I will say this guy's enthusiasm for micro computers gets me every time. Thanks to him I made a choice to buy myself a 3050 dell micro. This channel is definitely worth everyone's time. I'm not disappointed with my purchase thanks to this channel.
Been using the 7050 and 7060 mff's at work for a while and they are always noticeably slower than the full size units with the same specs. Dell really needs to fix the cooling aspects of these and find a batter power adapter that has the brick on one end or the other and not a middle laptop style.
@@Christobevii3 It could be that your units came with the lower-power "T" CPUs to save power. The apples-to-apples comparison would be using full-power CPUs with the 65W thermal solution.
at this point 10Gbit should be standard in all PC:s, We have USB standard that is 2x or 4x of that, but I guess many people have only one PC at home with out NAS.
@@oappi4686 10gb is much more expensive and a bit hotter. also some cheaper modules have trouble connecting at lower speeds. but as others have mentioned, most likely dell doesn't want these things to be used as low power servers, as this might interfere with their bottom-cost server products.
@@ryutenmen they are not mutually exclusive.. Putting a parachute on before jumping out of a plane is both incredibly smart and an obvious choice too for instance..
Love the flow of these videos now, and especially the new desk and background setup. I need something for my eyes to go over while I'm listening every so often, so an interesting background actually keeps my focus better than the previous studio background
I think buying these used is the way to go. A week ago, I bought a very lightly used 5090 with a 10th gen i5 cpu and Windows 11 Pro for only $350. I spent $30 to upgrade the RAM from 8 GB to 16 GB, and it runs great. I’m using it as a media server.
Apart from a couple of Sony laptops, all the PCs in my home are DELL, I like that I can log on and get drivers and updates quickly and safely. I recently bought a very cheap used 7040 micro and upgraded the drive and added RAM. The STH videos have been hugely helpful in choosing a model and doing the upgrades. Thanks!!
7:35: The PM9A1 series (you can see this on the left side of the label, along with the model number) is the OEM variant that's basically equivalent to the 980 Pro, FWIW.
Another fantastic review. After watching STH a few years ago I picked up and upgraded a pair of HPE MicroServer G10+ units. However I was looking to downsize my “Production” homelab (Websites, Plex, Pihole, Tailscale, and a few other services). After watching a bunch of this series I ended up getting a Dell 7060 Micro and it’s been awesome for me! I keep my two HPE Microservers as “test” homelab gear but I might even be looking to sell one as my “test” stuff doesn’t really require two full fat servers lol
Very interesting. Thanks for this comparison. I was tempted to get the non-T version of the 13500 Micro on Dell's Outlet, now I am not sure (as 13th gen runs even hotter than 12th). May wait for the 28W Meteor Lake Asus Mini PC instead.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo I wonder if in normal usage like for web browsing and office tasks the fans stay fairly quiet? instead of just under stress tests. Also whether it can be throttled in the BIOS to mimic the t-series settings of 20% less power.
Deployed a bunch of the previous gens of these. All the staff got i5 and all the managers got i7. The i7 system noise can only be described as 'jet engines'. Windows updates were the highest load in their use and would always trigger jet mode for the fan. Everyone gets i5 now if I have any say in the purchasing decision.
Got a new job at a bank and they use all Dell micro PCs and Dell laptops. They let me take some 5000 series models that were being disposed of. Have yet to get anything up and running with them yet, but excited to use them.
I went for the 5000 version of this, it's the same board but missing the second NVMe connector, 35W only and DDR4 only (when purchasing anyway). It does take a 2.5" SATA drive though. Got it with the 15-12600T and it performs really well for dev work using Visual Studio. I also got the rear USB-C and am driving a 5k 5120x2160 monitor plus two more 4k monitors using the display ports, and that's what ruled out the Lenovo equivalent for me, the Dell is much better for multiple monitors.
@@plutoisacomet 5080->5090->5000 Hopefully they've ironed out more problems by now! It's working very well in my un-corporate small business office and when they next have a good deal on it, I might get another for home.
it would be great to compare the stock cooler throttling behaviour with a copper version from an older model - assuming that the mounting is compatible. After market mods would be fun.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo i see more of a problem with the external plastic grid blocking the flow of air. Push some smoke thru the fan to give us a visual as the air exits!! The only other choice would be to swap for a higher end laptop fan. Visually it looks like dell chose old overstock fans.
Great video! Last year I bought a dell 7050 micro for about $95 with 8gb ram and a 128gb ssd. I removed the ssd and installed my 1tb sata ssd that I had and installed linux mint. It ran it great. Later I upgraded the ram to 32 gb. And just recently I installed a wifi card and ant. It has the vga addon also. Maybe later I will get a m.2 hard drive and install a large sata storage drive to hold files. It runs linux mint perfectly even with just 8gb ram with plenty of responsiveness. Just limited running vms in virutal box. I love it.
Flash performs and last longer when cool. The premise that it lasted longer when hot was a misunderstanding. It's always better to be cool but being near and below freezing can be a problem.
@@emailkanji Flash performs best around 40-60C depending on the SSD. Micron drives seem to be a little more touchy than the rest when it comes to temps.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Yes, but a heatsink is a high thermal conductivity block of metal, whereas an FR4 PCB with 0.035mm copper layers has a much lower thermal conductivity, so the heatsink is absolutely guaranteed to raise the NAND IC temperatures unless you're throwing incredible amounts of forced air at it.
So the PCIe pinholes are for the Precission 3260 2L model. I got one, but since I didn't get the GPU package they didn't provide the raiser board - I r so pissed. Dell didn't provide the SATA parts either.
I wish this series included some analysis how to add 10Gbps connectivity to these boxes, because without it 1Gbps is kinda limiting them in networking department.
All the micro Optiplex systems I can see online have fixed configurations, but the video shows a working configurator. Did Dell change in the two weeks since this video came out or am I missing something?
I know we can easily find it ourselves, but a link to the actual product on Dell's website would be nice. I like these units, but they always leave me wanting. Like ability to add 10Gb or make one just a little thicker for more storage options, etc.
A ssd heatsink would be nice but easy to add on. I would like to see the case being used a passive heatsink to allow for some increase cooling and maybe reduce fan speed for spikes in CPU utilization.
Max Power that it showed was 181.6 W. But only for split second. I wonder if (due to socket lever being present - I didn't finish the video yet BTW) you can change CPU's or at least use better Thermal Paste on this thing and maybe small fan? Or use similarly sized, better designed copper heat sink coming with a fan?
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Well, duh. But if you can and if you can "mod" it, it would be cool. Also I didn't know the price of a unit. Wow, this is expensive.
It might be worthwhile to do a short 5-10 minute revisit after adding a heatsink to the SSD if there is room in the chassis or downgrading to a PCIe 3.0 NVMe.
I have couple of them at work, the lack of a forth USB port at the rear side of the 65W model is really hurting a lot. IMHO those micro PCs should have six USB-A ports on the rear side by default. With keyboard and mouse two ports are already gone, having four extra ones makes so much more sense, especially If you want to connect multiple monitors and want to use all of their internal hubs too. Some pepole also use USB printers at their desk.
Yes, I miss keyboards with USB ports on them. That seems like such a great solution for mice, reduces cables, and frees up a port on the computer. But it adds cost to the keyboards, so they're not the default. In a few years when everything is using USB-C plugs, that will free up some space to add more.
Not sure about the music... wait, where is the silver play button?! But I am glad to see you holding up some big piece of equipment again! :) Even if it is just a power monitor... Cant wait for the 35w TDP system, should get rid of the thermal throttling, but agreed that the SSD needs some love.
Finally a micro PC with a powerful CPU and DDR5. Most have a 12700T and DDR4. I wonder how much cooler a 12700H would run. Great review. I hope we get a micro PC (that isn't a laptop) with a 13700H and DDR5. I had a 7500T and 8500T Dell Optiplex micro and neither got hot enough to thermal throttle. And you talk about the Geekbench score but you never show it or say what it was. I'd like it because it is easy to compare to our own system.
I have one with a i7-12700 (65W). Fast as hell with gen 4 nvme. I think it might be a similiar motherboard used in the precision 3240/3260 compact which has a riser card on that slot 1. We get a lot of noise complaints at work on these 65w units for fan noise.
I feel like the audio set up in the new set needed work. The audio quality is noticeably worse/muddy. Or did patrick recorded the VO/in the new set with a cold?
100% it is. Actually, we got interference on the mic that Alex and I did not notice until I was in California for OCP Summit this week. That worse quality is same model (MKH 416) but is from having to do hiss removal.
I am IT and we have a bunch of these. One is having thermal events. It hit 100C. Brand new. I changed thermal paste but still about the same. Not sure what to do.
I'd like these to be compared to the HP Elitedesk minis, as I've got one of those and they're awesome little power savers. Also more USB ports than the Dell so it'd be great to see which of these two series do better at what. Got mine specifically because of the energy hike (150w idle Xeon workstation vs 10w idle HP mini pc) so needed some real sensible power consumption for what is essentially text editing and cmd/terminal workloads.
Love these little systems! Only thing that turns me away for homelab duty is lack of 10gbe. 2.5gb it’s easy and affordable to add but for a VM host or k8s node accessing the NAS over NFS 10gb is a minimum.
They could easily rectify this by designing a 10Gbit/s Nic in a M.2 form factor. Just break out the RJ45 where the optional HDMI port would mount. But since those tiny PCs don't come with dual NICs or 10Gbit/s NICs is probably testament that those manufacturers don't want those things to be used as low cost servers :D
@@marcogenovesi8570 So, I looked it up. A dual port Intel X550T2 PCI-E x8 card will draw 8,33W for the whole card when maxing out the 10GBbit connection. A Samsung 980 Evo Plus will draw 7.8W out of the M.2 slot. So I doubt a Dell, Hp or Lenovo couldn't make this work. Yes the thing would need a similar heatsink to an m.2 ssd and probably wouldn't be used in a laptop. But not completely impractical to do.
Why they don't exist is probably not so much power related and more a price thing. The cheapest 10Gbit/s PHY IC is 84€ on Mouser, so this is easily a 150€ card. Additionally you need to verify that it works as expected which will require a fancy super expensive logic analyzer and the skills to lay out a PCB in a way that it works on high frequency signals correctly is probably deferring your "average joe" from just making such a contraption.
love your videos on tiny micro, i believe you are missing a review on the most overlooked tiny pc 1L that actually has a fully size x16 pci-e slot for a graphics card plug in an rx 580 to a dell expternal power supply and this thing plays games really well
They are pervious generations but we use a bunch of these little suckers at work. I'm not a Dell fan (Dell is a four letter word after all), but these are great little machines. We use them on welders, ovens, measuring systems, pretty much anything where we don't need an expansion card. Tough little workhorses.
still rocking twin westemere chips as a home server, genuinly considering buying even an older model of this and throwing away my big tower pc re-casing theese into a 24 bay scrap supermicro and using that as my nas for like 180w peak rather than 850 max
im sure theyll have to upgraded cooling once they start putting raptor lake in there, even if theyre using 30-65w variants of the chips. maybe even a vented top
It's funny you should mention the mismatched logo orientation on the case. At my previous job (pre-2011), we bought a few of the larger Dell OptiPlex desktops, and I discovered one day that Dell actually made the logo medallion able to rotate so it would be right-side-up whether the computer was standing upright or laying down.
We have some 20 Optiplex 9020's and I changed the logo orientation accordingly. Very old Optiplex models used to be able to rotate the logo manually without any tool.
One of the reasons they often don't put heatsinks on the M.2 drives is that the controller IC is absolutely fine with running hot but the flash chips aren't always as happy with it. If you add a heatsink, you're essentially thermally bonding those ICs together, so the controller runs a bit cooler but the flash chips actually run warmer. Since the controller IC is usually perfectly capable of safe operation up to 90C, and the passive dissipation is sufficient to keep it below that line, adding a heatsink may be detrimental.
Have you looked at the Lenovo p350 and the newer versions? Similar size with a pcie slot. Someone put a custom cooler on an a2000 in one of these, probably the most performance per liter of system ever.
I bought a used Lenovo m920q with a 9th-gen core i5 and I love it, but it does not stand vertically by itself. I wish more people like you make this demand to the companies making these little tiny desktops: they should come standard with a base to make them more stable when put in vertical position. The case is so tiny and I like it, but when put in vertical position the entire PC will move when pressing the power button or inserting/removing a USB device. I am still planning to build something like two small stands in this shape __|_|__ simple and effective.
Were moving to these at work to replace our older HP and Dell MFF PCs. Even the i5's cook themselves. Imaging these stacked on eachother creates a nice little space heater for few hours. Youre also correrct about the black box on the back, its the antenna which is similar to how HP did it on the G2 MFF series.
Man I really hope we get a Ryzen 7000G version of this, especially since it's becoming more clear that Zen 4 APU's with Navi GPU's are going to stomp even the GTX 1660
new sbc will be octo core for quite a while but the new mini pc out with x86 are pretty nice - runs everything and the fact that these mini pc can run 32/64gb ram is nice - the zen4 mobile chips with rdns3 will be nice - maybe you can do a comparo benchmark with different types of nodes - arm vs x85 vs new gen sbc vs 7th gen refurb or 10th gen refurb - they may have more 100g options? the world is moving to 100gbe for smb - clients can upgrade to 200g! - also we need to ask is 640kb ai enough for every person on earth - mi300 is really going to turn up the workload for apu that is for sure - the age of 4k gaming is here and ai compute is doubling every 3mos, the 100 tflop ws is here also - fairly significant
Power usage is surprisingly high.....my Dell R730 will lots of drives only uses ~150 watts and has a lot of CPU headroom ....downside is that they can be pretty loud if you don't tweak the fan and power profile settings. Great review!!! Looking to get one of these also, so this is helpful.
I have the Optiplex 3000 which I modified to have a tower cooler. The heat is just way too high on the i5-12500T with the stock cooler. Now I can change the processor even to an i9 if I want.
Running one of these to homeserve. It’s a real ache to get Ubuntu running on them with quicksync enabled for hardware video encode/decode in Plex. It’s possible, but prepare for hard work. Also, the e1000 network adapter requires some manipulation before you’ll get working network support. I had to set the system up with a low-rent usb-Ethernet adapter to even get intel’s newest e1000 driver/module working in Ubuntu. Short version: If you’re comfortable in Linux, you can make the machine to do a lot at home. If you’re stuck in windows, there’s no easy way for it to act as plex server.
I had them made about a year ago on etsy IIRC. I wanted to use them as a background for an important piece, so they were featured in the Milan-X article/ video th-cam.com/video/oUugk0INTRU/w-d-xo.html
"dual E5-2670 vs modern SFF system" What I still miss in SFF-systems like this is support for ECC, for some that might be something essential which is currently lacking in such systems. I don't suppose you can look for systems that do support it (if they exist at all) and create a review about those, compared with old power hungry dual Xeon servers?
How did you get that Wi-Fi set up (8:28)? I can’t find that kind of antena online:( I’m have a 7000 and am looking for a good Wi-Fi solution rather than running an ethernet cable across the room
I cant wait for dell/HP/lenovo units with Ryzen 7 6800u, or preferably removable 7850GE. My M75QG2 with 4750GE has this nice feature where i can connect my AR goggles to the USB-C port and get video out, the sad thing is that the anemic VegaII 8 graphics really cant drive most games after 2016 at higher than 720p medium settings. Dont get me wrong, 720p medium still looks pretty good on an OLED AR headset, but it would be nice to get the full resolution and frame rate out of these things in more modern titles and the 6800u/6800H GPUs should be more than 2x faster, and depending on power budget, up to 3x faster. Those rare units with dGPUs like the HP 805G6 would also be pretty cool to get my hands on
You forgot to say if it will power thru usb-c. And also, can you add a gigabit Ethernet instead of the hdmi? If yes, it would make for a sweet pfsense router!!
i use an older lenovo m920x as a router/firewall as it has a pcie slot so i was able to set up a 10gb router interface with it, i think thats the one thing that would prevet me from upgrading it i just feel like the pcie slot is a big deal for my use cases.
the labeling of the USB ports is the latest recommended standard for end users and consumers - it actually makes a lot of sense... Level1Techs, LTT, GamersNexus, etc. have all covered the confusion of the technical standard and the disarray of the naming conventions used since circa 2010 of the various versions of USB 3.x... USB 3 made some sense, but USB 3.0, 3.1, & 3.2 and Gen 1, Gen 2x1 Gen2x2, etc. was pure madness..
Perhaps this might sound a bit extreme; but do you think the following might be realistic i.e. we get a dell 240watts psu, with two pci out x16 with one having a pci 16 to x4 m.2 and another one to a quadro rtx 3000 mxm, and 64gb ram ? I really like the form factor and cpu on this model and wanted to have a good zfs nvme nas and powerful vm workstation.
Intel Core i7-12700 with quick sync and UHD 770... any chance you could do some testing on transcoding with jellyfin, emby, or plex? In theory, this thing should be able to transcode 4k without busting a sweat.
I do love an optiplex micro.. Maybe not as much as the host though lol. It'll be quite awhile before I go back to one though, my skull canyon nuc is going to have to die first. I just like it for the uniqueness, power is not an issue as it only runs a couple Firefox tabs on my downstairs TV lol.
They flipped the ports because if the system is vertical, the type C port is physically smaller than the type A. If the type A is on top and there's a device plugged in, it's hard to find / see the unoccupied type C port below it. If you put type C on top and there's something plugged in, it's easy to see Type A below it when a device is plugged in.
I will say this guy's enthusiasm for micro computers gets me every time. Thanks to him I made a choice to buy myself a 3050 dell micro. This channel is definitely worth everyone's time. I'm not disappointed with my purchase thanks to this channel.
Thank you. Glad you are enjoying your TMM experience
Patrick is the only person I’ve come across who shares my degree of enthusiasm for this model line!
Yeh, but I get tired of hearing "this" so many times
Been using the 7050 and 7060 mff's at work for a while and they are always noticeably slower than the full size units with the same specs. Dell really needs to fix the cooling aspects of these and find a batter power adapter that has the brick on one end or the other and not a middle laptop style.
it's contagious. His passion has made me pay attention to 1L PCs more and they're definitely more front-of-mind and easy to suggest & recommend now :)
@@Christobevii3 It could be that your units came with the lower-power "T" CPUs to save power. The apples-to-apples comparison would be using full-power CPUs with the 65W thermal solution.
@@aednichols same cpu specs between all three with our corporate contract direct with dell.
Dang it Dell, you were so close. Make that 2.5g LAN standard already! Maybe next year, haha.
at this point 10Gbit should be standard in all PC:s, We have USB standard that is 2x or 4x of that, but I guess many people have only one PC at home with out NAS.
@@oappi4686 10gb is much more expensive and a bit hotter. also some cheaper modules have trouble connecting at lower speeds. but as others have mentioned, most likely dell doesn't want these things to be used as low power servers, as this might interfere with their bottom-cost server products.
Sending you the unit was an incredibly smart thing to do, as they will likely sell quite a few purely because of this video.
But how many.....over 1K for one is a bit......
"incredibly smart" lol 😂
No dude, its just first level/obvious move on their part to try to benefit on, it's nothing special.
@@ryutenmen they are not mutually exclusive.. Putting a parachute on before jumping out of a plane is both incredibly smart and an obvious choice too for instance..
Love the flow of these videos now, and especially the new desk and background setup. I need something for my eyes to go over while I'm listening every so often, so an interesting background actually keeps my focus better than the previous studio background
Thank you
Love that open fan port over the ddr5. If you go high density, the cooling might actually be needed.
I think buying these used is the way to go. A week ago, I bought a very lightly used 5090 with a 10th gen i5 cpu and Windows 11 Pro for only $350. I spent $30 to upgrade the RAM from 8 GB to 16 GB, and it runs great. I’m using it as a media server.
How did you turn it as a media server? Can you use it as sort of a NAS as well?
Apart from a couple of Sony laptops, all the PCs in my home are DELL, I like that I can log on and get drivers and updates quickly and safely. I recently bought a very cheap used 7040 micro and upgraded the drive and added RAM. The STH videos have been hugely helpful in choosing a model and doing the upgrades. Thanks!!
7:35: The PM9A1 series (you can see this on the left side of the label, along with the model number) is the OEM variant that's basically equivalent to the 980 Pro, FWIW.
Yes.
Another fantastic review. After watching STH a few years ago I picked up and upgraded a pair of HPE MicroServer G10+ units. However I was looking to downsize my “Production” homelab (Websites, Plex, Pihole, Tailscale, and a few other services). After watching a bunch of this series I ended up getting a Dell 7060 Micro and it’s been awesome for me! I keep my two HPE Microservers as “test” homelab gear but I might even be looking to sell one as my “test” stuff doesn’t really require two full fat servers lol
The 7060 is great!
I would like to see you review remote management features on these too, these would make brilliant tiny servers for small stuff
One of our writers Will wanted to do a piece on this and I said go for it. Not sure if it will be a video too, but good idea.
Finally a video on the 12th gen Micro 😃
I know... too long! The 1L PC's trail announcement by some time, then these were expensive for us to buy.
Some day, TH-cam contributors will stop opening their vids with 'Hey Guys!'
Very interesting. Thanks for this comparison. I was tempted to get the non-T version of the 13500 Micro on Dell's Outlet, now I am not sure (as 13th gen runs even hotter than 12th). May wait for the 28W Meteor Lake Asus Mini PC instead.
Personally, if folks asked me which 1L PC to buy, I would always recommend a 35W version
@@ServeTheHomeVideo I wonder if in normal usage like for web browsing and office tasks the fans stay fairly quiet? instead of just under stress tests. Also whether it can be throttled in the BIOS to mimic the t-series settings of 20% less power.
Deployed a bunch of the previous gens of these. All the staff got i5 and all the managers got i7. The i7 system noise can only be described as 'jet engines'. Windows updates were the highest load in their use and would always trigger jet mode for the fan. Everyone gets i5 now if I have any say in the purchasing decision.
We use Lenovo "tiny" at work and these units are quite versatile. Some could even be good enough for home theater use (use a NAS for storage).
Totally. Lenovo Tiny's are my favorite design currently.
Got a new job at a bank and they use all Dell micro PCs and Dell laptops. They let me take some 5000 series models that were being disposed of. Have yet to get anything up and running with them yet, but excited to use them.
Wow cool!!!
I went for the 5000 version of this, it's the same board but missing the second NVMe connector, 35W only and DDR4 only (when purchasing anyway). It does take a 2.5" SATA drive though. Got it with the 15-12600T and it performs really well for dev work using Visual Studio.
I also got the rear USB-C and am driving a 5k 5120x2160 monitor plus two more 4k monitors using the display ports, and that's what ruled out the Lenovo equivalent for me, the Dell is much better for multiple monitors.
@@plutoisacomet 5080->5090->5000 Hopefully they've ironed out more problems by now! It's working very well in my un-corporate small business office and when they next have a good deal on it, I might get another for home.
Can you share a link to the USB-C card. I can't find it at all a Dell aren't helping, getting bounced between Sales and Tech Support. Thanks.
it would be great to compare the stock cooler throttling behaviour with a copper version from an older model - assuming that the mounting is compatible. After market mods would be fun.
It is hard to do that since fans change. We can probably try to do versus HP or Lenovo
@@ServeTheHomeVideo i see more of a problem with the external plastic grid blocking the flow of air. Push some smoke thru the fan to give us a visual as the air exits!! The only other choice would be to swap for a higher end laptop fan. Visually it looks like dell chose old overstock fans.
3:55 That is the new USB-IF recommended branding, so we should see this much more sane naming scheme more in the future.
Great video! Last year I bought a dell 7050 micro for about $95 with 8gb ram and a 128gb ssd. I removed the ssd and installed my 1tb sata ssd that I had and installed linux mint. It ran it great. Later I upgraded the ram to 32 gb. And just recently I installed a wifi card and ant. It has the vga addon also. Maybe later I will get a m.2 hard drive and install a large sata storage drive to hold files. It runs linux mint perfectly even with just 8gb ram with plenty of responsiveness. Just limited running vms in virutal box. I love it.
Super deal
Would be interesting to see this unit compared to others, such as the Minisforum HX90 for about half the price.
There's a lot of extra space in the space dedicated to that heatsink. I feel like you could have it extend all the way to the back of the case.
Yes. Some designs do this
I vaguely recall seeing something about flash itself not wanting cooling but the controllers for NVME do want it for optimal performance
Often that is the case, but the PCB can heat up as a result of the controller and that can transfer some heat into adjacent NAND.
Flash performs and last longer when cool. The premise that it lasted longer when hot was a misunderstanding. It's always better to be cool but being near and below freezing can be a problem.
@@emailkanji Flash performs best around 40-60C depending on the SSD. Micron drives seem to be a little more touchy than the rest when it comes to temps.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Yes, but a heatsink is a high thermal conductivity block of metal, whereas an FR4 PCB with 0.035mm copper layers has a much lower thermal conductivity, so the heatsink is absolutely guaranteed to raise the NAND IC temperatures unless you're throwing incredible amounts of forced air at it.
So the PCIe pinholes are for the Precission 3260 2L model. I got one, but since I didn't get the GPU package they didn't provide the raiser board - I r so pissed. Dell didn't provide the SATA parts either.
I wish this series included some analysis how to add 10Gbps connectivity to these boxes, because without it 1Gbps is kinda limiting them in networking department.
All the micro Optiplex systems I can see online have fixed configurations, but the video shows a working configurator. Did Dell change in the two weeks since this video came out or am I missing something?
It takes awhile, but usually one has a custom configurator. You are right it is a pain.
I know we can easily find it ourselves, but a link to the actual product on Dell's website would be nice. I like these units, but they always leave me wanting. Like ability to add 10Gb or make one just a little thicker for more storage options, etc.
That's the one option I wish we could have in those flexible I/O slots. I could totally use a 5Gb/s or 10Gb/s nic in that slot.
A ssd heatsink would be nice but easy to add on. I would like to see the case being used a passive heatsink to allow for some increase cooling and maybe reduce fan speed for spikes in CPU utilization.
Max Power that it showed was 181.6 W. But only for split second. I wonder if (due to socket lever being present - I didn't finish the video yet BTW) you can change CPU's or at least use better Thermal Paste on this thing and maybe small fan? Or use similarly sized, better designed copper heat sink coming with a fan?
In a $1475 Dell system, you should not have to change thermal paste.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Well, duh. But if you can and if you can "mod" it, it would be cool. Also I didn't know the price of a unit. Wow, this is expensive.
Can't you configure the TDP in the BIOS? Or even with Intel XTU? You should be able to set the PL1/PL2 to 35W
It might be worthwhile to do a short 5-10 minute revisit after adding a heatsink to the SSD if there is room in the chassis or downgrading to a PCIe 3.0 NVMe.
You know you are watching the right channel when the new set has the stones from the 5th Element!
I have couple of them at work, the lack of a forth USB port at the rear side of the 65W model is really hurting a lot. IMHO those micro PCs should have six USB-A ports on the rear side by default. With keyboard and mouse two ports are already gone, having four extra ones makes so much more sense, especially If you want to connect multiple monitors and want to use all of their internal hubs too. Some pepole also use USB printers at their desk.
6 type om the rear would likely take up too much space on the month board:(
Yes, I miss keyboards with USB ports on them. That seems like such a great solution for mice, reduces cables, and frees up a port on the computer. But it adds cost to the keyboards, so they're not the default.
In a few years when everything is using USB-C plugs, that will free up some space to add more.
@@pfcrow Has anyone seen quadruple stacked USB-C connector receptables yet? I only see USB-C in combo with USB-A or RJ45.
Not sure about the music... wait, where is the silver play button?! But I am glad to see you holding up some big piece of equipment again! :) Even if it is just a power monitor...
Cant wait for the 35w TDP system, should get rid of the thermal throttling, but agreed that the SSD needs some love.
Just arrived this week! You will see it in videos soon
Complete insane power draw for this form factor, thankfully it's only for short bursts.
Finally a micro PC with a powerful CPU and DDR5. Most have a 12700T and DDR4. I wonder how much cooler a 12700H would run. Great review. I hope we get a micro PC (that isn't a laptop) with a 13700H and DDR5. I had a 7500T and 8500T Dell Optiplex micro and neither got hot enough to thermal throttle.
And you talk about the Geekbench score but you never show it or say what it was. I'd like it because it is easy to compare to our own system.
I have one with a i7-12700 (65W). Fast as hell with gen 4 nvme. I think it might be a similiar motherboard used in the precision 3240/3260 compact which has a riser card on that slot 1. We get a lot of noise complaints at work on these 65w units for fan noise.
I feel like the audio set up in the new set needed work. The audio quality is noticeably worse/muddy. Or did patrick recorded the VO/in the new set with a cold?
100% it is. Actually, we got interference on the mic that Alex and I did not notice until I was in California for OCP Summit this week. That worse quality is same model (MKH 416) but is from having to do hiss removal.
We're using those a lot. They're perfect for e.g. office use. Tiny and powerful.
I am IT and we have a bunch of these. One is having thermal events. It hit 100C. Brand new. I changed thermal paste but still about the same. Not sure what to do.
I'd like these to be compared to the HP Elitedesk minis, as I've got one of those and they're awesome little power savers. Also more USB ports than the Dell so it'd be great to see which of these two series do better at what.
Got mine specifically because of the energy hike (150w idle Xeon workstation vs 10w idle HP mini pc) so needed some real sensible power consumption for what is essentially text editing and cmd/terminal workloads.
The HP's I like better than Dell.
HPs are miles better..
Love these little systems! Only thing that turns me away for homelab duty is lack of 10gbe. 2.5gb it’s easy and affordable to add but for a VM host or k8s node accessing the NAS over NFS 10gb is a minimum.
They could easily rectify this by designing a 10Gbit/s Nic in a M.2 form factor. Just break out the RJ45 where the optional HDMI port would mount. But since those tiny PCs don't come with dual NICs or 10Gbit/s NICs is probably testament that those manufacturers don't want those things to be used as low cost servers :D
@@tschuuuls486 10Gbit nics are way too power hungry for M.2, the heatsink would also be a big issue for M.2 form factor
@@marcogenovesi8570 So, I looked it up. A dual port Intel X550T2 PCI-E x8 card will draw 8,33W for the whole card when maxing out the 10GBbit connection. A Samsung 980 Evo Plus will draw 7.8W out of the M.2 slot. So I doubt a Dell, Hp or Lenovo couldn't make this work. Yes the thing would need a similar heatsink to an m.2 ssd and probably wouldn't be used in a laptop. But not completely impractical to do.
Why they don't exist is probably not so much power related and more a price thing. The cheapest 10Gbit/s PHY IC is 84€ on Mouser, so this is easily a 150€ card. Additionally you need to verify that it works as expected which will require a fancy super expensive logic analyzer and the skills to lay out a PCB in a way that it works on high frequency signals correctly is probably deferring your "average joe" from just making such a contraption.
Wish you could swap in a 10GBe card for where the WiFi is. That would let you run mirrored NVMe for local storage with a fast connect back to NAS
How cool does this run with top off??? What about cooling ports put in top above fan?? Or opening up fan intake??
love your videos on tiny micro, i believe you are missing a review on the most overlooked tiny pc 1L that actually has a fully size x16 pci-e slot for a graphics card
plug in an rx 580 to a dell expternal power supply and this thing plays games really well
They are pervious generations but we use a bunch of these little suckers at work. I'm not a Dell fan (Dell is a four letter word after all), but these are great little machines. We use them on welders, ovens, measuring systems, pretty much anything where we don't need an expansion card. Tough little workhorses.
Do you have a spreadsheet comparing price to performance for these small computers?
still rocking twin westemere chips as a home server, genuinly considering buying even an older model of this and throwing away my big tower pc re-casing theese into a 24 bay scrap supermicro and using that as my nas for like 180w peak rather than 850 max
im sure theyll have to upgraded cooling once they start putting raptor lake in there, even if theyre using 30-65w variants of the chips. maybe even a vented top
It's funny you should mention the mismatched logo orientation on the case. At my previous job (pre-2011), we bought a few of the larger Dell OptiPlex desktops, and I discovered one day that Dell actually made the logo medallion able to rotate so it would be right-side-up whether the computer was standing upright or laying down.
We have some 20 Optiplex 9020's and I changed the logo orientation accordingly. Very old Optiplex models used to be able to rotate the logo manually without any tool.
One of the reasons they often don't put heatsinks on the M.2 drives is that the controller IC is absolutely fine with running hot but the flash chips aren't always as happy with it. If you add a heatsink, you're essentially thermally bonding those ICs together, so the controller runs a bit cooler but the flash chips actually run warmer. Since the controller IC is usually perfectly capable of safe operation up to 90C, and the passive dissipation is sufficient to keep it below that line, adding a heatsink may be detrimental.
Have you looked at the Lenovo p350 and the newer versions? Similar size with a pcie slot. Someone put a custom cooler on an a2000 in one of these, probably the most performance per liter of system ever.
will buy in 7 years
It's missing one thing to be a knockout - 10gbe. Using these for any heavy proxmox workload I'd be worried about storage latency.
Just wait. We have it. Video later this month, probably between the Genoa launch and Thanksgiving
I think they could've just went with the newer Laptop CPUs, they could've done a cool option where you can get the vPro CPUs and get ECC Ram.
I bought a used Lenovo m920q with a 9th-gen core i5 and I love it, but it does not stand vertically by itself. I wish more people like you make this demand to the companies making these little tiny desktops: they should come standard with a base to make them more stable when put in vertical position. The case is so tiny and I like it, but when put in vertical position the entire PC will move when pressing the power button or inserting/removing a USB device. I am still planning to build something like two small stands in this shape __|_|__ simple and effective.
Maybe I missed it, but you don't seem to talk about the graphic card or built in graphics on these mini PC's
anyway to add an additional nic on this or the NUCS, Asus PN , or Lenovo Think Tiny?
Were moving to these at work to replace our older HP and Dell MFF PCs. Even the i5's cook themselves. Imaging these stacked on eachother creates a nice little space heater for few hours. Youre also correrct about the black box on the back, its the antenna which is similar to how HP did it on the G2 MFF series.
Do any 1L PCs have a battery? Essentially a full powered configurable upgradeable laptop with external monitor, keys, mouse.
No, but I think they assume people will just get UPSes or other external batteries to power them
Man I really hope we get a Ryzen 7000G version of this, especially since it's becoming more clear that Zen 4 APU's with Navi GPU's are going to stomp even the GTX 1660
Nice review. Is one of your 5th Element stones upside down? ;-)
Would be nice to see some benchmark numbers
Performance section.
Can you set something like this up as a NAS? Are there good options for hooking up lots of storage to a device like this over USB?
We need the guts of this system in a NAS case. Hooking up storage over USB is not a good idea I think
are those Wiha screwdrivers on the shelf?
Is the heatsink mount custom? Think we can swap it out with something beefier if you're willing to keep the case off?
@ServeTheHome I'm looking for a PC in this formfactor but with at least 2.5Gbe LAN. Can you recommend one?
new sbc will be octo core for quite a while but the new mini pc out with x86 are pretty nice - runs everything and the fact that these mini pc can run 32/64gb ram is nice - the zen4 mobile chips with rdns3 will be nice - maybe you can do a comparo benchmark with different types of nodes - arm vs x85 vs new gen sbc vs 7th gen refurb or 10th gen refurb - they may have more 100g options? the world is moving to 100gbe for smb - clients can upgrade to 200g! - also we need to ask is 640kb ai enough for every person on earth - mi300 is really going to turn up the workload for apu that is for sure - the age of 4k gaming is here and ai compute is doubling every 3mos, the 100 tflop ws is here also - fairly significant
Vega 8 or even some of the older Ryzen Vega 11 chips are perfect students or hobbiests. Guess that's why they are not cheap second hand
That cooling assembly is mounted with two clips? Thats probably going to rattle when the plastic gets a bit old.
Power usage is surprisingly high.....my Dell R730 will lots of drives only uses ~150 watts and has a lot of CPU headroom ....downside is that they can be pretty loud if you don't tweak the fan and power profile settings. Great review!!! Looking to get one of these also, so this is helpful.
I have the Optiplex 3000 which I modified to have a tower cooler. The heat is just way too high on the i5-12500T with the stock cooler. Now I can change the processor even to an i9 if I want.
Running one of these to homeserve. It’s a real ache to get Ubuntu running on them with quicksync enabled for hardware video encode/decode in Plex. It’s possible, but prepare for hard work.
Also, the e1000 network adapter requires some manipulation before you’ll get working network support. I had to set the system up with a low-rent usb-Ethernet adapter to even get intel’s newest e1000 driver/module working in Ubuntu.
Short version: If you’re comfortable in Linux, you can make the machine to do a lot at home. If you’re stuck in windows, there’s no easy way for it to act as plex server.
Honestly I’m still very satisfied with my 5080/10500T opti. Thanks for the excellent reviews and helping me pick it.
The Core i5-10500T is great!
Well done review, thank you! Nice unit but the list price is too high.
Was also a 65w TDP chip, spiking at three times that.
Where did you get those 5th element stones?
I had them made about a year ago on etsy IIRC. I wanted to use them as a background for an important piece, so they were featured in the Milan-X article/ video th-cam.com/video/oUugk0INTRU/w-d-xo.html
They look great but here in Australia they run around the $1,500 to $2,100 mark as a pre-owned unit?!
Awesome Video Patrick !! Love it !!
"dual E5-2670 vs modern SFF system"
What I still miss in SFF-systems like this is support for ECC, for some that might be something essential which is currently lacking in such systems. I don't suppose you can look for systems that do support it (if they exist at all) and create a review about those, compared with old power hungry dual Xeon servers?
Do these have wake on lan? It would be nice to be able to start an array of these on demand.
Where did you get that map of world? it looks neat! I want one
How did you get that Wi-Fi set up (8:28)?
I can’t find that kind of antena online:(
I’m have a 7000 and am looking for a good Wi-Fi solution rather than running an ethernet cable across the room
Needs 10g network and dual 3.5 inch drive bays as a larger option
I cant wait for dell/HP/lenovo units with Ryzen 7 6800u, or preferably removable 7850GE.
My M75QG2 with 4750GE has this nice feature where i can connect my AR goggles to the USB-C port and get video out, the sad thing is that the anemic VegaII 8 graphics really cant drive most games after 2016 at higher than 720p medium settings.
Dont get me wrong, 720p medium still looks pretty good on an OLED AR headset, but it would be nice to get the full resolution and frame rate out of these things in more modern titles and the 6800u/6800H GPUs should be more than 2x faster, and depending on power budget, up to 3x faster.
Those rare units with dGPUs like the HP 805G6 would also be pretty cool to get my hands on
You forgot to say if it will power thru usb-c. And also, can you add a gigabit Ethernet instead of the hdmi? If yes, it would make for a sweet pfsense router!!
We discuss that in the main site article since we can go into more detail. We did not see a NIC option
Lack of Thunderbolt to facilitate a one cable solution means this is a no go. You have it on your laptops, put it in your mini pcs.
i use an older lenovo m920x as a router/firewall as it has a pcie slot so i was able to set up a 10gb router interface with it, i think thats the one thing that would prevet me from upgrading it i just feel like the pcie slot is a big deal for my use cases.
why you are not talking about the elephant in the case, the huge desktop pci-e slot?
wonder if we can get a bios update to support 13th gen.
Does Dell offer an optional 2.5gb Ethernet port on these?
the labeling of the USB ports is the latest recommended standard for end users and consumers - it actually makes a lot of sense... Level1Techs, LTT, GamersNexus, etc. have all covered the confusion of the technical standard and the disarray of the naming conventions used since circa 2010 of the various versions of USB 3.x... USB 3 made some sense, but USB 3.0, 3.1, & 3.2 and Gen 1, Gen 2x1 Gen2x2, etc. was pure madness..
Perhaps this might sound a bit extreme; but do you think the following might be realistic i.e. we get a dell 240watts psu, with two pci out x16 with one having a pci 16 to x4 m.2 and another one to a quadro rtx 3000 mxm, and 64gb ram ? I really like the form factor and cpu on this model and wanted to have a good zfs nvme nas and powerful vm workstation.
These would rock if I could ever find a way to get android tv stable on x86 Nvidia shield is popping the bed lately with its issues.
Putting the numbers at the USB ports is the new standard.
Intel Core i7-12700 with quick sync and UHD 770... any chance you could do some testing on transcoding with jellyfin, emby, or plex? In theory, this thing should be able to transcode 4k without busting a sweat.
The entire 7000 series is standard for all my clients. I get the monitor stand where it fits behind the monitor. Eons better than a NUC
I do love an optiplex micro.. Maybe not as much as the host though lol. It'll be quite awhile before I go back to one though, my skull canyon nuc is going to have to die first. I just like it for the uniqueness, power is not an issue as it only runs a couple Firefox tabs on my downstairs TV lol.
I bought a dell 7040m but I'm really disappointed regarding the noise of the fan. Do you know any solution for the fan noise?
Cleaning the fan would probably be the first step. Usually used units have fans that are not clean and that makes them noisier
This is the most excited I've ever seen anyone be about an Optiplex...
Love these! Super easy to upgrade as well
They flipped the ports because if the system is vertical, the type C port is physically smaller than the type A. If the type A is on top and there's a device plugged in, it's hard to find / see the unoccupied type C port below it. If you put type C on top and there's something plugged in, it's easy to see Type A below it when a device is plugged in.