"Update on the warranty: We called up the support line for Advanced Skytech (Treasure Box) secret shopper style. There was no wait time to get an agent, and they walked us through every step of fixing the issue including sending videos to assist us. They were patient and helpful overall. Pretty pleased with how it went." When a no name company that glitter bombs old office PC has infinitely better customer support than billion dollar OEM company Dell
imo the reason why is cause of the high markup on these kinds of systems. presumably to justify their price, they have to create some sort of value add that makes it stand out from other products including just going to another refurbisher and paying less outright.
@@telepathicdragon OEMs sell similarly if not more overpriced systems without adequate customer service and get away with it, so I'm not sure what's your point.
This makes me feel the nostalgia I have for the Tech Showdown days of LTT. Still love you guys, but I miss those kinds of pure, authentic, "because we can" episodes. Stay golden LTT. I love you.
Pro Tip to Linus: Windows 10 can be activated with a Windows 7 key. Micro$oft let the back door open for the upgraders on purpose. So if you have a Win7 Pro key, you can have 10 pro. The iso is available on their site to use off of a USB stick and is set up so you can choose from the Education versions to the pro version.
Yea, but that requires I downgrade to win 10 and lose all the features I paid for in Win 7 ultimate. Win 7 for gaming, Linux for security. MS can get bent until win pro edition becomes actual pro edition and not a slightly less bastardized home edition.
I got a Optiplex 7040 SFF from work when they upgraded PCs. Had it in a closet for 2+ years. Recently installed new ram, 1tb NVME and RX 6400. I love it 😍
Nice thing about these Dell, hp, Lenovo business machines is that they are engineered to run 24/7 hot, cold, dusty environments and just keep going. I was a Dell/hp tech at John Deere servicing these machines on a daily basis. Many of them that come in from the factory floor where so dirty and beat up you couldn't imagine they worked. But with a good cleaning maybe light repair and some updates they go right back to work. Most of these machines will keep running for years yet so long they will just become obsolete before they quite running. I was flipping these into gaming PCs back in 2016 helping out local kids on a budget.
Most of the time as long as nothing is preventing it from cooling and nothing physically damaged the chips, they'll keep going. We've had some nightmare machines come in at the college I worked at. Just before I started, one came in full of termites. I've seen them with inches of dust and fans that failed years ago still running.
Looking back on these things now as a service technician for a nationwide chain of computer stores that sold these things, I wish they just got recycled. So many of these ended up coming back for RMA, warranty repairs and defects that at one point we were returning almost as many as we were selling. The SSDs that the refurbisher used were so horrifically unreliable that techs started begging people to buy an SSD to replace the one in it. Hell, we even offered free reimaging for a short while because of how bad it got. These things were terrible. Even moreso now that Windows 11's requirements have functionally invalidated them.
I recently "built" my first PC. Got a 90€ PC of ebay and upgraded the PSU and GPU and the total money I spent was around 230€. Specs are decent for the Money as well: Xeon E3 1230 V3, 8GB DDR3 1600MHz and a GTX 1050 Ti Gaming X 4gb from MSi
One reason those two USB ports might have been covered: They might have been (mis-)diagnosed as faulty and by opting to not letting the customer know that the ports are even there, there is no chance of overselling the computer's capabilities on that front.
I work on replacing warranty swaps and repairs on Dell Optiplex at work and can't help but think that a LOT of these Treasure Box refurbs were most likely touched by my hands before they got bedazzled. It makes a weird kind of sense that they would use these too as these models are super easy to tear down and rebuild. A usual tear down and rebuild for a motherboard replacement takes me typically 10 to 15 minutes.
I got an old dell optiplex 9020 from my school, I ran a surprisingly large amount of games on the i7-4790 that was already in it with the intel hd4600 graphics, and I used that for about a year or 2, I later got a usedgtx1650 low profile, which is about the best card you can get that will fit in it, now it runs most games great and I am super happy with it. However, the gpu temps get quite high with the side panel on, so I have to play with the side panel always off, which for me is not a problem.
me reading this comment knowing I haven't used a side panel on any PC in over a decade even on $3k+ machines. Just hit it with an air can every once in a while or once I had a box fan with a dust filter on the back pointed right at it to keep one that ran hot cool.
simular here, i got an sff optiplex 7010 for free that my college was chucking out proberbly around 2017, quad i7-3770, 16gbram, 256gb ssd, reinstalled windows 10, shoved an sff gtx1050ti (£110) in and a 1tb hdd (£30) and its been my main desktop since, ran any game i tried at over 60fps medium unless i went crazy with spawned vehicles and max graphics in BeamNG (my cooling solution was side pannel off with a desk fan pointed at it, worked really well actually haha), bought a new laptop (dell insperion 15+) this time last year that has mostly replaced it (wish i could have gone desktop but needed somthing i could stuff in a rucksack) though its still used occasionally for running hevier game servers and older games requiring xp, the optiplex was certainly a mega upgrade over the 2010 dell latitude buisness laptop i was using at the time, looking back idk how the hell i used to game on that laptop and cringe thinking that i used to find 17fps on very low in BeamNG running off a memory stick playable, surprised it even ran at all on intergrated graphics haha ooh boy did that thing cook, also i dont have a clue how i managed with just 128gb duel booted split between win7 and ubuntu, i actually took it to peices a few weeks ago, keep meaning to replace the whats left of the thermal paste, it more seems to resemble dust now.
Here's the thing. You use a GTX 1650 because it fits. You take the side panel off because of thermals. If you think about it, the 1650 is no longer the best card you can fit in it. I just butchered the PICe bracket on my 7010, and now a full-height card fits.
@@JonathanSchrock you know, I never thought about that, technically I could, however the power supply is only 255 watts and I don’t believe it has any cables to support a gpu that needs extra power cables
These refurbished office PCs definitely are a thing in Europe too and often are a lot of value for little money. Friend of mine got one as all he plays is world of warcraft (and not any of the recent expansions either) and happily used it for two years. When I found out it only has the crappy office GPU (but better than none) I dug out ancient GTX 580 with busted fans, removed the fan hub, zip-tied two 80mm fans directly to the cooler block and now he runs wow at full details at smooth stable 60fps in raids happy as a clam having absolutely no need for any more modern hardware :D
Even if it’s not great for gaming, there’s still value in providing options at the budget end of the market and giving new life to what would otherwise be trashed but still good parts. The fact you get a clean Windows install really makes them seem like a customer-oriented business. Looks like they found a niche and I think it’s good that it’s occupied.
I actually got 4 surplus Dell 3020 SFFs similar to this. One got a $5 R5-240. One got it's power supply moved a bit & got a GT 1030 & SSD. One got it's mobo swapped into a regular tower with a HD 7850 & SSD. And the best one got an RX 480, SSD, HDD, and full-size power supply stuffed into the original SFF case with a homemade extended top to contain it all.
I'm in Venezuela, and this computer are everywhere, they are super cheap between 100-200$ and are pretty decent for gaming. I have a Optiplex 3010 with a 1060 i did spent 280$ and I'm pretty happy. This computer are really good for 3er world Country, where buying a 600-1000$ isn't a option.
This video is really making me rethink some things, as I used to refurb/upgrade and sell used office pcs online and local, and now I do a lot of work with my cricut, and can easily cut vinyl... those old cases would look great with a vinyl covering
Old office pcs and thin clients make amazing respbery pi alternatives and are often a lot better. I've built a pfsense box, and small home server recently out of some tiny thin clients
My only complaint is not outfitting these with a low profile 1650, or at least a 1050ti to make them actually respectable at gaming. Considering the aesthetic choices, one would definitely think they would be gaming oriented.
I got a few 4th gen i7s Dells identical to those from a local college for $25 a pop in 2019. Just had to add a Samsung SSD and a video card. Turned them into gaming PCs for my kids. Found out that the ones I didn't buy got sold as electronic scrap by the pound.
so far I've been having a gaming setup that was once an office PC but then i made it into my own customized gaming build and i am blessed by God that it still works even if i can't play newer titles much I still can enjoy my fav GTA title GTA IV and some other titles like Wiz and Pirate 101... and thanks to continued mod support the og GTA trilogy can in fact be played from start to finish at 60 fps (for OG GTA SA it needs more work on get the fps to be at 60 since low or max settings in GTA SA doesn't seem to reach that smooth 60) (i have my preordered PC GTA DE trilogy still even though i have to lock it at 30fps imo the DE trilogy does have better graphics)
Windows license is in the UEFI, so the OEM (Dell) already paid Microsoft and added these fees in the initial purchase by the company that used these PC's. This way you can resell these systems without having to ask licensing fees for a second time.
I made a pretty competent little computer out of an Optiplex like this. I have an Optiplex 7020 that I got for free from my old job and pretty heavily modified it with stuff I had lying around. Put a 500gb Adata SSD in it, 16gb of ram, and a used i7 and it is pretty decent. I was able to get it up to speed running modern games though by throwing in an old GTX1060 3gb on a PCIe riser cable. I must admit it isnt pretty - the side panel is open with a graphics card loosely laying out of it, but it is very usable. I regularly run Forza Horizon 5 on it with medium-low settings. It isn't fancy, but if you are going for the cheap-frankenstein look, it is pretty cool.
My first computer build was based off a $150 refurbished HP Elitedesk 800 G1 with an Intel i5 4570. The good thing about these office PC’s is they usually have a decent CPU to pair with a mid range GPU. Was a fun learning experience, I actually had to buy special cables though to power the gtx1060 as HP uses proprietary cables/inputs. I ran Witcher 3 at pretty much max settings @1080p-60fps with only slight drops in Novigrad, the cpu being the bottleneck here. Building that PC gave me the skills to build some awesome towers, I’m on my sixth PC build now 😂
These seem to be actually pretty ok! My local pc hardware store does something pretty similar to this (but with less glitter or rgb), I picked one up on a whim as having a little media pc was something I'd wanted for a while, and for around $155 USD (translating from my currency) it seemed like a pretty safe buy. Little did I know, it was one of the best purchases I'd made! They put in a little NVMe SSD, a 6th gen i5 and 8gb of DDR4 ram, it's STUPID fast and can even do some lightweight gaming without upgrades. Just bought a GT 1030 to stick in it, once that's in it'll be a perfect little games box for the living room!
honestly, its a smart move by these companies, its a low risk, decent reward money making setup. I'm sure they are buying those pcs for like $25-$100 a piece (if not lower) and then throwing cheaper components (where needed) helps save them some money while also not making them overpriced for the end user.
I've been considering a refab computer from Amazon to replace my teenage computer. Although I would like a full-sized box that can handle a few cards. From what I can tell is that the biggest weakness is the low generation of the processors.
My first computer was a refurbished Dell Optiplex 7010 with a GT710 inside. It performed pretty decently considering the price, until the CPU died a few years after I got it.
Hello LTT! We have noticed you included Kashmir and Aksai Chin as a part of china in the map 13:35. They are not. Kashmir and Aksai Chin is an integral part of India.
Ayyy I bought 2 of these optiplex’s from a yardsale for $10 and it’s kinda great. Threw a cheap low profile GPU, USB3 card, and WiFi card, and 2 8gb ram sticks and have had no problems. Not a big PC gamer.
I swear I’ve watched this video before but I didn’t realize those companies were like in the area I live…. It’s quite industrial that area so I expect stuff like that to exist tbh
i will say i have built a few of these low budget pc and the thing i have always liked about dell is that when i install windows 10 it will always validate windows without a key im sure thats just a dell thing so if i had to guess thats probably what there doing they dont even need a key if they stick with oem dells
LTT is doing comercial now for a company selling e-waste with LED Linus: good for you to buy! Otherwise it will be in a landfill Me: Yes it is e-waste it belongs there
Was thinking these were a maybe, until I saw that the xps 8700 I bought secondhand and upgraded as best I can is equivalent. Meaning I still want to get a better PC that can run my games better than I'm running them now
It's cool seeing old computers being reused/repurposed instead of being sent to the scrap yard like in the old days. sadly this trend will end when microsoft kills support for windows 10
With cheap used GPUs flooding the market it gives those that bought the full tower room to pop in a cheap small card for 1080p medium gaming (if you when the lottery and get a PSU with a 6-Pin(or 8) power plug you can do 1440p medium.) For that SFF though the only best card would be the low profile single slot RX6400 (at least it's better than a 1030 single slot) I would recommend the low profile GTX 1650, but breathing room would be a issue for those that don't understand air flow & temps. I would tell someone that asked me about them to go for a 4th Gen or better for a SFF or a 3rd Gen or better for a desktop (and make sure it's a I7 for AAA gaming and I5/I3 for HTPC/Retro Gaming). Also for gaming when Win 10 gets EOL just install SteamOS (via HoloISO or the official 3.X "whenever" it gets released publicly.)
There are some excellent and fast computers from Dell and HP i7 3.4, 3.6Ghz 16gb of RAM SSD, or 1tb HDD, Dell XPS, and HP ProDesk 600 G1 for about $200.00 just put a decent Video card on it and you have a good machine to play with. And regarding the Windows 10 license,you just need to download it from Microsoft and install it, the key is embedded on these PCs.
I build my own pc in 2010, and is still better than most of pc right now. From 2017, i made custom laptops, and now 2023, i got bored, and bought a ps5 that i moded. :)))
I got ahold of an old Optiplex 7010 dt. I know it's old and I'm not really using it for gaming, but I did buy a Radeon rx 6400 and 32gb of ddr3 ram for it. Mine has the i5 3470.
Damn for the same price I managed to build a pc with an i7 4770. Gtx 1060 6gb 500gb ssd and 320gb hdd with 16gb of 1600mhz RAM. How do they manage to sell that junk
Back in my school days these PCs ran Minecraft pretty darn well. Of course Mojang has ruined their creation by making it nearly unplayable even on non-budget gaming PCs without modifying the game with third party software
I got literally that same(ish) 2nd pc (minus the sickers and RGB lights) for like 100 bucks on ebay. Sure mine only came with 8gb ram and a 1tb hdd, plus no keyboard mouse, mon.. blah blah. But for like another 150.. pretty solid mid gaming PC. 500w psu, I7 4c8t (3.6ghz?)cpu, rx580 8gb, 16gb ram, 500gb boot ssd, 1 tb hdd, key/mouse, and monitor.. and 2 (count em!) 2.. dvd rw disk drives that I will probably never touch again after making sure they opened. 😂 No cheating.. I didn't already have, or get gifted anything. Goodwill (HMDI w sound monitor), FB MP key/mouse), and just buying stuff new (ram, gpu, and psu.) The goal was to build something playable for cheap.. mission accomplished.
I have been clearing a bunch of even older Optiplex machines, with Core2Duos, for work. Unfortunately a little too old for this to be viable, unfortunately.
Man Linus, most of them that dont have a win7 sticker (with what you also can activate win 10 or and 11??) have the licence on the bios. So all of them have a genuine licence on them. Why buy a win licence, just go sticker photo hunting (like on ebay and find a photo where the licence can be seen) on those optiplex pcs and activate your own copy.
I work for a small family owned company in Indiana and "act" as our IT guy mainly because my boss overheard me talking about how I built my gaming computer one day. I have been buying Tecdale computers for our company for about 3 years, about 15 in total. All for around 250-300 bucks and have only ever had a problem with 1 of them...and Tecdale replaced it for free. I avoid the cringy LED light versions,. but they have been great for a small company like us who are on a budget and only need to use the internet and run our sales software program, thats it. Cool to see them on this video
That's really nice to hear. I'm guessing the sales software has to run on Windows? I want to say a Pi would be idea for that scenario too but that locks you into linux and they're annoying to find at the moment.
@@Furluge I sold similar models to schools and non-profits for a while, these machines have much better specs compared to a Pi (you can even find some with enterprise graphics cards) in addition to the "benefit" of running a familiar OS like Windows. Its been a few years for us, but we were selling 7th or 8th gen i5's and i7's with 8GB - 16GB of RAM. We did sell quite a few running Linux as well though.
That bit about underinformed parents/grandparents buying these for ultimately disappointed kids hit me so hard Something about adults doing things with the best intentions for their kids and still failing really gets me lol
Oh god this brings back the pain from when my mom got a free tablet with a subscription somewhere, and she was so proud to give it to me and my brother. It was an absolute piece of junk that was quite literally unusable, and we just pretended we loved it. Pretty quickly though it actually stopped working altogether, and she went after the comoany to have it replaced, which never happened, and so it was left to rot in the closet never to be used again. Something about that experience pains me to this day. Just seeing your sweet mom try so hard, and not daring to tell her the truth.
@Joris Keijser If your moms still around you should tell her, might make her feel better, knowing her kids appreciated everything she was trying to do
@LinusTechTips So cool that LTT reviewed a PC where I work at! To answer some of your questions; The RAMs are brand new from a vendor. We do used old ram but using new ram modules means more reliability and higher quality parts! The skins/vinyl are used to cover up the scuffs and dent repairs that was there when we got the PC from the businesses we got it from (They come in skids so dents and scratches are to be expected). As for windows, we believe that a clean install plus VLC is all a customer needs for their everyday tasks and keeps the computer running smoothly! No background task to eat up unnecessary resources. Advance Skytech is North Americas second highest PC refurbishment company, we do pc, laptops and servers! Quality over quantity is our commitment, glad for a positive feedback from you! Edit: The company is a wholesaler for companies to buy refurbished pcs from us to resell to the public, only a warehouse, no store and not open to the public.
I've worked IT for the last 5 years. I started in the office building myself, later helped with Work from Home efforts all throughout the pandemic, and even had a position where I was in charge of the fleet of laptops, docks, monitors, and peripherals we lent to the users. During that time with the fleet, I sometimes pondered the amount of waste just my job alone creates. Then I would get overwhelmed in my head at the sheer scale of global e-waste; take my job, then make it make a position for basically every company and government function on the planet. This was a nice video for me in that regard
Honestly I think devices like these could live on for many years if they were marketed towards secondary use cases. I could see one being used as a media computer for watching movies on a tv. If the thing has a 1030 in it that'll easily run a 4k display. A person could also use one of these as a simple DIY NAS or home server. It might even be useful as a private game server for something like valheim--assuming it's at least got a quad-core cpu in it. Some of those server applications can be a little demanding if you have a ton of friends connected to it, but a handful of people punching deer in the wilderness won't break it that easily.
eventually they become waste when they are just phased out, one can only have so many pc(s), as in actively using, keeping them out of landfill is only temporary, what we really need is something like framework laptop and the likes and we just need to not consume and buy so much/ buy into the marketing department and buying things we absolutely dont need but just can
seriously?? one of the best looking? a 2 dollar infinity mirror and 12v ledstrip... nahhh even proper brands have legit addressable rgb infinity mirrors that dont look like a funnel🤣💀
I just had prebuilt pc sold as cheap as 79 dollars. But I discovered that it can partly be updated. The whole process of upgrading to ssd was troublesome. Also had to upgrade the ram, the ghz was bad but sustainably for limited application.
I did this for 5 years but refurbishing dell poweredge (00/10/20 series mostly) but we would get a fair few HP DL series and my god no one hates their customers like HP hates their customers. Consumer grade or Enterprise. The worst most restrictive bios ever made.
3:22 How privileged have we become when we aren't willing to shed blood for a build??? Truly I say we must dedicate ourselves thusly, even for the downtrodden prebuilts.
You can flash another similar bios in the motherboard. Neither Dell or HP produces motherboard and in most cases, the motherboard that they choose is already a project in production of the mb company. Actually, im using now a gigabyte bios from gen 3 in a itautec(kinda a small dell from brazil) prebuild
I’ve worked with Dell Optiplex desktops for 14 years. They are mostly tool-less, but they will slice your fingers open in every way possible if you’re not careful.
as someone who use to work in Ewaste recyceling and would pushout 50 to 70 dell 9020sff's a day i love that the things still turn up on youtube as budget pc alternitives and every time someone trys to pull a drive they get slived open, i have soo many permanate scars on my fingers from those things its nice to see it happen to someone else for a change
I was a field tech for Dell. I have never sliced myself open removing one of those drive cages, and considering that's the hinge point, I'm not sure why anyone would even have their hand up that side of it once the latch was popped. Odd.
Seeing PCs like these on resale is a great thing. They make great starter PCs for younger children and a great starting platform to build on. My love of PC building and modding came from upgrading my massively overpriced Time PC. Seeing hardware staying out of landfill is a brucey bonus.
Used office PCs are definitely a great value, usually. When you're paying twice as much as you normally would for a refurbished machine, so you get a case that looks a bit nicer and get a crappy SSD with it I am not so sure anymore. Maybe the warranty is worth it to some people.
@@toolbaggers BIOS has no limits. Idk if that has changed but on the time Dell released these models, they actually upgraded the motherboard microcode several times, and some models do support Xeon cpus (Inspiron 3847 being one of those). The PSU might be the first wall you might hit, actually.
@@r.lr.l1531 that's a valid point but unfortunately there are thousands of products on the market that target above their ability. Its the nature of corporate greed and colourful marketing.
Came in expecting a "wish" scam, found local businesses upcycling old office hardware with honest marketing, reasonable prices, legit licenses and at least some warrenty. I'm rarely happy to get the wrong 1st impression of a video, but this certainly turned out better and more wholesome than expected.
its kind of nice knowing those old boxes were able to retire from the office life rather than being put down, they can go help old Doris play solitaire in style
I don't know about that, I'm a power user and some of these old desktops can give you some really good power with some upgrades for a very low pricepoint, especially a GPU upgrade in the full fat case would give some really solid performance inline with a 1500 to 2000 dollar machine
These types of cheap older PCs are also becoming popular for emulators. If you have at least Intel HD 630 in the CPU, the graphics performance is good enough for PS2 and Wii gaming. Add a GT 1030 or GTX 1050 for 4k video and light PC gaming.
@@TruthDoesNotExistyou aren't getting anywhere near close to the computers that cost anywhere from 1500 to 2000 and even if you managed to get one of them to run a 30 series card from Nvidia then the temps are going to be really bad
This honestly hits so close to home, my first experience with gaming on my own pc was using an old decommissioned optiplex from my local county government, it was used for mapping and data entry and for some reason had duel mini gpus. Legit helped my dad who worked in IT at the time rip out HUNDREDS of these and i would take them and build them into computers for my friends, had a squad of 15 year olds playing league of legends on desktops used for child support cases or court case proceedings
@@GodSaveTheUnitedStates did you have to install a bigger PSU to use the 580? I've been looking into doing a build similar to this, but I'm nervous about the power requirements of the 580
Can you imagine being the owner of this company and seeing this video on youtube? These guys have to be stoked with this review from LTT, this is about as much of a two thumbs up as any system builder has ever gotten from them.
Hope they see this as a motivation to go further. Maybe sourcing old GPUs, like 680's, 770´s, 960's or 1050's and put them in for a small price increase.
@@potatopotatopotatopotatopo8746 Keyword "almost". I've watched countless PC build guides over the years, but I would never trust myself with building one myself (mainly due to money constraints). Sure, I've upgraded a few parts here and there, but never built one from scratch. Something like these "glitter-furbished" PCs would be great for me. Peel off the tacky glitter. Slap in an older GPU, and be fine with the okay performance.
@@MeowMeowMeowMeowMeowMeowMeowww I mean those are like just barely beneath the real basic minimum, unless you're counting sub-1080p which is also fine I mean, I got by on an RX 550 4gb before which was "fine" for 1366x768p but was basically just an upgrade from a 7570 1gb which itself barely ran stuff by mid to late 2010s. So my point being, yeah idk about a 960, even if it's still "fine" but to be fair a 770 is still going to basically run like 3/4's of all games out there, I mean you can still play a whole bunch of pretty decent games on a dualcore and a GTX 480 max or something like that. That being stated, do note: *older* games that run on a dualcore. So in other words, you can say good bye to most brand new indie games by going with a GTX 600 series card that's not gonna have the kind of OpenCL DirectX support you're going to need for even the most basic of Rimworld tier games usually. Because of that, I think that it eventually gets tot he point you'd be better off just getting an APU that runs modern DirectX versions that bothering with a somewhat faster but ancient GPU completely lacking in supporting those APIs.
I feel like the warranty might actually be legit with the simple fact that they have an abundance of used hardware that will be dirt cheap to just send out which mean they really don't lose much
That’s really neat that the warranty actually has value. The more expensive ones still feel very overpriced, but the cheaper ones aren’t bad at all for non-techy people.
@@ristekostadinov2820 right I mean hell all ya gotta do is find the best Deal you can on a GPU... I mean a 3060 can be had for 200 maybe less or amd ya might something
@@RyanUlring I got a $10 full size ATX OptiPlex 3010 w/ an i5-3470 before Although whoever from Goodwill that posted it on eBay mistakenly thought it was just the case lmao, banked on it real quick after noticing there was there a motherboard in it based off of the pic of the backside of the case
A very good possibility. The thing about those cheap PCs is they keep e-waste out of landfills and give it a second life. It gives people without a lot of money a chance to have some sort of machine they can use for most things too. I can imagine someone in college using one of these to do his homework. That or a cheap laptop anyhow.
@@ewenchan1239 I'm actually considering getting two or three for exactly that reason. These things seem like pretty decent value and I wonder if one could contact the companies and get some for cheaper, if you forgo the Windows license, since in a cluster you'd just be slapping some kind of Linux on them anyways.
@@PontschPauPau3451 You might be able to google the companies and send them an email to see if they would be willing to do that. I SUSPECT (and again, this is just me) that they might be getting like "OEM" licenses, which might only be maybe like $10/20 a pop or something akin to that. In other words, the cost of the Windows license is probably NOT significant given the fact that even in the video, Linus mentioned that if you priced out all the parts, it's about $240 which comes pretty close to the $300 cost that they charge. You MIGHT be able to find the systems on eBay for less, but I doubt that it would be significantly less without the Windows license. If nothing else, you can always buy their systems, and then swap the SSD with your own SSD and then that way, that SSD will have a licensed copy of Windows 10, and then you can install Linux on something else, so it's like getting a "free" licensed copy of Windows 10 with your purchase that you can then put into another system, as long as the activation key isn't locked to the hardware. It'd be cheaper than building a single, bigger system, but of course, running three systems will cost more in power than a slightly bigger, monolithic system (and then just doing the same stuff that you were going to do, with VMs instead of physical systems).
I have to say I love this idea in terms of keeping these out of landfills. And while I’m sure not a lot of people will be doing this with these I think it’s so fun trying to get as much performance out of hype budget computers
Problem is these used to be readily available for only $150 and the best source for cheap internet machines for family on a budget. Now I know why they all disappeared.
Problem is these used to be readily available for only $150 and the best source for cheap internet machines for family on a budget. Now I know why they all disappeared.
no one puts PCs in a landfill lmao its valuable metals ... unless u live in africa or india or china ,landfills detect and grab any metals that morons have not put in the recyles
I think retro PCs are cool by themselves tho, why are they trying to put some cheap glitter on it. A little glitter might be ok, but just sell glitter tape bro. That's my opinion.
Honestly the treasure box PC is adorable with the glitter. If my daughter was a couple years older, I would definitely consider it for a starting computer for her and then build out from there.
@@AMV12S To big for the Case. Literally just bought on ebay a R7 350 for such a usecase for 23€. Slim Case PC no PCIE. And don't buy the RX 6400 for this Systems PCIE 3.0 together with 4x are not great: 30% performance loss.
@@AMV12S A Quadro P1000 or T1000 series or one of the Radeon Pro 4 GB models. That Optiplex SFF looked like it would be best with a single slot card for airflow.
@@stephen1r2 often the PSUs on these boards arent that easy to hook to GPUs, and the motherboard use specific non ATX connectors which makes things complicated for uprgades. But as a tiny GPU, bus powered, the Nvidia A2000 is amazing
Honestly I'm just glad to see these systems put to good use. My company isn't even that big and we've alone sent hundreds of these 9010 and 9020s to the local e-waste recycler while they're still perfectly usable for someone who just needs a basic PC. The wrap to hide their previous life and the cheap SSD are all perfect answers to how to get these things a second life. Even at ~$200 they're prolly making a pretty decent profit from each unit, too.
Average price i was coming up with on ebay was ~$50 usd for a 9020. Large lots were even cheaper, ~$30-40 per unit. So, yeah, the markup for a bit of 'bling' is pretty substantial.
@@nyblenproductions5166 Unfortunately that's not an option - as mentioned in the video, like most businesses we're required to destroy the hard drive when disposing of workstations. So we work with a local e-waste recycler that is able to certify that the disks have been destroyed (and means they're legally liable in the unlikely event we find out company info was leaked via a HDD they said they had destroyed). There's just not time to destroy hundreds of drives ourselves; nor manage individual sales. As far as accounting is concerned, the assets have been fully depreciated and have no value so - we just need to get rid of them as quickly and painlessly as possible.
@@chrisbaker8533 Exactly. Not to mention most recyclers are getting these things for free from businesses doing a big e-waste purge. Hell; sometimes we've even paid form them to send a truck out.
The benefit of them being OEM pre built units is than even windows 7 era machines STILL get free windows 10 upgrades as an in place upgrades, which can then be freshly re installed thanks to its shiny new digital license
I used to work for a refurbisher in Belgium who had literally thousands of these Dell optiplexes, but even with some upgrades (though, no snazzy glitter stickers or RGB) we couldn't get rid of these even though we tried. :D Bet they would be happy to see this now.
The stickers and RGBs are honestly the magic touch here, because otherwise these actually decent PCs are unlikely to catch anyone's attention. With or without the stickers and lights, these are fantastic little machines for daily use for people with light workloads. Making them look nice (depending on your tastes of course) will actually get them out the door and keep them out of the landfill which I think is really cool.
@@jafizzle95 I started doing this for this exact reason. Over my 19 years, Ive gotten so many for free that I ran out of room. Ive now sold every one 😁.
Fun fact: Dell Optiplex is commonly used as the heart and soul of an arcade machine. Usually running Windows or Linux configured to autostart the game. I know this as I work at Chuck E. Cheese.
Actually these desktop are great for that and seen them used in quite a few arcade and also casino games as well. They built well quite reliable and easy to get part for and dirt cheap. I use one for my electronic work bench and been great as only PC that works with my chip burners and other programmers while my newer computers won’t work barely, or at all with older programmers. The Dell 5040 I have works with everything I thrown at it and is a true workhorse. Yea get people like latest and greatest but in some when dealing with certain older programmers and older hardware requires an older PC and the older dell optiplex are great and well built as well.
By avoiding e-waste, and helping countries and people in needs, I'm genuinely happy with these. Hell, an SFF office PC with GPU seems surprisingly tempting as they fit in one of my favorite suitcases and could be a very nice LAN party PC.
"Update on the warranty: We called up the support line for Advanced Skytech (Treasure Box) secret shopper style. There was no wait time to get an agent, and they walked us through every step of fixing the issue including sending videos to assist us. They were patient and helpful overall. Pretty pleased with how it went."
When a no name company that glitter bombs old office PC has infinitely better customer support than billion dollar OEM company Dell
imo the reason why is cause of the high markup on these kinds of systems. presumably to justify their price, they have to create some sort of value add that makes it stand out from other products including just going to another refurbisher and paying less outright.
Nice! Surprised kudos and mad respect
@@telepathicdragon OEMs sell similarly if not more overpriced systems without adequate customer service and get away with it, so I'm not sure what's your point.
I mean if aftersale really bad this kind of company already vanished from the world, it's clearly just for cheaper normal people
...
You're not LTT...
This makes me feel the nostalgia I have for the Tech Showdown days of LTT. Still love you guys, but I miss those kinds of pure, authentic, "because we can" episodes. Stay golden LTT. I love you.
I feel like the majority of the out of the box things they do are "because we can", especially when they drop sponsorships for the sake of the content
Pro Tip to Linus: Windows 10 can be activated with a Windows 7 key. Micro$oft let the back door open for the upgraders on purpose. So if you have a Win7 Pro key, you can have 10 pro. The iso is available on their site to use off of a USB stick and is set up so you can choose from the Education versions to the pro version.
This is exactly how I've been sourcing Win10 for the past few years after support ended for Win7.
I've been using my old Technet keys and haven't needed to buy new licenses since they ended the program.
Yea, but that requires I downgrade to win 10 and lose all the features I paid for in Win 7 ultimate.
Win 7 for gaming, Linux for security. MS can get bent until win pro edition becomes actual pro edition and not a slightly less bastardized home edition.
Can it be upgraded to Windows 11 for free, also?
@@Daywalker222 yes
I got a Optiplex 7040 SFF from work when they upgraded PCs. Had it in a closet for 2+ years. Recently installed new ram, 1tb NVME and RX 6400. I love it 😍
10:40 This is the video where Linus reveals he is actually a 3 moths in an LTT jacket
Nice thing about these Dell, hp, Lenovo business machines is that they are engineered to run 24/7 hot, cold, dusty environments and just keep going. I was a Dell/hp tech at John Deere servicing these machines on a daily basis. Many of them that come in from the factory floor where so dirty and beat up you couldn't imagine they worked. But with a good cleaning maybe light repair and some updates they go right back to work. Most of these machines will keep running for years yet so long they will just become obsolete before they quite running. I was flipping these into gaming PCs back in 2016 helping out local kids on a budget.
Most of the time as long as nothing is preventing it from cooling and nothing physically damaged the chips, they'll keep going. We've had some nightmare machines come in at the college I worked at. Just before I started, one came in full of termites. I've seen them with inches of dust and fans that failed years ago still running.
5:33 the way I reached for the right arrow key because I thought that was going to be a segway into a sponsor haha
Looking back on these things now as a service technician for a nationwide chain of computer stores that sold these things, I wish they just got recycled. So many of these ended up coming back for RMA, warranty repairs and defects that at one point we were returning almost as many as we were selling. The SSDs that the refurbisher used were so horrifically unreliable that techs started begging people to buy an SSD to replace the one in it. Hell, we even offered free reimaging for a short while because of how bad it got. These things were terrible. Even moreso now that Windows 11's requirements have functionally invalidated them.
I recently "built" my first PC. Got a 90€ PC of ebay and upgraded the PSU and GPU and the total money I spent was around 230€. Specs are decent for the Money as well: Xeon E3 1230 V3, 8GB DDR3 1600MHz and a GTX 1050 Ti Gaming X 4gb from MSi
One reason those two USB ports might have been covered: They might have been (mis-)diagnosed as faulty and by opting to not letting the customer know that the ports are even there, there is no chance of overselling the computer's capabilities on that front.
I work on replacing warranty swaps and repairs on Dell Optiplex at work and can't help but think that a LOT of these Treasure Box refurbs were most likely touched by my hands before they got bedazzled. It makes a weird kind of sense that they would use these too as these models are super easy to tear down and rebuild. A usual tear down and rebuild for a motherboard replacement takes me typically 10 to 15 minutes.
I got an old dell optiplex 9020 from my school, I ran a surprisingly large amount of games on the i7-4790 that was already in it with the intel hd4600 graphics, and I used that for about a year or 2, I later got a usedgtx1650 low profile, which is about the best card you can get that will fit in it, now it runs most games great and I am super happy with it. However, the gpu temps get quite high with the side panel on, so I have to play with the side panel always off, which for me is not a problem.
me reading this comment knowing I haven't used a side panel on any PC in over a decade even on $3k+ machines. Just hit it with an air can every once in a while or once I had a box fan with a dust filter on the back pointed right at it to keep one that ran hot cool.
@@TheHomicidalTendency haha yeah everything runs better with more air
simular here, i got an sff optiplex 7010 for free that my college was chucking out proberbly around 2017, quad i7-3770, 16gbram, 256gb ssd, reinstalled windows 10, shoved an sff gtx1050ti (£110) in and a 1tb hdd (£30) and its been my main desktop since, ran any game i tried at over 60fps medium unless i went crazy with spawned vehicles and max graphics in BeamNG (my cooling solution was side pannel off with a desk fan pointed at it, worked really well actually haha), bought a new laptop (dell insperion 15+) this time last year that has mostly replaced it (wish i could have gone desktop but needed somthing i could stuff in a rucksack) though its still used occasionally for running hevier game servers and older games requiring xp, the optiplex was certainly a mega upgrade over the 2010 dell latitude buisness laptop i was using at the time, looking back idk how the hell i used to game on that laptop and cringe thinking that i used to find 17fps on very low in BeamNG running off a memory stick playable, surprised it even ran at all on intergrated graphics haha ooh boy did that thing cook, also i dont have a clue how i managed with just 128gb duel booted split between win7 and ubuntu, i actually took it to peices a few weeks ago, keep meaning to replace the whats left of the thermal paste, it more seems to resemble dust now.
Here's the thing. You use a GTX 1650 because it fits. You take the side panel off because of thermals. If you think about it, the 1650 is no longer the best card you can fit in it. I just butchered the PICe bracket on my 7010, and now a full-height card fits.
@@JonathanSchrock you know, I never thought about that, technically I could, however the power supply is only 255 watts and I don’t believe it has any cables to support a gpu that needs extra power cables
These refurbished office PCs definitely are a thing in Europe too and often are a lot of value for little money. Friend of mine got one as all he plays is world of warcraft (and not any of the recent expansions either) and happily used it for two years. When I found out it only has the crappy office GPU (but better than none) I dug out ancient GTX 580 with busted fans, removed the fan hub, zip-tied two 80mm fans directly to the cooler block and now he runs wow at full details at smooth stable 60fps in raids happy as a clam having absolutely no need for any more modern hardware :D
Even if it’s not great for gaming, there’s still value in providing options at the budget end of the market and giving new life to what would otherwise be trashed but still good parts. The fact you get a clean Windows install really makes them seem like a customer-oriented business. Looks like they found a niche and I think it’s good that it’s occupied.
I guess you can make a mini home server out of it
This is actually how you reduce E-waste. Intresting product tbh.
I actually got 4 surplus Dell 3020 SFFs similar to this. One got a $5 R5-240. One got it's power supply moved a bit & got a GT 1030 & SSD. One got it's mobo swapped into a regular tower with a HD 7850 & SSD. And the best one got an RX 480, SSD, HDD, and full-size power supply stuffed into the original SFF case with a homemade extended top to contain it all.
Watching Linus take the computer apart is hilarious, I work on these mini-sized Dells all day at work 😂
I'm in Venezuela, and this computer are everywhere, they are super cheap between 100-200$ and are pretty decent for gaming. I have a Optiplex 3010 with a 1060 i did spent 280$ and I'm pretty happy. This computer are really good for 3er world Country, where buying a 600-1000$ isn't a option.
This video is really making me rethink some things, as I used to refurb/upgrade and sell used office pcs online and local, and now I do a lot of work with my cricut, and can easily cut vinyl... those old cases would look great with a vinyl covering
Old office pcs and thin clients make amazing respbery pi alternatives and are often a lot better. I've built a pfsense box, and small home server recently out of some tiny thin clients
My only complaint is not outfitting these with a low profile 1650, or at least a 1050ti to make them actually respectable at gaming. Considering the aesthetic choices, one would definitely think they would be gaming oriented.
I got a few 4th gen i7s Dells identical to those from a local college for $25 a pop in 2019. Just had to add a Samsung SSD and a video card. Turned them into gaming PCs for my kids. Found out that the ones I didn't buy got sold as electronic scrap by the pound.
Time to paint my Dell Optiplex 9020. 😆
Who u
so far I've been having a gaming setup that was once an office PC but then i made it into my own customized gaming build and i am blessed by God that it still works even if i can't play newer titles much I still can enjoy my fav GTA title GTA IV and some other titles like Wiz and Pirate 101... and thanks to continued mod support the og GTA trilogy can in fact be played from start to finish at 60 fps (for OG GTA SA it needs more work on get the fps to be at 60 since low or max settings in GTA SA doesn't seem to reach that smooth 60) (i have my preordered PC GTA DE trilogy still even though i have to lock it at 30fps imo the DE trilogy does have better graphics)
3:40 deal with the Dellvil
Windows license is in the UEFI, so the OEM (Dell) already paid Microsoft and added these fees in the initial purchase by the company that used these PC's. This way you can resell these systems without having to ask licensing fees for a second time.
I love that they recognize the good product and just carried Jerryrig everything knife in ltt storeß
The TecDale probably didn't use vinyl but spray on rubber. Little inside tip, I used to do the same with ThinkPads I resoled.
I made a pretty competent little computer out of an Optiplex like this. I have an Optiplex 7020 that I got for free from my old job and pretty heavily modified it with stuff I had lying around. Put a 500gb Adata SSD in it, 16gb of ram, and a used i7 and it is pretty decent. I was able to get it up to speed running modern games though by throwing in an old GTX1060 3gb on a PCIe riser cable. I must admit it isnt pretty - the side panel is open with a graphics card loosely laying out of it, but it is very usable. I regularly run Forza Horizon 5 on it with medium-low settings. It isn't fancy, but if you are going for the cheap-frankenstein look, it is pretty cool.
My first computer build was based off a $150 refurbished HP Elitedesk 800 G1 with an Intel i5 4570. The good thing about these office PC’s is they usually have a decent CPU to pair with a mid range GPU. Was a fun learning experience, I actually had to buy special cables though to power the gtx1060 as HP uses proprietary cables/inputs. I ran Witcher 3 at pretty much max settings @1080p-60fps with only slight drops in Novigrad, the cpu being the bottleneck here.
Building that PC gave me the skills to build some awesome towers, I’m on my sixth PC build now 😂
These seem to be actually pretty ok! My local pc hardware store does something pretty similar to this (but with less glitter or rgb), I picked one up on a whim as having a little media pc was something I'd wanted for a while, and for around $155 USD (translating from my currency) it seemed like a pretty safe buy. Little did I know, it was one of the best purchases I'd made! They put in a little NVMe SSD, a 6th gen i5 and 8gb of DDR4 ram, it's STUPID fast and can even do some lightweight gaming without upgrades. Just bought a GT 1030 to stick in it, once that's in it'll be a perfect little games box for the living room!
That silver glitter bombed PC actually looks nice.
8:35 I mean technically they did say "powerfull" and not "powerful" so there is a chance that they're not lying.
>the treasure box is looking like a pretty okay value if we adjust our expectations
>$75 office PC sold for $300
Not so sure on that one, chief.
Dell Precision Tower 3620 on Amazon. One of the best refurbs. Easy to expand into a Gaming PC, on a budget.
Can't wait for the glitter tape to show up on a LTT build in the future. Maybe the Cardboard PC case part deux?
The warranty is the most impressive part...
honestly, its a smart move by these companies, its a low risk, decent reward money making setup. I'm sure they are buying those pcs for like $25-$100 a piece (if not lower) and then throwing cheaper components (where needed) helps save them some money while also not making them overpriced for the end user.
The TecDale one looks alright tbh and like said, it's upgradable.
I've been considering a refab computer from Amazon to replace my teenage computer. Although I would like a full-sized box that can handle a few cards.
From what I can tell is that the biggest weakness is the low generation of the processors.
Dell computers were not harmed during filming of this video^^
My first computer was a refurbished Dell Optiplex 7010 with a GT710 inside. It performed pretty decently considering the price, until the CPU died a few years after I got it.
As someone who owns one of these and upgraded it on a budget, it works well for me and I use it everyday
Hello LTT! We have noticed you included Kashmir and Aksai Chin as a part of china in the map 13:35. They are not. Kashmir and Aksai Chin is an integral part of India.
Ayyy I bought 2 of these optiplex’s from a yardsale for $10 and it’s kinda great. Threw a cheap low profile GPU, USB3 card, and WiFi card, and 2 8gb ram sticks and have had no problems. Not a big PC gamer.
When he bled I was like "yep" same thing happened to me with similar pcs lol
I swear I’ve watched this video before but I didn’t realize those companies were like in the area I live…. It’s quite industrial that area so I expect stuff like that to exist tbh
i will say i have built a few of these low budget pc and the thing i have always liked about dell is that when i install windows 10 it will always validate windows without a key im sure thats just a dell thing so if i had to guess thats probably what there doing they dont even need a key if they stick with oem dells
12:51 I see you editor person
“you can replace your bulky wallet with the ridge” no way!! i can replace my 5 dollar wallet with a 95 dollar wallet?? what a steal.
LTT is doing comercial now for a company selling e-waste with LED
Linus: good for you to buy! Otherwise it will be in a landfill
Me: Yes it is e-waste it belongs there
Also my stepdad did refurb pc's in the early 2000s. We used spare parts to build my gaming pc 😅 i remember playing diablo and spiderman on it.
Was thinking these were a maybe, until I saw that the xps 8700 I bought secondhand and upgraded as best I can is equivalent. Meaning I still want to get a better PC that can run my games better than I'm running them now
It's cool seeing old computers being reused/repurposed instead of being sent to the scrap yard like in the old days. sadly this trend will end when microsoft kills support for windows 10
With cheap used GPUs flooding the market it gives those that bought the full tower room to pop in a cheap small card for 1080p medium gaming (if you when the lottery and get a PSU with a 6-Pin(or 8) power plug you can do 1440p medium.)
For that SFF though the only best card would be the low profile single slot RX6400 (at least it's better than a 1030 single slot) I would recommend the low profile GTX 1650, but breathing room would be a issue for those that don't understand air flow & temps. I would tell someone that asked me about them to go for a 4th Gen or better for a SFF or a 3rd Gen or better for a desktop (and make sure it's a I7 for AAA gaming and I5/I3 for HTPC/Retro Gaming). Also for gaming when Win 10 gets EOL just install SteamOS (via HoloISO or the official 3.X "whenever" it gets released publicly.)
I can say on behalf of Poles that EVERY Polish school has such computers.
I guess this video is useful. For those consumers who dont really shop for refurbed desktops.
well those dell optiplex 7010s are fairly nice for some gaming if you fully kit em out
5:34 lol thought it was gonna be a sponsor
There are some excellent and fast computers from Dell and HP i7 3.4, 3.6Ghz 16gb of RAM SSD, or 1tb HDD, Dell XPS, and HP ProDesk 600 G1 for about $200.00 just put a decent Video card on it and you have a good machine to play with. And regarding the Windows 10 license,you just need to download it from Microsoft and install it, the key is embedded on these PCs.
ReviewTechUSA sent me here. He says "Hi."
I build my own pc in 2010, and is still better than most of pc right now. From 2017, i made custom laptops, and now 2023, i got bored, and bought a ps5 that i moded. :)))
So i went for an interview today (i live in jordan the country Linus mentioned) and they were using this computer
Nice gaming Linus! 🤣 I was WTF for a second.
I got ahold of an old Optiplex 7010 dt. I know it's old and I'm not really using it for gaming, but I did buy a Radeon rx 6400 and 32gb of ddr3 ram for it. Mine has the i5 3470.
That's my main PC, optiplex 9020, without the glitter of course
Damn for the same price I managed to build a pc with an i7 4770. Gtx 1060 6gb 500gb ssd and 320gb hdd with 16gb of 1600mhz RAM. How do they manage to sell that junk
I fell for this scam many years ago. They are marketed as gaming PCs but just sell you a glam office pc
Back in my school days these PCs ran Minecraft pretty darn well. Of course Mojang has ruined their creation by making it nearly unplayable even on non-budget gaming PCs without modifying the game with third party software
I got literally that same(ish) 2nd pc (minus the sickers and RGB lights) for like 100 bucks on ebay. Sure mine only came with 8gb ram and a 1tb hdd, plus no keyboard mouse, mon.. blah blah. But for like another 150.. pretty solid mid gaming PC. 500w psu, I7 4c8t (3.6ghz?)cpu, rx580 8gb, 16gb ram, 500gb boot ssd, 1 tb hdd, key/mouse, and monitor.. and 2 (count em!) 2.. dvd rw disk drives that I will probably never touch again after making sure they opened. 😂 No cheating.. I didn't already have, or get gifted anything. Goodwill (HMDI w sound monitor), FB MP key/mouse), and just buying stuff new (ram, gpu, and psu.) The goal was to build something playable for cheap.. mission accomplished.
I have been clearing a bunch of even older Optiplex machines, with Core2Duos, for work. Unfortunately a little too old for this to be viable, unfortunately.
Man Linus, most of them that dont have a win7 sticker (with what you also can activate win 10 or and 11??) have the licence on the bios. So all of them have a genuine licence on them. Why buy a win licence, just go sticker photo hunting (like on ebay and find a photo where the licence can be seen) on those optiplex pcs and activate your own copy.
Cosmodata in Greece is doing it, if I remember well, for more than 10 years. Check how many brands.
3:30 The type of stuff an iFixit kit can't heal 🧼
Liberace called, he wants his PC back.
They have a cool retro look to them and im all for reusing and recycling. They just cost more than they are worth
I work for a small family owned company in Indiana and "act" as our IT guy mainly because my boss overheard me talking about how I built my gaming computer one day. I have been buying Tecdale computers for our company for about 3 years, about 15 in total. All for around 250-300 bucks and have only ever had a problem with 1 of them...and Tecdale replaced it for free. I avoid the cringy LED light versions,. but they have been great for a small company like us who are on a budget and only need to use the internet and run our sales software program, thats it. Cool to see them on this video
That's really nice to hear. I'm guessing the sales software has to run on Windows? I want to say a Pi would be idea for that scenario too but that locks you into linux and they're annoying to find at the moment.
@@Furluge linux isnt something non tech savy people use. He needs the pcs to be straightforward as possible i imagine
@@Furluge not only does it lock you into linux, but not even x86 linux sometimes... it's ARM. making it even more niche.
@@Furluge I sold similar models to schools and non-profits for a while, these machines have much better specs compared to a Pi (you can even find some with enterprise graphics cards) in addition to the "benefit" of running a familiar OS like Windows. Its been a few years for us, but we were selling 7th or 8th gen i5's and i7's with 8GB - 16GB of RAM. We did sell quite a few running Linux as well though.
@@Furluge Spoken like someone who hasn't actually worked in IT or ran a business 💀
That bit about underinformed parents/grandparents buying these for ultimately disappointed kids hit me so hard
Something about adults doing things with the best intentions for their kids and still failing really gets me lol
is this a cry for help
@@spahgetti96 what
@@xpt read between the lines
Oh god this brings back the pain from when my mom got a free tablet with a subscription somewhere, and she was so proud to give it to me and my brother. It was an absolute piece of junk that was quite literally unusable, and we just pretended we loved it. Pretty quickly though it actually stopped working altogether, and she went after the comoany to have it replaced, which never happened, and so it was left to rot in the closet never to be used again. Something about that experience pains me to this day. Just seeing your sweet mom try so hard, and not daring to tell her the truth.
@Joris Keijser If your moms still around you should tell her, might make her feel better, knowing her kids appreciated everything she was trying to do
@LinusTechTips
So cool that LTT reviewed a PC where I work at! To answer some of your questions; The RAMs are brand new from a vendor. We do used old ram but using new ram modules means more reliability and higher quality parts! The skins/vinyl are used to cover up the scuffs and dent repairs that was there when we got the PC from the businesses we got it from (They come in skids so dents and scratches are to be expected). As for windows, we believe that a clean install plus VLC is all a customer needs for their everyday tasks and keeps the computer running smoothly! No background task to eat up unnecessary resources.
Advance Skytech is North Americas second highest PC refurbishment company, we do pc, laptops and servers! Quality over quantity is our commitment, glad for a positive feedback from you!
Edit: The company is a wholesaler for companies to buy refurbished pcs from us to resell to the public, only a warehouse, no store and not open to the public.
Have the team considered buying in bulk some low profile GPUs, in order to upgrade these PCs into real gaming PCs?
"linistechtips" 💀
that's awesome! do you have some contact with someone over at the company? this product would be so popular in my country
Kinda weird that you make a statement like "quality is OUR commitment" while also saying you don't work there anymore lol
@@RealTaIk that’s that i was thinking 😂
I genuinely think this is a really cool trend. Less e-waste is never a bad thing.
Refurbished office PC-s with i5/i7 were always popular in the budget segment.
I've worked IT for the last 5 years. I started in the office building myself, later helped with Work from Home efforts all throughout the pandemic, and even had a position where I was in charge of the fleet of laptops, docks, monitors, and peripherals we lent to the users. During that time with the fleet, I sometimes pondered the amount of waste just my job alone creates. Then I would get overwhelmed in my head at the sheer scale of global e-waste; take my job, then make it make a position for basically every company and government function on the planet.
This was a nice video for me in that regard
Honestly I think devices like these could live on for many years if they were marketed towards secondary use cases. I could see one being used as a media computer for watching movies on a tv. If the thing has a 1030 in it that'll easily run a 4k display. A person could also use one of these as a simple DIY NAS or home server. It might even be useful as a private game server for something like valheim--assuming it's at least got a quad-core cpu in it. Some of those server applications can be a little demanding if you have a ton of friends connected to it, but a handful of people punching deer in the wilderness won't break it that easily.
eventually they become waste when they are just phased out, one can only have so many pc(s), as in actively using, keeping them out of landfill is only temporary, what we really need is something like framework laptop and the likes and we just need to not consume and buy so much/ buy into the marketing department and buying things we absolutely dont need but just can
Reusing e-waste is great. Spraypainting old Dell shitboxes gold and selling them for double price to those who don't know better isn't.
The RGB on the front panel of the second case was genuinely some of the best looking RGB I've ever seen on a case. It was distractingly good.
you mean the lcd Screen display?
@@MRALEX9870that's not an lcd screen
@@MRALEX9870 It's an infinity mirror, derpus. 🙄
@@MobileTaz Ok nerd
seriously?? one of the best looking? a 2 dollar infinity mirror and 12v ledstrip... nahhh even proper brands have legit addressable rgb infinity mirrors that dont look like a funnel🤣💀
As someone who has had to deal with these prebuilts, I have to give respect to figuring out those painful bios.
I just had prebuilt pc sold as cheap as 79 dollars. But I discovered that it can partly be updated. The whole process of upgrading to ssd was troublesome. Also had to upgrade the ram, the ghz was bad but sustainably for limited application.
The BIOS from Dell is actually pretty usable
I did this for 5 years but refurbishing dell poweredge (00/10/20 series mostly) but we would get a fair few HP DL series and my god no one hates their customers like HP hates their customers. Consumer grade or Enterprise. The worst most restrictive bios ever made.
3:22 How privileged have we become when we aren't willing to shed blood for a build??? Truly I say we must dedicate ourselves thusly, even for the downtrodden prebuilts.
You can flash another similar bios in the motherboard. Neither Dell or HP produces motherboard and in most cases, the motherboard that they choose is already a project in production of the mb company. Actually, im using now a gigabyte bios from gen 3 in a itautec(kinda a small dell from brazil) prebuild
I’ve worked with Dell Optiplex desktops for 14 years. They are mostly tool-less, but they will slice your fingers open in every way possible if you’re not careful.
as someone who use to work in Ewaste recyceling and would pushout 50 to 70 dell 9020sff's a day i love that the things still turn up on youtube as budget pc alternitives and every time someone trys to pull a drive they get slived open, i have soo many permanate scars on my fingers from those things its nice to see it happen to someone else for a change
Lmao, ur pain is my pleasure 😂
... And you never considered using gloves?
@@Eyoldaith Do u wanna fit int there?
I was a field tech for Dell. I have never sliced myself open removing one of those drive cages, and considering that's the hinge point, I'm not sure why anyone would even have their hand up that side of it once the latch was popped. Odd.
Seeing PCs like these on resale is a great thing. They make great starter PCs for younger children and a great starting platform to build on. My love of PC building and modding came from upgrading my massively overpriced Time PC. Seeing hardware staying out of landfill is a brucey bonus.
@@toolbaggers I agree but as I said, these PCs are starter PCs. No seasoned PC builder would buy something like this but that isn't the target market.
Used office PCs are definitely a great value, usually. When you're paying twice as much as you normally would for a refurbished machine, so you get a case that looks a bit nicer and get a crappy SSD with it I am not so sure anymore. Maybe the warranty is worth it to some people.
@@toolbaggers BIOS has no limits. Idk if that has changed but on the time Dell released these models, they actually upgraded the motherboard microcode several times, and some models do support Xeon cpus (Inspiron 3847 being one of those). The PSU might be the first wall you might hit, actually.
@@r.lr.l1531 that's a valid point but unfortunately there are thousands of products on the market that target above their ability. Its the nature of corporate greed and colourful marketing.
just build your own, use used parts if you're on a budget
I don't even have a legit copy of windows on my $2000 gaming PC 😂
I'm just running the water mark on my 1100$ custom build
Came in expecting a "wish" scam, found local businesses upcycling old office hardware with honest marketing, reasonable prices, legit licenses and at least some warrenty. I'm rarely happy to get the wrong 1st impression of a video, but this certainly turned out better and more wholesome than expected.
well the fucking bling doesn't really speak in their favor XD it just screams cheap junk in a fancy overpriced coat
yeah, tech waste is going to continue to be an issue, so it's really nice to see a company doing this with a good amount of integrity.
@@zwenkwiel816 don’t fucking disrespect the bling
@Zwenk Wiel you should be shamed for not accepting rgb.
@@imn0tgarbage I think by bling he means the glitter not the RGB lol
It makes me so happy to see this. These old desktops still have so much life to give for non-power users and I'm glad someone is blinging them up
its kind of nice knowing those old boxes were able to retire from the office life rather than being put down, they can go help old Doris play solitaire in style
I don't know about that, I'm a power user and some of these old desktops can give you some really good power with some upgrades for a very low pricepoint, especially a GPU upgrade in the full fat case would give some really solid performance inline with a 1500 to 2000 dollar machine
im super happy to see this and that 10+ year old PCs get a second life.
These types of cheap older PCs are also becoming popular for emulators. If you have at least Intel HD 630 in the CPU, the graphics performance is good enough for PS2 and Wii gaming. Add a GT 1030 or GTX 1050 for 4k video and light PC gaming.
@@TruthDoesNotExistyou aren't getting anywhere near close to the computers that cost anywhere from 1500 to 2000 and even if you managed to get one of them to run a 30 series card from Nvidia then the temps are going to be really bad
This honestly hits so close to home, my first experience with gaming on my own pc was using an old decommissioned optiplex from my local county government, it was used for mapping and data entry and for some reason had duel mini gpus. Legit helped my dad who worked in IT at the time rip out HUNDREDS of these and i would take them and build them into computers for my friends, had a squad of 15 year olds playing league of legends on desktops used for child support cases or court case proceedings
same here my first pc was a "shuttle" square box pc that only had a bad power supply. Added a gtx 660 and it was a great pc for the time
My first true gaming PC was a Packard-Bell desktop that needed a video card to play Half-Life.
Still play games with an optiplex 7010 3rd gen i7, 16gb ram and an rx580 8gb.
@@GodSaveTheUnitedStates did you have to install a bigger PSU to use the 580? I've been looking into doing a build similar to this, but I'm nervous about the power requirements of the 580
From dealing with cases to creating them
Can you imagine being the owner of this company and seeing this video on youtube? These guys have to be stoked with this review from LTT, this is about as much of a two thumbs up as any system builder has ever gotten from them.
Hope they see this as a motivation to go further. Maybe sourcing old GPUs, like 680's, 770´s, 960's or 1050's and put them in for a small price increase.
Except almost the entire LTT audience knows the basics of how to assemble a computer
@@potatopotatopotatopotatopo8746
Keyword "almost".
I've watched countless PC build guides over the years, but I would never trust myself with building one myself (mainly due to money constraints). Sure, I've upgraded a few parts here and there, but never built one from scratch.
Something like these "glitter-furbished" PCs would be great for me. Peel off the tacky glitter. Slap in an older GPU, and be fine with the okay performance.
@@potatopotatopotatopotatopo8746 This doesn't mean they want to assemble and provide support for PCs, especially if not their own.
@@MeowMeowMeowMeowMeowMeowMeowww I mean those are like just barely beneath the real basic minimum, unless you're counting sub-1080p which is also fine I mean, I got by on an RX 550 4gb before which was "fine" for 1366x768p but was basically just an upgrade from a 7570 1gb which itself barely ran stuff by mid to late 2010s. So my point being, yeah idk about a 960, even if it's still "fine" but to be fair a 770 is still going to basically run like 3/4's of all games out there, I mean you can still play a whole bunch of pretty decent games on a dualcore and a GTX 480 max or something like that.
That being stated, do note: *older* games that run on a dualcore. So in other words, you can say good bye to most brand new indie games by going with a GTX 600 series card that's not gonna have the kind of OpenCL DirectX support you're going to need for even the most basic of Rimworld tier games usually. Because of that, I think that it eventually gets tot he point you'd be better off just getting an APU that runs modern DirectX versions that bothering with a somewhat faster but ancient GPU completely lacking in supporting those APIs.
I feel like the warranty might actually be legit with the simple fact that they have an abundance of used hardware that will be dirt cheap to just send out which mean they really don't lose much
That’s really neat that the warranty actually has value. The more expensive ones still feel very overpriced, but the cheaper ones aren’t bad at all for non-techy people.
It's the ultimate grandma machine
Sometimes these PCs can cost like 300-400$ and for that price you can build a new PC with 12th gen i3 and beat any of the 3rd-4th gen i7.
Idk bruh I got a $150 refurbished pc with a 6th gen i5, 16gb of ddr4, and a 256gb ssd so this is pretty horrible by comparison
@@ristekostadinov2820 right I mean hell all ya gotta do is find the best Deal you can on a GPU... I mean a 3060 can be had for 200 maybe less or amd ya might something
@@RyanUlring I got a $10 full size ATX OptiPlex 3010 w/ an i5-3470 before
Although whoever from Goodwill that posted it on eBay mistakenly thought it was just the case lmao, banked on it real quick after noticing there was there a motherboard in it based off of the pic of the backside of the case
The Treasure Box looks like a sci-fi tv/movie setpiece. Imagine a stack of 20 of them sideways in a cabinet pretending to be a data server.
You COULD cluster them...
There are worse ways to learn clustering, high availability, etc....
A very good possibility. The thing about those cheap PCs is they keep e-waste out of landfills and give it a second life. It gives people without a lot of money a chance to have some sort of machine they can use for most things too. I can imagine someone in college using one of these to do his homework. That or a cheap laptop anyhow.
@@ewenchan1239 I'm actually considering getting two or three for exactly that reason. These things seem like pretty decent value and I wonder if one could contact the companies and get some for cheaper, if you forgo the Windows license, since in a cluster you'd just be slapping some kind of Linux on them anyways.
@@PontschPauPau3451
You might be able to google the companies and send them an email to see if they would be willing to do that.
I SUSPECT (and again, this is just me) that they might be getting like "OEM" licenses, which might only be maybe like $10/20 a pop or something akin to that.
In other words, the cost of the Windows license is probably NOT significant given the fact that even in the video, Linus mentioned that if you priced out all the parts, it's about $240 which comes pretty close to the $300 cost that they charge.
You MIGHT be able to find the systems on eBay for less, but I doubt that it would be significantly less without the Windows license.
If nothing else, you can always buy their systems, and then swap the SSD with your own SSD and then that way, that SSD will have a licensed copy of Windows 10, and then you can install Linux on something else, so it's like getting a "free" licensed copy of Windows 10 with your purchase that you can then put into another system, as long as the activation key isn't locked to the hardware.
It'd be cheaper than building a single, bigger system, but of course, running three systems will cost more in power than a slightly bigger, monolithic system (and then just doing the same stuff that you were going to do, with VMs instead of physical systems).
you can make a server of em . 5 would be enough , to hold 10tb🙂😂
I have to say I love this idea in terms of keeping these out of landfills. And while I’m sure not a lot of people will be doing this with these I think it’s so fun trying to get as much performance out of hype budget computers
Problem is these used to be readily available for only $150 and the best source for cheap internet machines for family on a budget. Now I know why they all disappeared.
Problem is these used to be readily available for only $150 and the best source for cheap internet machines for family on a budget. Now I know why they all disappeared.
no one puts PCs in a landfill lmao its valuable metals ... unless u live in africa or india or china ,landfills detect and grab any metals that morons have not put in the recyles
I think retro PCs are cool by themselves tho, why are they trying to put some cheap glitter on it. A little glitter might be ok, but just sell glitter tape bro. That's my opinion.
Honestly the treasure box PC is adorable with the glitter. If my daughter was a couple years older, I would definitely consider it for a starting computer for her and then build out from there.
Just a GPU can make that Optiplex fly...GTX 1650 or RX 6400.
@@AMV12S To big for the Case. Literally just bought on ebay a R7 350 for such a usecase for 23€. Slim Case PC no PCIE. And don't buy the RX 6400 for this Systems PCIE 3.0 together with 4x are not great: 30% performance loss.
@@AMV12S A Quadro P1000 or T1000 series or one of the Radeon Pro 4 GB models. That Optiplex SFF looked like it would be best with a single slot card for airflow.
@@stephen1r2 often the PSUs on these boards arent that easy to hook to GPUs, and the motherboard use specific non ATX connectors which makes things complicated for uprgades. But as a tiny GPU, bus powered, the Nvidia A2000 is amazing
Honestly I'm just glad to see these systems put to good use. My company isn't even that big and we've alone sent hundreds of these 9010 and 9020s to the local e-waste recycler while they're still perfectly usable for someone who just needs a basic PC. The wrap to hide their previous life and the cheap SSD are all perfect answers to how to get these things a second life. Even at ~$200 they're prolly making a pretty decent profit from each unit, too.
damn, I would buy you a couple of those for a cheap price if you ever have some to throw away. Need some cheap machines to make some servers
Average price i was coming up with on ebay was ~$50 usd for a 9020.
Large lots were even cheaper, ~$30-40 per unit.
So, yeah, the markup for a bit of 'bling' is pretty substantial.
@@nyblenproductions5166 Unfortunately that's not an option - as mentioned in the video, like most businesses we're required to destroy the hard drive when disposing of workstations. So we work with a local e-waste recycler that is able to certify that the disks have been destroyed (and means they're legally liable in the unlikely event we find out company info was leaked via a HDD they said they had destroyed). There's just not time to destroy hundreds of drives ourselves; nor manage individual sales. As far as accounting is concerned, the assets have been fully depreciated and have no value so - we just need to get rid of them as quickly and painlessly as possible.
@@chrisbaker8533 Exactly. Not to mention most recyclers are getting these things for free from businesses doing a big e-waste purge. Hell; sometimes we've even paid form them to send a truck out.
The benefit of them being OEM pre built units is than even windows 7 era machines STILL get free windows 10 upgrades as an in place upgrades, which can then be freshly re installed thanks to its shiny new digital license
I used to work for a refurbisher in Belgium who had literally thousands of these Dell optiplexes, but even with some upgrades (though, no snazzy glitter stickers or RGB) we couldn't get rid of these even though we tried. :D Bet they would be happy to see this now.
I'm from France, and I was in the French Navy. There were a shit ton of those PCs in all the naval bases lol. Good memories. ^^
The stickers and RGBs are honestly the magic touch here, because otherwise these actually decent PCs are unlikely to catch anyone's attention. With or without the stickers and lights, these are fantastic little machines for daily use for people with light workloads. Making them look nice (depending on your tastes of course) will actually get them out the door and keep them out of the landfill which I think is really cool.
You were trying to sell pigs. You need to put some makeup on them and make em look pretty for people to want them!
Dude, the 7010s with the i7 are amazing value. I bought one years ago, and I actually want another. Very upgradable.
@@jafizzle95 I started doing this for this exact reason. Over my 19 years, Ive gotten so many for free that I ran out of room. Ive now sold every one 😁.
Fun fact: Dell Optiplex is commonly used as the heart and soul of an arcade machine. Usually running Windows or Linux configured to autostart the game. I know this as I work at Chuck E. Cheese.
Actually these desktop are great for that and seen them used in quite a few arcade and also casino games as well. They built well quite reliable and easy to get part for and dirt cheap. I use one for my electronic work bench and been great as only PC that works with my chip burners and other programmers while my newer computers won’t work barely, or at all with older programmers. The Dell 5040 I have works with everything I thrown at it and is a true workhorse.
Yea get people like latest and greatest but in some when dealing with certain older programmers and older hardware requires an older PC and the older dell optiplex are great and well built as well.
R u the real Charles Cheese bro?
@@paulsbunions8441 I guess me and my non-manager coworkers all are.
That infinity RGB made the CD tray look so much better.
It actually looks like a gif on a small LCD display.
It has no right to go that hard
@@certifiedpossum1638 It seems to have parallax though, a gif wouldn't have any parallax
I use the cd trays 😶
@@certifiedpossum1638 an LCD would be much more expensive
@@omegaPhix and lower quality no matter what you attempted.
When analog works, it WORKS.
By avoiding e-waste, and helping countries and people in needs, I'm genuinely happy with these.
Hell, an SFF office PC with GPU seems surprisingly tempting as they fit in one of my favorite suitcases and could be a very nice LAN party PC.