds up like a tank and runs w11
Haha no way, that's awesome!
I believe it, up to last week my 620 was my daily. After some bad storms with power outages it’s cooked. I could get a 1:1 board, but it’s time to move on. I’m going to bring it up to the 11th Gen.
Hi! Great video as always :D
28:11 - The system doesn't start because you probably forgot to plug in the 4-pin connector for the CPU power. I'm only seeing 24 pin connector from other PSU.
Maybe there is a reason :)
Have a nice day!
Appreciate it! I'll check it out and double back with an update!
a 2004 pentium 4 dell dimension in one of those purple cases was my first computer i ever owned myself, i played so much neverwinter nights on that thing
Nice!!!! There are so many around. There was a time where every thrift store had one or 10 lol
The Dimension 2400/3000 was truly a solid little unit from Dell. The downside was a lack of an AGP slot. I had to rebuild a few of them, using retail Intel desktop motherboards. All the pins lined up perfectly, seeing that the Dimension 2400/3000 was using a stripped down variant of an Intel desktop motherboard.
Nice! And yes the lack of an AGP slot would definitely be considered a deficit, however it adds to the character lol.
glad to see you're back again and I have some fond memories of the dell dimension 2400. I upgraded it over the years to have a SoundBlaster Audigy 2, 2gb of DDR Ram, 200gb and 80GB HDD, DVD/CD-RW drive & a floppy drive/bracket from a similar model while working at good will.
The only issue I ran into using this computer was the lack of of an AGP slot and the weak onboard intel chipset. Granted it was good for dos, 90's gaming but anything pass 2002 pushed it way too hard.
Edit: Oh yeah that's not a stock PSU for that dell, it wouldn't have switch or SATA ports at all, it must've been replaced because the OEM went out over it's life.
Makes total sense (about the PSU) and yes - the entry levels were what they were, but definitely could be tweaked a little bit haha. It's good to be back :)
Nice to see these. I must have at least a dozen of the old Dell Dimension series of systems. Nobody wanted them in the past.
They were definitely a plentiful system at the time and flood ewaste centers today lol.
My grandma had one of those Dimensions, I had one of those Inspirons (and earlier a BTX Dimension E510) and the frustrating part for me was always how close they were to being completely standard mATX machines and yet how far -- the Dimensions had the cooler brackets in the case metal, both had non-standard front panel connectors and pinouts, but both were otherwise completely normal. You could swap the power supply fairly easily -- good thing, because you would when they went pop and you'd be praying they didn't take the boards with them.
Absolutely. Now I have heard many people mention that they have modified the BTX cases to accommodate the ATX MBs.
It's interesting, the Hhgregg I used to work at almost certainly sold that model of HP. I probably handled several dozen of them working in the stockroom. I also bought a HP laptop from the store using my employee discount that had similar specifications but (luckily) was loaded with Windows 7. Not a bad system for what it was, and definitely leagues better than not having that integrated Radeon graphics. Lots of games would run on it, on the lowest graphics settings.
That's awesome, thanks for sharing this.
The best one is the silver dell inspiron 530. That thing has been amazing since I bought it in 2008 and with upgrades it’s still in use to this day running windows 11 hooked up to my TV.
The lack of SSE4.2 (POPCNT and AVX instructions) is a limiting factor. I was eyeing mine, wondering how well it might stream XBox Series X games on Gamepass. It could still manage to be a modern gaming computer.
Nice! I'm going to dig deeper into it and see what is causing it not to come out of reset.
8gb of ram with a sata ssd and a four cores cpu makes this machine still viable for simple tasks. It is a perfect illustration that the last 10-15 years were characterized by not much progress. We've gotten used to 5-7 percent improvements in CPU speeds per so called generation- really pathetic increases. Intel 13 to 14 gen cpu's are 2-3 percent better.
@@sezwo5774 There are real world limits regarding the underlying physics. Computers were a new and emerging technology back when tremendous performance gains were to be had, but now the x86 ATX WinTel standard is mature.
Can't really call it pathetic, when nature won't let you spend a lot of time past the 4GHz thermal barrier, given clock speeds were the primary driver for performance.
We were able to extend the life of the x86 by expanding the core count to two, and then to four. However, going beyond 6 cores is much more challenging.
Microsoft has been laying the foundation for a shift to a new computing paradigm. Windows 8 saw the introduction of UWP apps to replace legacy x86 software. These UWP apps are expected to be cross-platform with Windows RT, the ARM implementation. Following Apple making the switch to Apple Silicon withe M1, Microsoft is expected to follow with AI powered ARM chips.
@@sezwo5774 Yep I agree. Tech chances slower now. Yet people keep throwing out or rejecting perfectly usable machines. Their loss is someone else’s gain I suppose.
I used a Hp pavillion like #3 (A5 quad core , original 8Gb, upgraded to 16gb, replaced the hdd with an Ssd 5 years ago ) until about 2 or 3 years ago when my software was just running too slowly on it. Well built and reliable machine. Eventually I started operating it without the case for heat reasons.
Nice!! What os were you running on it?
my 2nd PC was a dell dimension 8400 and at first is was great . but just after a few years the fans went into jet engine mode. replacing gpu did nothing as it was the p4 cooking itself or rather the temperature sensor.
it stopped booting properly and when it managed to post then windows struggled with bad ram as it couldn't correctly load ntldr and winlogon from hdd so I had run them from a floppy.
I'm amazed it lasted 8 years. good times watching movies on my crt tv from the svideo out on gpu. maaaaaaan what a furnace it was though as my room felt like a sauna when it was on, cpu fan power connector also look burned.
Haha room heaters for sure. It's funny ad I have an i7 3rd Gen system that's fully clean and new Thermal paste and it tends to run quite hot / fans running quite a bit.
My first PC ran windows ME or as I called it More Errors! It had a CD rewriter and a floppy disc with a 40Gb HDD which for the time was a large capacity.
Haha I know there are a lot of stories / challenges out there regarding ME, however I cannot say I ever experienced any issues with ME. I did a video on it and I think it's because my system had the latest drivers, etc and it just worked well (for me). Of course I also had a 2000 system running in parallel that was stable as a rock.
That Dell Inspiron 530 holds a strong place in my heart, it was my first computer after all and is what got me started in Vintage computing. My Inspiron 530 is actually still running and I still have it, it did have the power supply issue that yours was having. So for me when my supply failed the motherboard light would come on and nothing else, same bestec supply. But after a replacement it got going again, what I'm thinking your systems problem is has to do with Ram slots, mine has always been sensitive about those I had to clean them out with rubbing alcohol to get it running again. Mine has the specs of a gtx 550 TI, 4gbs of ram, and a core 2 duo 2.66ghz, it ran games pretty well and can sometimes even run more modern titles.
Thanks for sharing this. You should check out my recent release as it features this system again :)
lol, i missed my dell dimension 2400, and recently bought one for $30.
Funny how at the time i wasn't the biggest fan of the case, but now i love it.
Agreed. It's grown on me :)
same it was the first computer I got out of highschool and it lasted until 2015 "cap plague destroyed the motherboard"
Awe too bad. Yeah it wasn't well known at the time where now we are all over it and fixing where we can.
The Pentium 4 Dell Dimension was our family computer in the 00's!
It was replaced by a newer Dell with an AMD Athlon in 2010, then a Dell with a 7th gen Core i5 and a terribly slow HDD in 2017.
In 2021, I re-used the case from the 2010 Dell to build a new PC for my parents with an AMD Ryzen 5600G.
Nice!
On the 1st pc The power supply has been replaced at some point as originally they came with dell psus and the ram was 128 when it was new so has been upgraded
Yes agreed.
this was the exact computer i had when i was a kid!!! it looked the exact same except it was a dell dimension 2300
Nice! Yes Dell seemed to have used this case design quite a bit for many different hardware configurations.
System Nr. 2 properly needs a new CPU. I had a similar computer showing the same behaviour. After replacing CPU it came back to life.
I'll be checking that out for sure.
I don't know if you would consiger it retro but,
I took a HP Pro with a I7-3770, 16GB DDR3 1600 memory, added a GTX 780 Ti, a WD Blue SSD 1TB and built a Windows XP machine with. It will run old Windows 98 games like Midtown Madness and play upto games like FEAR 2. Very cool XP build, and support Opengl hardware mode with the GTX 780 Ti. Awesome end life XP build.
That's actually a nice build. I guess the term retro can be very subjective lol.
@The_Rebel587Yeah, sad that 4th gen CPUs by Intel are the last ones to run with no driver. Does anyone know what was AMD's last gen for Windows XP? Just wondering.
@@aegwasherndryrer For AMD, AM3+ platform is the last with proper Win XP support.
turned around matx on the hp , btx would have the i.o still on top but gpu slots down and cpu further in the front
Yes, true thanks for pointing that out.
I would like to get one of these cases and do a sleeper build but I'm just worried about the atrocious air flow
Yes, it may need to be modified to accommodate some extra cooling for sure.
That first machine was indeed everywhere back in the mid 2000s. It was an okay web browsing machine.
Ironically for a relatively basic machine, it has become more popular int he retro community.
Mine was an absolute monster when I got done building on It in 2012
Nice!!
Just put Win98 SE on a dell dimension 3000. It runs great as a 98 retro gaming setup. It would have probably struggled in XP but on 9x I'm very happy with it!
Agreed!!! It would be great with that and a voodoo card for the win :)
@@TheRetroRecall haha that would be sweet! I'll need a PCI one but they're so expensive now, I'll have to get lucky at the thrift store (I hope)...I got the 3000 for 15 bucks 💪🏻😎👍🏻
Holy, that's awesome! My Voodoo3 3000 PCI was 20.00 from an online marketplace, so I lucked out. Keep your eyes peeled!
@@TheRetroRecall wow thats a crazy good price
MS deciding to kill Win-7 was the best thing that happened to me.. it put me onto Linux and I've never looked back
I've heard that same decision from many. Why Linux distro do you commonly use / recommend?
You said you thought the third system had a BTX motherboard but it doesn’t, it’s just upside down. If it was a BTX motherboard the expansion slots would still be at the bottom.
In the first Dell, the Cooler Master PSU is definitely a replacement because the cables are too long and Dell would not put in a PSU with an 8 pin CPU power connector for this motherboard.
100% - thank you! Of course I realized this after release :)
I have the upgrade old computer sickness. Which is why my Inspiron 530 has 8gb ram & a quadro p400, and a 2tb evo 870... It's actually pretty usable, I just need to find a Q9550S that's real and not $lolprice and it'll be complete.
Hahah 'the upgrade old computer sickness' 😂
How many modems do you now have? ;) Seems every PC in de states comes with one.
One gripe/pet peeve is the lack of AGP ports's on business/entry machine's of the era as seen in PC1.
For PC3. The Windows 8 licence has been upgraded as well so i am not sure if Windows 8 will activate. And OEM recovery disk's are not really nessecary anymore since Windows Vista as the standard install media will activate with the included OEM licence. Windows XP had different install disk's for that. For example the Dell recovery media is needed for Dell systems as the retail media does not active on the OEM licence. And does not even accept/recognize the OEM key.
Haha!! So.... Many..... Modems..... 😂. Thanks for the added info and yes - AGP would have made a world of difference (at the time).
I have a 530s with a concerning power supply that has to kinda charge up until it boots up and it does this pulsating light thing where both the front power and psu led flash
That sounds like a capacitor issue for sure. I have one like that, I tend to keep it powered off now until I have time to fix it.
@@TheRetroRecall yeah the computer was previously used by my grandpa before and it was hardly turned off, when I opened it the thing was dust central until I disassembled it and gave it a good clean up to find out later down the road the on board audio stopped working but it served its purpose as a vista PC back then
For sure. Just a little TLC and you will have it running in no time!
I recenty upgraded a Dell Dimension E520 from the Pentium D to the Core 2 Quad Q6600 and it is very fast with Windows 10. It can play youtube at 1080p and it only takes a few seconds to boot up since I added a SSD and 8gb RAM. Once your Inspiron 530 is up and running, you can do the same if you have the G33M03 model motherboard. It would transform it into a great modern PC to use today for any basic web task. The new CPU is only $7 on ebay so its a great deal for over 4x the performance.
Appreciate it! I think I have a few of those CPUs around that I can test!
psu was definatly replaced!!! i noticed sata power connectors at the bottom of the case! these computers didnt even have sata ports let alone power plugs for them!
For sure, the things you notice after you publish a video haha!
I have a AMD HP hibiscus mainboard but I want to sell it together with a hard drive with XP installed. It has 8gb installed but only 4 is visible cuz 32 bit XP. It’s the top of the line FM1 based chip so the integrated graphics is great. It also runs PCIe slots and XP likes them. Could stand to have a good dGPU but the integrated runs or launches almost everything.
Nice. I like those systems.
I bought the silver Inspiron new in 2006 or 2007. It had 2gb of ram. Cost almost 1,000 before tax and software. Had it a long time, it served it's purpose.
They weren't bad systems for what they were, and I'm convinced we can get this one working again.
I have everything here from 1978 to 2016. No, not everything is retro yet, even if I often call it that, but it is on the way there, even if it will take a while for some machines. I don't think it's so bad if there are newer ones. The last one I have is from 2016, an A10 7890k, the fastest FM2+ model (which only offers average gaming performance, though). It's just an entry-level office platform. All the ones that came after that are based on AM4. But you're right, with Linux you can definitely continue to use the device for a few more years.
Yes, that's the plan. I'll feature it in akother video I'm sure with a Linux distro :)
I work as office computer guy since 2005 or so. These dells were supper common. Decent price, full package, good warranty.
Also very reliable/low maintenance. Worked long past expected life wo problems. As its government, these had to be destroyed/recycled. Wish I could had saved some :(
Some had coppermine/tualatin, pop up front panels and board with AGP. Bit more ram, decent AGP card and it plays time appropriate games very well.
Agreed re: reliability and longevity. Shame they get destroyed, especially when they could just destroy the drives instead.
@@TheRetroRecall Yes its sad. Was not only bout data. As far as I remember it was so people wouldn't take these to resell or dump theme in forest. Had to had documents to show they were officially recycled.
Ahhhhh yes makes sense then.
. . . Microsoft Windows GUI desktop stability was considered a luxury; and the support for massive items like paper clips a very valuable asset . . .
Haha! Clippy?
The last desktop we ever used as the family computer was a P4 2.8Ghz HP Pavilion before we all moved over to our own laptops. That 1st Dell has all the legacy ports so that's nice for anyone who might still like to use those. I'm hoping that 2nd system doesn't have a fried chipset from that bad 5V line, cheapo PSU's can be a real issue! For the 3rd system I'm thinking Linux Mint with the Cinnamon interface, it has that familiar Windows look & feel.
Yes, a few others have mentioned Linux Mint, I'm going to have to check it out. I'll report back on the Inspiron system. My thoughts are still on the PSU causing the damage, but we will see.
@@TheRetroRecall Looking forward to the future episodes! 👍
Haha stay tuned!
I could be wrong, but the second PC doesn't appear to have the CPU power cable plugged in from the working unit. May be the problem.
I'll double check that for sure.
@@TheRetroRecall I think you only pluggeg the 24 pin cable too..
I'll confirm for sure. Now you all have me curious.
Computer number 3 would probably make for a beefy Vista machine. It even looks the part, considering the glossy black case. How about installing Vista Ultimate 64 bit with extended kernel on it?
Ohhhh Vista.....it would make for an interesting restoration.
Another Walmart Inspiron 530 user here. It was touch and go briefly when I wondered if it would be better to spend money on Windows 7 near the end of its life, or to upgrade to something more modern. Windows 10 was out, but was too heavy on the old mechanical HDD. I rode out Windows Vista as long as I could. Eventually SATA SSD prices made upgrading affordable, and I was able to install Windows 11 on it.
I was working in I.T. at the time, and my office upgraded to Surface Pro devices, which meant that I had to follow suite in order to keep providing support. I spent $1,000 on a base model Surface Pro 4 with a dock, a thermally limited dual core, less RAM, and weaker GPU than the upgraded Inspiron 530. Personally, I found it to be a largely pointless upgrade, despite the novelty of the Surface tablet form factor. A "luxury" computing device to be sure, but poor performance to price value compared to a Walmart PC.
I remember seeing these on the shelves but never tended to think much more of them. I was into custom builds mostly, then later switched to Thinkpads for everything. I've been itching to build a brand new decently powered desktop pc for my editing, etc. Not a fan of Windows 11, so may end up really getting into the Linux side of things.
@@TheRetroRecall Linux is a shift into a different world. I tried it back around 2000 with Mandrake 7.2. It was mostly a toy, kind of cool to run Windows software under WINE.
Later I was introduced to a beginner friendly distribution called "Xandros", which renamed all of the obtuse Linux applications to generic names to make them more intuitive for Windows users.
What are XMMS, Amarok, and Elisa to a novice? How do you avoid uninstalling your desktop environment when trying to install Steam?
Regarding Windows 11, I'm sketchy on TPM security flaws, and Microsoft Accounts (MSA). I'm looking at the Windows 11 roadmap, and wondering how bad October might be.
The HP one is somewhat odd. It's not completely bespoke. The board itself looks like microATX judging by the screw layout and shape of the PCB itself. It apparently seems to use inverted ATX, and I thought it was some HP-only nonsense. But no, it's also on off-the-shelf cases.
The chassis itself seems to at least date back to the Windows Vista era as taking off the faceplate reveals a metric ton of cutouts for extras used in higher and SKUs. The good thing is that that chassis can more or less take standard boards and PSUs, meaning that replacing the guts is easier than modern HPs which use special form factors and connectors for the board and PSU.
Agreed. I tend to like keeping these systems as original as possible, however it's interesting the different things OEM's were doing with their configurations / builds and in their minds future proofing them to minimize production costs. The issue is that at that time tech was changing so quickly that the next best idea rendered some of this obsolete.
@@TheRetroRecall Understandable.
Though the layout atill persists on newer HP desktops, the boards went from mATX to bespoke form factors and layouts.
I have one of those white Dell cases myself, they look pretty slick, I don´t use it though. I would begin testing yours with a different CPU and reset the bios if possible to rule out those to begin. since it does not execute any code at all the CPU is a suspect in this matter. that system would probably be possible to overclock but since it is a Dell it will be locked for that but it should be possible with the tape mod on the cpu instead if you get it running again
I appreciate the recommendation! I'll check it out, thanks!
No, no, and no. Never owned any DELL. I bought recently cheap second-hand business machines.
An HP Elitedesk 8300 which has a i7-3770, it had 8Gb of RAM and I upgraded it to 32GB max. I didn't yet put my hands on a Geforce 1030 and these utilise PCIe 3.0 bus.
An HP Elitdesk 6300. It had 8Gb but added the 8gb that came out of the HP 8300, total 16GB of 32GB max. Added a multicard reader and changed the dvd burner.
An Lenovo thinkcenter m700 tiny. Added a 2.5" spinning disk.
All these 3 system replace old ones from 2000's and they still have plenty of room for upgradings. Money... simply doesn't stretch.
Old systems are now resting in the attic. Me or someone will play with them in the future.
Regrading to those systems, they are ok for they were intented for. With some hardware upgrades, they will perform better at level of mid-range PCs. Cheap SSDs whenever possible will improve things and there are tons of RAM, CPU, and GFXs offers.
Nice builds and glad you are holding onto them for the future!
So I definitely have 2 or 3 of those 1st Dells sitting in my basement on my workbench... and I agree with you, as much as I dislike Dell, some of them were randomly built like beasts. That 2nd Dell system, I had worked on quite a few back when I was a worker at the local repair shop, and we used to run into a lot of problems... it was also when Dell *supposedly* was using *bad/failed/likely-to-fail* hardware in their systems, although we usually had just issues with the HDD or the RAM. Almost always was a nightmare trying to get those assessed and fixed in a reasonable amount of time. The HP, that seems like something I would've sold when I worked at Staples in the mid-2010's... actually I'm pretty sure I did. Never had any issues with them, and it was when AMD was trying to make a big push back into the market, especially regarding affordable GPU options. All-in-all, really cool look back at the options that many of us, especially with those Dell systems, saw daily.
Yes, agreed. Dell is one of those OEM's you love to hate lol. Just when you want to get mad at them, they come out with something that just works lol. I generally love HP and have for decades... There's just something about these systems that I can't out my finger on. Lol.
@@TheRetroRecall I love HP, or at least always had really good luck with them since growing up. Speaking of... I'll 110% have to look in my basement later and see if I have one of these style HP machines, I remember that front being scratched up a bit on a few. It's all that casing, as far as I can tell... just very prone to the slightest touch.
So true - it's the piano black finish.
always nice to see these older machines of yesteryear end up on your bench. Also, is it me or did you upgrade your audio setup?
Haha thanks and totally upgraded :)
@@TheRetroRecallreally did help getting that upgrade. That last HP machine was regular micro Atx. For whatever reason, HP liked making their mini tower systems with matx motherboards flipped around. Probably to match their BTX systems
Appreciate the additional info :)
At: 29:50 you mention that the Power Supply is down below when you can clearly see that it’s at the top, Good video all the same! 🙂🇬🇧
I wonder if the CMOS Jumper has been set to: “Clear CMOS” on System 2, The Dell Inspiron 530, Just a thought, Definitely the nicest looking machine of the 3 although the HP is a close second and the first one isn’t that bad but just looks a bit bland…
Yes.
I will take a look for sure. I know I replaced the battery, but haven't dug into it much more from that. I'm determined to get it working!
@@TheRetroRecall Hope you manage to get it working, I’m just going through some of the retro machines that I have here which is 50+ PC’s & 100+ Laptops etc, I’ve got a few Dell & HP PC’s from different eras and not much thought was put into the design of the older machines, That’s what it seemed like back then anyway! 😂🇬🇧
Haha! Feel free to end some this way 😂
I took my childhood PC, a Compaq Presario CQ5700Y, gutted it and turned it into a complete monster of a PC 😆
Haha awesome!
You can quite easily play Arena with a Pentium 1.0 Gig and higher. I remember those games quite well, as that engine was used to power the massive growth of online pc gaming RTCW, COD, HL, etc
100%
I'd definitely looking to make one of those systems into a very-high-end Windows 98 gaming PC :) Linux is very backwards compatible and I have a modern linux system, so I wouldn't need old hardware to run old linux, but that is just me, if I was giving the system to someone who just needed a browser terminal maybe....
I think it would be fun to explore some of the older distributions of Linux on some of this older hardware.
Try windows 11 on dell dimension you can choose the upgrades and which dell dimension
Or whatever windows to
My edit don’t work
Windows 11 on the 3000?
You can choose your upgrades if you like or original hardware
@@TheRetroRecall dell dimension 3000 good choice man
that last case is not btx. it's just an inverted atx case which you can still go out and buy new. it's a useful configuration if you have the left side of your case resting right against a wall
For sure, I realized that after of course :)
I have had all 3 Dimension 3000 with 52-32-12 CDRWwith a Celeron 3ghz Inspiron 530 with ubuntu and the last one well I still have
I love hearing when people say they still have them going. That's awesome.
Dude you got a Dell.
Honestly for what you got those are stylish computers and require very few mantainance. have you seen the project exo-dos for having games preconfigured and ready to use in msdos even if you have to use a network drive.
Thanks and I've heard of it however have not seen it. I will check it out, many thanks!
@@TheRetroRecall there's the project TH-cam channel but I haven't seen anyone implementing it yet in retro gaming channels. Also 500 gb to have almost every dos game maybe it's too much so I guess it can be made into different sizes according to different machines
Ok, now I'm definitely interested. Didn't Phil'sComputerLab do something on this?
@@TheRetroRecall I don't remember if he did or was a short video, maybe.
Another excellent vid👍🏼👍🏼
Thank you!!
That PSU on the dell was replaced. I have the same one with a dell power supply it was not good when i came back the whole area smelled like smoke. I think they are common to fail.
Yes. I've had many Dell PSUs die prematurely.
the 2nd pc looks like its a cpu problem or a failed bios flash. could be an unsupported cpu or the bios is too old to recognise the upgraded cpu. its the only time ive known a cpu fan on a dell or hp to spin at full rpm. could also be that it needs a dedicated gpu.
I'm going to dig deeper but yes, definite possibilities. Thank you!
I used an inspiron 530 for a long time. Upgraded it to 8gb ram, nvidia GPU, SSD & large HDD combo, and a core 2 e8600. With a modded bios, it supported AHCI for SSD TRIM. It was the most reliable PC I ever had.
I stupidly got rid of it. But recently someone gave me an inspiron 518, and when I looked inside, it was basically the same mainboard.
I'm sure they shared the same architecture across the models for a while. Some of these OEM systems were quite upgradable!
Great video, those gray box Dells really are everywhere selling for dirt cheap nowadays. My first computer which was a hand me down was one of them. Now I have 3 of them in my collection haha! Still pretty good if you wanna do some retro gaming.
100%. I really enjoyed LGR s video on one he got for his channel. Definitely a must watch :)
#1 I had one. That Dell was a tank! Worst thing I ever did was get rid of it!
The definitely built them to last and used this design over many hardware configurations that they sold. I personally never liked these systems at the time, but now I enjoy tinkering with them and appreciate what Dell was doing back in the day.
I have an inspirion with a Core 2 Duo e8400, its actually a decent gaming rig, I think I have a Geforce 9800 GT in there atm, I also have a a Dimension 4600, which is similar to the 3000 except it has an AGP Port, I have a Radeon 9600 SE in it, oh and a 3GHz P4 HT. Fun retro gaming rig as well.
Nice builds and yes... Retro gaming is the best on real hardware :)
1000%
@@TheRetroRecall so decided to get it out of storage to boot up the Inspirion 530 and turns out I have a GTX 460 in it. Definitely overkill for an XP Machine
Thinking about throwing something in more period correct like an 8800 gt (I actully have a Dell OEM too) Thoughts?
I'll be honest, I think what you are suggesting would be ok. @The_Rebel587 knows quite a bit about the video card setups. Thoughts Rebel?
You should show the FPS in quake3. Hit the tilde key and type /cg_drawfps 1 and hit enter. Now you have your frame rate in the corner. I can't believe I still remember all those console commands. lol
Thanks. I will keep that in mind for next time.
Awesome
Thanks!
The first one reminds me of my dell optiplex gx280 I use for work 😂
Haha! That's awesome.
Btw, standard tech procedure is to test the power supply BEFORE starting the system... Less magic smoke that way 😁
Appreciate it.
funnily enough, i had my psu die in the same way on the same machine, except the core 2 version of it. luckily the psu did not kill it and the 5v rail was dead. i did get it to boot when it was dead but it was extremely unstable
I'm going to dig deeper soon to see what I can do to get this system working.
That HP Pavilion is not BTX. BTX would have the IO’s on the right side of the board when viewed from the back. I have only seen BTX form factor on Dell systems and was not well received.
Thanks - as I noted in other comments I realized that after. I guess HP was notorious for flipping the boards around.
The little Dell was nice as everything you could upgrade
True. Many have mentioned the lack of an AGP limits it. I think it does give it some charm lol.
@@TheRetroRecall I had a 530 or still do and the only thing that held it back was the length of card it could hold. It now has a GTX 265. 8gb of ram also. Good little firewall or nas now.
Nice! Everything has a purpose.
@@TheRetroRecall It has PCIE 1 slot. The very 1st PCIE I believe.
@@TheRetroRecall Mine was the Core 2 quad Q6600
I saved up for months and gave dell £800 for one of those dimensions and a flat screen monitor. As much as the system worked well, when it came to adding a video card, the asshats at dell had desoldered the AGP port as a cost saving measure. Also, only discovered the front USB whilst using the flap as a handle whilst throwing it out ....
Haha, I hear so many stories of what Dell did as cost saving measures and how people dealt with them (including throwing off of cliffs) haha!
At least we had installed optical drives, rather then, now, companies expect you to purchase separately as external drives.
I their logic is that you can either use a USB stick or download the software. I for one love physical discs.
I still have my Dimension 3000. Damned thing still works too. Used it from new until about 2015 to run CAD/CAM software and machine emulators to program CNC milling machines. Was a solid machine, though I ran Windows 2K on it rather than XP for compatibility reasons. My biggest gripe with it, was the cooling fan had an atrocious pitch to it. Thing would incessantly ramp up and down in RPM even when the system was idle. Drove me nuts. One evening after the shop had closed, I was working on a project and had enjoyed a few “adult beverages” … well, I lost my shit on that damned cooling fan. Took a 3” hole saw to the side panel and installed a 110 volt muffin fan wired in with a 12v relay to power it on with the PC. Did it stop the CPU fan from revving up and down? Nope. But I couldn’t hear it over the the 110 volt fan anymore!
Still running - impressive and pleased to hear! Hahahaha 'adult beverage' inspiration!! 😂😂. Remind me never to make you upset lol
Several years ago I was given a Dimension 3000. I cleaned it up and bumped up the RAM and my wife used it happily for a few years.
Back when it was fun to upgrade systems and see the difference in performance.
@@TheRetroRecall Yep, and when her power needs exceeded the limits of the Dell I built her a new PC that last her for years (with a few upgrades, of course 😉).
That's perfect.
on the 2nd system, I'd suggest testing the CMOS battery and clearing it as the first step in diagnosing why it won't even POST
Yes I did that, unfortunately no dice. I'm going to dig deeper into it and see what's what. Great suggestion though as I had two other systems do the same thing. I wonder how many systems were tossed As a result of that one cr2032 battery
When we put out those Dimensions at schools we maxed out the ram, even if they didnt utilize it. I would upgrade bios and max ram.
Sounds good.
I think I had that same model Dell Dimension when I was in college
Nice! They were quite common....
@@TheRetroRecall yea, wish I still had my old ivory dimension to run DOS on
I have the third system, i put an i7 3770 cpu, a gtx 1650 and 16GB of ram and it runs pretty well.
Awesome. What OS are you running?
@@TheRetroRecall windows 11
Nice!!