Lots of comments about adapters being available so why bother like I did in this video? I checked prices of the front i/o and power switch adapter kit, would cost me $57 AUD to get those connectors shipped to Australia. I pick up the whole hardware itself cheaper than that a lot of the times....
Separate from what you said, on the newer 6000 and 7000 series intel optiplex's you can use the Qtj1 and Qtj2 ES 6 core cpus from aliexpress with a bios mod on them, I have a friend who is running it with an old hd 7870 6gb
You did a good job on the video Bryan. I know tons of people who have these builds with these stupid errors. The whole point is to keep it cheap. Keep up the good work
These are great value for money boards! These also work with E3 Xeon chips, so I have found E3-1220 (i5-2400) CPUs for $15 USD or less. Pair it with a nice 2GB GPU and you have a custom gaming PC for around $200-$300 that will play all major eSports games respectably.
THIS IS THE VIDEO IVE BEEM WAITING FOR! I've done so much looking around for videos on how to get around the connectors and such and this has saved me! Thank you Mr. Yes Man!
I have been meaning to do it for a long time! and funny story that I didn't talk about in this video, was those connectors on the bench in the broll were actually left overs from when I was going to do it the last time, but the motherboard pull ended up being completely gonskis, so I just took the CPU and ram etc. Though this time when this one came in I thought "we are doing this".
Jumpers were the only way to configure hardware addressing back when I was a kid. The juggle of "old ex upgrade" hardware was mostly forcing it to work together as platform compatibility was still in its infancy. It was referred to as bridging the pins, not shorting.
Computer building and repairs have changed a lot over the years I remember when you left the pc plugged in to ground yourself now they no longer do that. But that was like 18 years ago.
@Chris yeah in 1998 I was taught that cause if you open the psu you will see it is grounded to the case and if make sure to touch the case while working in it that gives the esd somewhere to go.
You can "jump" the data wire over to the next fan connection so both connections read as connected even though only 1 actually is, eliminating the need for a fan placed flat on its back doing nothing.
Bry man, thanks so much for all the excellent content the last year or so. I used to build 2 or 3 pcs for general sale each year, until the pandemic hit and the market went haywire! When I watch your content, it scratches that price performance itch by proxy. Really appreciate it dude. All the best and Merry Christmas!
tip: there are two pins in the proprietary dell power button header for blinking error codes, you can plug your HDD activity light front panel wire into those two pins to keep your error code functionality
I love this video you can still use these great Dells for music productions, i5 and i7s are plenty of processor power for it. Power supplies are also cheap now non modular of course. Thanks Brian you did it again, I bought a HP Z600 and OptiPlex because of your videos. Cheap is my middle name.
Like father Xeon was saying, there are adapters available, but depending on where you live they can be kind of costly. Also, there tend to be different boards even used in the same product line, so some of these are very easy to transplant and take almost no work, while others need a fair deal of troubleshooting… So this video is a godsend for anyone looking to put together a budget PC with a pretty thorough guy. Thanks for the video!
I have done the 4th gen conversion before. I kept the motherboard ends of the dell case cables and wired standard layout pin blocks to them so that you could just plug in the new case connectors into those as extensions. The extra pins on the 5pin power button header are the power buttons leds, so you can wire it up as a power led and a power switch header for the requisite case cables. These adptations removes the errors and still allows you tto use the on board usb, hd led, power switch, power led and sound facilities. Less to add, more profit to gain.
Also you don't need to keep the little fan in there. Cut the cable off it and put a standard wired pwm fan header tto the cut end to move the errant wire to the correct side. Then you have a working pwm fan header on the motherboard. Dell's proprietary fan header just moves the pwm cable to the other side, so you just have to switch it back.
Great video Bryan. I've converted a few optiplex sff in the past. They are tricky things to get going but fun to troubleshoot, and rewarding when you get them running in a shiny new case
I did this conversion recently on a 3020 small form factor, currently doing it on a 9020 haswell sff unit. Like what you said, adapters are good if youre willing to pay, not feasible if you're not in the US (the only place that makes the custom mini boards for the power and front panel adapters is Harbin in Georgia, USA). I learned a lot from the work arounds you had to bypass the boot warnings. These 2nd/3rd gen Intel optiplexes are the last time Dell used a regular ATX PSU connector, the Haswell and later optiplexes need an additional PSU adapter if you're doing a case swap.
DLM Tech garage (precision/optiplex build guide) has a video that covers all the adapters you needed for this build and avoid all of those error messages and annoyances you went through with the front panel. It will make this a cleaner build.
My first PC was an Optiplex 790, and after bouncing around various junk gaming PC parts around I've returned to it and gotten some surprisingly good performance with just an Nvidea Quadro and 16 Gb of RAM. Games run pretty well if I tweak the settings a bit, and I've yet to run into any issues with the hardware. I even managed to pull a 2nd-gen i7 from a burned out machine and the processor was so much better than the old i5 it came with. If you can sneak into a recycling center and have the time and patience, building a hacky machine based off of an Optiplex can be pretty rewarding. EDIT: I've come back to this video to put my Opti in an old ASUS gaming case I got, and I've been using this as a reference for how to get stuff to stop working. Soldering is necessary, but I've got power and HDD LED's now. And for anyone wiring power and getting errors, solder the red and yellow wires together. Stupid Dell, crappy failsafe right there.
It’s definitely fun to do this stuff. In 2019 I turned my 2014 HP Envy (GT 640 and i7 4770) into a gaming machine. I started with my older GTX 970 paired with a new i7 8700K, but since then its had parts swapped every now and again. Today it has a RTX 3060Ti paired with a i9 10850K running 5.1GHz.
I got a i7 4.5ghz with 24 gig ddr4 for free,only used for light work.with amd 2100 videocard but that one is going to be swapped with a 580.recently i bought already a gaming pc but this one i got for free is probably going to be faster.Also got another i5 free computer with 32 gig ddr3 going to upgrade that one to currently there is a 4890 (very old videocard)in it but thats going to be a 580 to.🤔still making sense of what im going to do with 7 pc,s
I did this a few years back. For the power switch, I spliced in the power in and led connectors then used heat shrink tubing. The front audio/usb cable I zip tied to the bottom pci slot to keep from moving.
Holy shi I just bought a dell precision and a gtx 1050 ti for $220 on Craigslist and look who uploads while I’m making a list of things to buy to upgrade it 😂
I have a Dell Optiplex with an i5-4590, R9 Nano and 12gb (4x4gb) ddr3, it's excellent for a budget build and the R9 cards are still relatively cheap due to their bad rep, but with a bit of undervolting and a sturdy 500/600W PSU it'll run fine given that you buy the PSU adapter for a proprietary Dell board. If all you play is ~5 year old games or esports one of these builds are great.
Nearly all of these headaches can be solved in a couple of seconds with some front panel adapters. Not sure if you're aware of them, or just wanted to show people how to bypass all the crap on the cheap. I keep the temp sensor... but the biggest issue with these systems is the fan controller. It's stupid levels of picky. Still can't seem to find a pattern of fan that will and won't throw an F1 error.
I don't really look around at others content when it comes to making my own. Though I don't think I will bother with adapters unless it is the 8 pin to 24 pin power converter. As the front panel audio / rear audio sounds garbage on these boards, and the two pin jumpers are inexpensive. As for the fan error have you tried an adapter on that and it still spits out an era? Could have something to do with the fans PWM and variance of voltage.
@@techyescity Yep, I've tried the fan adapter, and I do think it has something to do with the PWM signal, and some variance with these aftermarket fans. Tested a bunch of fans and only found the Corsair ML 120/140 Pro LED fans would work without throwing an error. Pretty much any other PWM fan I tried doesn't work. But DC fans seem to work just fine. I'd also wondered if it was a minimum start up voltage thing as well. Still not sure, but that fan controller is stupid picky. And I was just wondering if you'd heard about the front panel adapters. I just figured they were worth mentioning... but you're right. You're only really missing the onboard audio, which is genuinely trash.
@@TheGameBench It's funny you say that, I heard about the power connectors and knew they existed for years actually, though the front io and audio I didn't know, as I usually check aliexpress for adaptors/connectors, basically the meaning of that is; if it's worth it for ali sellers to push those connectors then it means people are mass converting them. Though since only the power connectors are sold in bulk on Ali, I figured people would be doing cheap workarounds. I guess this video finds those cheap work arounds. As for the fan, that is really strange, the 80mm fan actually isn't loud at all! Neither is the CPU fan with the i7-2600S at least while running all the tests here. So I think I will just keep pulling them out of the original builds to save myself the headaches.
@@techyescity Yeah, the front panel adapters are made by some small company here in the states. And I don't see them being nearly as mass marketable as the PSU adapters have been. You can find those everywhere these days. I just found em' while looking for otpi's on ebay and they poped up. So, I don't imagine we'll be seeing them cheap from several sources any time soon... and yeah, $25 is a bit spendy for both. Far cry from a couple of jumpers. I agree, the stock fans are absolutely fine. I don't swap them out in my flips. I'm just seeing more people that want to swap the coolers on these and add RGB fans, and they end up being disappointed, but it's all for that bling since a new cooler isn't going to make a difference on a locked i7 like these come with anyways.
Tips and workarounds around Dell motherboards are great. Not a lot of people are touching this subject, i hope for more maybe with higher Dell models. Workaround with fans could be great in those bigger 2 socket towers.
This is awesome, I picked up an optiplex from my neighbor who was just throwing theirs out earlier this year before the snow fell. Been sitting in my room and I've been meaning to clean it, but I just never knew looking at the parts what I'd end up doing with it. Thanks for the inspiration, I'll see if I can flip this.
Thanks for making this video. Very detailed n most importantly, it solved my headache regarding the power button issues where other videos failed to do. Bless u mate
I found the lenovo motherboards to be the best standardised oem boards. The only thing that needs an adapter is the usb 3 connector. You can work around the hd audio connector by removing a pin
I sell a crap ton of these in my state. Dell 3010s is probably my favorite prebuilt(close second would have to be a z620). E3 1245 v1 or 2 is arguably the best bang for buck cpu for this system. NZXT h510 cases did the job for me as far as front output (took a bit of trial and error but it works flawlessly each time).
What about using E3-1275 v1? Price is comparable to an E3-1245 v1... Got me rethinking. I have an Optiplex 3010 SFF and another Optiplex 3020 medium tower. Both are i3s with 4 Gb RAM. I just ordered some video cards for them.
@@johnross8939 I see them floating around for the $75-90 price tag and the small 2-400 MHz increase you get is honestly not worth it vs $35-50 max for a 1245.
I got two E3-1275s for $58 on epay plus $6 SH and tax. So no more expensive than the E3-1245s I saw listed. Seller has more of them as well, initial list price $32 each.
Discovered the Xeon E3-1275 Ivy Bridge CPU won't fit in a Dell Optiplex 3010 or 3020 socket. They're Sandy Bridge and incompatible with that CPU. However, I successfully installed a Xeon E3-1275 in a Dell Optiplex 7010. Upgraded RAM to 8 Gb, installed a Seagate 1 Tb HDD, and a AMD Firepro w2100. 64 bit Linux Mint Cinnamon 20.2. Works like a champ! Built it last Friday and sold it today... for a tidy profit.
personally love these kinds of builds the extra problems experienced with proprietary connectors is all part of the fun but in the instance i don’t have a or can’t afford a case swap oem case modding is just as fun
Thank for this vid bud actually doing similar build right now helped a lot mine ended up bit lower end mid you with 260x and only 11gb ram but still holds up for esports with that i7 👍
Another thing you forgot to mention is that a lot of the old Dells use 5000RPM Delta 120mm fans, which absolutely kick ass on an AIO. They're loud as hell, but you can't beat the airflow and pressure with any other "gaming pc" fan, considering almost none of them even do 2000rpm, let alone 5000. It even destroys the A12x25 Noctua fan.
Great guide Brian! The pin bridging was new to me, but l've dealt with censor and fan before. Maybe a future video on finding good motherboard power adapters (24 to x pins) with the various newer OEM machines?
I remember I did an experiment on the Optiplex once. The power button jumper (5 pins one), 2 pins are designated for power button, the other 3 pins is designated for power LED. The LED is dual colour, if not mistaken, having 1 common ground and 2 inputs to signal the system is switch off, standby or hibernate in amber colour and the system is switch on in blue or white colour. And as for the Front Panel IO, it is possible to use the existing Front IO port, and you can cut those cable and solder jumper pins so you can just plug in the USB cable from the case into it, but you need to check the connection. Anyway, As for Dell desktop system (Vostro or Optiplex or Precision) up to third gen Intel Core i series can actually move to a new case with a few tweaks, but most of them uses standard stuff.
Thanks for putting up this video. I just got the motherboard for one of these (the MT model) to make a decent low end gaming pc for my nephew. I can stick an i7 2600 or the K variant in it and pair it with a gtx 750 ti or 680. As long as it can play Minecraft, Among Us, Fortnite and some emulated games, he is happy.
Awesome video Bry 🥰👍🤩🤯🏆! This was a time when “pc tinkering” was an art form of the more technically inclined with pc’s as was the traditional overclocking 🥰🥰. Ahhh, the good old days 🥳🥳
Just an fyi to anyone looking for a super cheap lga 1155 motherboard, Look for the Dell MiH61R. These boards normally float between $15-20 but I find them all the time for only $10-12! It has a non-proprietary front panel pin layout for everything.
to get around the fan error just jumper the speed signal wire from one fan header that is used by an actual fan to all fan headers that need to see a speed signal. the other pins aren't needed to be used just the speed signal pin jumped to any fan header that needs to see an rpm signal. temp signal bypass is simple as a resistor jumpered in place of the sensor to act as a bypass if not needed.
Did this recently with an optiplex 3020 and an RX 570. Needed a 24-pin ATX to 8-pin Dell PSU adapter, but that was 14 Canadian bucks shipped. Got it sold within a day. These are a great option regardless of the GPU. An RX 550 will do you just fine for gaming on the cheap.
Jumper plugs to the rescue ;) I did this very same thing with a Dell optiplex 790 board. Jumping pins 3+4 on the power port fixes the power cable issue. the front usb header errors can also be bypassed by jumping the 4th set of pins from the left. can then use a PCI-E X1 slot to add a USB 3 card so there is a header for the new case front I/O. Dell fan header adapters are cheap luckily.
Regarding rewiring power button connector (at 8 min position in the video), you can connect Power LED of your new case to 3/4 and 5 pins of the MB power button connector (check the polarity).
I don't know if you celebrate Thanksgiving in Australia but Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow or today their its really important to feel gratitude in your heart have a wonderful day.
HAHA!!!!! YEAAAAAHHH!!!! I LOVE When the B man does budget builds...This is what Tech Yes City is all about!!!! But you should check out the case swap videos from DLM Tech Garage and Tech 215!!!!!
I recommend doing this to an Optiplex 3010, as it's much more easier (Don't get an SFF, else you need a PCIe extender cable and it comes with just two PCIe slots, x1 & x16 ) . Front IO header are standard, got the case front IO to work with the proprietary motherboard (with a few slight modifications on the connectors) , Front Audio works and the two front usb 2.0 works as well. The only problem is the fan error which only disappears if the fan is running. I didn't think about using extra jumpers on the power switch. Great tip on using those motherboard jumpers LOL.
There’s actually some pin outs online and a guide for Optiplex conversions. There’s a Reddit post as well stating which boards use the same IO assemblies, etc. I’ve built two 990 systems a couple years ago having picked up the boards for $10 each. The 790 and 990 are very similar even among the SFF models. Of course, the older Optiplex boards like the 380, 745 and 755 are fun to mess with as well because there are modded BIOS releases for them to use socket 771 Xeons. People dump on Optiplex, but I love using them. I have two 380 MT found on the curb for bulk trash pickup. I modded one, tricked it out with replacement fans and RGB, and then threw in a descent GPU to make a pretty good XP retro machine. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure 👍
Another adapter that may be needed if the board came from a USFF (Ultra Small Form Factor) model would be a miniPCIe to PCIe x16 (or x4) as for the USFF models the spec sheet (for the Optiplex 790 & 990 for example) shows the only expansion slots is a microPCIe instead of a x16 (& x16 wired x4) of the larger form factor models.
a bit late but im working on an optiplex 9010 that im pretty much doing the same with except Ive been meaning to dabble with it for about a year now but i had other projects to do. the mother board is similar minus the 34-pins connector. if you want, before i get further into it, i can provide some details on it and you could make a video on it
I did a Case swap for a Customer’s HP PC as HP wanted £150 for a replacement PSU, I do have 2 x Dell Optiplex 790 SFF PCs here and neither have working PSUs, Another one of my Customers needed a PSU for his Office PC, I was able to use a Standard ATX PSU and leave it dangling outside the Case although it’s not ideal but it did work, I also installed a Standard 750 TI Graphics Card in one of the PCs and that worked fine too although the Side Panel couldn’t be put back in place, It was a bit of a Frankenstein PC and I only used it for Folding@Home, I do want to transfer the Components into standard Cases so Standard PSU’s could be used, That 5 Pin Power Connector, Surely 2 of the Pins will be used for powering the Power LED at: 7:10 ? Good Video! 🙂🇬🇧
the old jumper pins :O havent seen them in forever, when we use to use them to set a hdd as master or slave... forgot about them. thanks for that trip down memory lane lol
Nice guide. I didn't realize these Dell motherboards were such a pain. The HP Prodesk 400 boards are way less work to mod in my experience. You just have to solder a bridge wire on the USB ports and cut a little piece off of the case fan header plastic then they work like a standard ATX board.
Just did this with a 990 SFF Dell OptiPlex $60, I5-2400, 8G 1333 {Lol}, 1TB HDD Bought separately 1030 $90 - 2 Extra fans Installed via USB hub $15. It hasn't struggled to play any game yet, new or old. Unless I cant clock the CPU to let the OS even recognize that I can load the game. All games that worked on Medium settings had an average range of 52-118 FPS. Forza Horizon 5 Rogue company Destiny 2 Back 4 Blood NBA Madden ESO For Honor Blood souls universe games & also Elden Ring Beta (While Overclocked GPU) GTA 5 Paladins Smite and many more.
thank you so much for this video, cause i moved my old pc in a new case and had to use the old power button and it was kinda wiggling up on the case ports, and now i could use the normal case cable
I love builds like this, I did a used part build last year with ebay and local seller parts. I was able to get a 6600k, Z270 mobo, 500gb ssd, 16gb of ram and a gtx 980 classified for about $250, The best deal I ever had in my life was the 980, bought it locally and the seller only wanted $50 for it and it was in pristine condition, I almost felt bad about using it. It came in the original but opened box looking brand new, with all the original documentation, manual, driver CD, sli bridge, and unused stickers + EVGA badge. All of that just so my girlfriend can fire up robolox and Minecraft lol...
i got a dell precision t5500 with dual cpu and 32gb ram for free from my friend and i changed the internals to a phanteks p400s case i got used for 20€. works perfectly and had no issues except mounting the board as it is BTX
Love the vid Bryan. Did almost the exact same with my girls rig a couple years ago down to even the add in sound card, only thing I did different was I wasn't sure how to short that 34pin connector, so that ugly front I/O hung out till her upgrade recently! Those sff optiplex can be some used bangers
That i7 CPU in this system is a 2600S, that is a 65W TDP part with 2.8GHz base clock. There is also the regular 2600 which is 3.4GHz baseclock and 95W TDP. You can get a bit more performance by changing out the CPU if you can find one cheap or in the junk.
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 89 | คู่เอก "ยอดไอคิว vs คิริลล์"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Z3vYkHJ_5Ig/mqdefault.jpg)
Lots of comments about adapters being available so why bother like I did in this video? I checked prices of the front i/o and power switch adapter kit, would cost me $57 AUD to get those connectors shipped to Australia. I pick up the whole hardware itself cheaper than that a lot of the times....
Separate from what you said, on the newer 6000 and 7000 series intel optiplex's you can use the Qtj1 and Qtj2 ES 6 core cpus from aliexpress with a bios mod on them, I have a friend who is running it with an old hd 7870 6gb
You did a good job on the video Bryan. I know tons of people who have these builds with these stupid errors. The whole point is to keep it cheap. Keep up the good work
That sound card was $30 Bryan! $25 shipping?😆
you do know to go to ebay an get a Front Panel Header Adapter Kit For Dell Optiplex
ive had a gtx 1060 on an alienware x51 motherboard in an asus mid tower
These are great value for money boards! These also work with E3 Xeon chips, so I have found E3-1220 (i5-2400) CPUs for $15 USD or less. Pair it with a nice 2GB GPU and you have a custom gaming PC for around $200-$300 that will play all major eSports games respectably.
Yep. The E3-1230/E3-1240's (i7 2600) go for around $25-$35.
@@The_Plump wait so it works? if i just buy e3 1230 on my dell 790
@@The_Plump or theres some setting in the bios
@@speedwagon5951 Should just straight up work but they don't have iGPUs so you need a dedicated GPU.
@@speedwagon5951 you may have to enable Hyper threading in the BIOS. Sometimes Dell has it disabled by default. Otherwise it should work.
THIS IS THE VIDEO IVE BEEM WAITING FOR! I've done so much looking around for videos on how to get around the connectors and such and this has saved me! Thank you Mr. Yes Man!
second that!
3way that
Foursome that.
@@boingkster ok handsome 😉
I have been meaning to do it for a long time! and funny story that I didn't talk about in this video, was those connectors on the bench in the broll were actually left overs from when I was going to do it the last time, but the motherboard pull ended up being completely gonskis, so I just took the CPU and ram etc. Though this time when this one came in I thought "we are doing this".
Audio upgrades are underrated. They just make the pc experience even better.
Jumpers were the only way to configure hardware addressing back when I was a kid. The juggle of "old ex upgrade" hardware was mostly forcing it to work together as platform compatibility was still in its infancy. It was referred to as bridging the pins, not shorting.
Computer building and repairs have changed a lot over the years I remember when you left the pc plugged in to ground yourself now they no longer do that. But that was like 18 years ago.
@Chris yeah in 1998 I was taught that cause if you open the psu you will see it is grounded to the case and if make sure to touch the case while working in it that gives the esd somewhere to go.
You can "jump" the data wire over to the next fan connection so both connections read as connected even though only 1 actually is, eliminating the need for a fan placed flat on its back doing nothing.
Bry man, thanks so much for all the excellent content the last year or so. I used to build 2 or 3 pcs for general sale each year, until the pandemic hit and the market went haywire! When I watch your content, it scratches that price performance itch by proxy. Really appreciate it dude. All the best and Merry Christmas!
tip: there are two pins in the proprietary dell power button header for blinking error codes, you can plug your HDD activity light front panel wire into those two pins to keep your error code functionality
I love this video you can still use these great Dells for music productions, i5 and i7s are plenty of processor power for it. Power supplies are also cheap now non modular of course. Thanks Brian you did it again, I bought a HP Z600 and OptiPlex because of your videos. Cheap is my middle name.
Like father Xeon was saying, there are adapters available, but depending on where you live they can be kind of costly. Also, there tend to be different boards even used in the same product line, so some of these are very easy to transplant and take almost no work, while others need a fair deal of troubleshooting… So this video is a godsend for anyone looking to put together a budget PC with a pretty thorough guy. Thanks for the video!
I have done the 4th gen conversion before. I kept the motherboard ends of the dell case cables and wired standard layout pin blocks to them so that you could just plug in the new case connectors into those as extensions. The extra pins on the 5pin power button header are the power buttons leds, so you can wire it up as a power led and a power switch header for the requisite case cables. These adptations removes the errors and still allows you tto use the on board usb, hd led, power switch, power led and sound facilities. Less to add, more profit to gain.
Also you don't need to keep the little fan in there. Cut the cable off it and put a standard wired pwm fan header tto the cut end to move the errant wire to the correct side. Then you have a working pwm fan header on the motherboard. Dell's proprietary fan header just moves the pwm cable to the other side, so you just have to switch it back.
THANK GOD BEEN WAITING FOR A CLEAR GUIDE THX
Absolutely love it man!!! Such an amazing complete guide!
Great video Bryan. I've converted a few optiplex sff in the past. They are tricky things to get going but fun to troubleshoot, and rewarding when you get them running in a shiny new case
I did this conversion recently on a 3020 small form factor, currently doing it on a 9020 haswell sff unit. Like what you said, adapters are good if youre willing to pay, not feasible if you're not in the US (the only place that makes the custom mini boards for the power and front panel adapters is Harbin in Georgia, USA). I learned a lot from the work arounds you had to bypass the boot warnings. These 2nd/3rd gen Intel optiplexes are the last time Dell used a regular ATX PSU connector, the Haswell and later optiplexes need an additional PSU adapter if you're doing a case swap.
DLM Tech garage (precision/optiplex build guide) has a video that covers all the adapters you needed for this build and avoid all of those error messages and annoyances you went through with the front panel. It will make this a cleaner build.
My first PC was an Optiplex 790, and after bouncing around various junk gaming PC parts around I've returned to it and gotten some surprisingly good performance with just an Nvidea Quadro and 16 Gb of RAM. Games run pretty well if I tweak the settings a bit, and I've yet to run into any issues with the hardware. I even managed to pull a 2nd-gen i7 from a burned out machine and the processor was so much better than the old i5 it came with. If you can sneak into a recycling center and have the time and patience, building a hacky machine based off of an Optiplex can be pretty rewarding.
EDIT: I've come back to this video to put my Opti in an old ASUS gaming case I got, and I've been using this as a reference for how to get stuff to stop working. Soldering is necessary, but I've got power and HDD LED's now. And for anyone wiring power and getting errors, solder the red and yellow wires together. Stupid Dell, crappy failsafe right there.
I've done a few of these. Surprisingly capable machines.. and they look pretty good with RGB bling.
It’s definitely fun to do this stuff. In 2019 I turned my 2014 HP Envy (GT 640 and i7 4770) into a gaming machine. I started with my older GTX 970 paired with a new i7 8700K, but since then its had parts swapped every now and again. Today it has a RTX 3060Ti paired with a i9 10850K running 5.1GHz.
@Michael's Productions Haha yeah it's a good experience.
I got a i7 4.5ghz with 24 gig ddr4 for free,only used for light work.with amd 2100 videocard but that one is going to be swapped with a 580.recently i bought already a gaming pc but this one i got for free is probably going to be faster.Also got another i5 free computer with 32 gig ddr3 going to upgrade that one to currently there is a 4890 (very old videocard)in it but thats going to be a 580 to.🤔still making sense of what im going to do with 7 pc,s
I did this a few years back. For the power switch, I spliced in the power in and led connectors then used heat shrink tubing. The front audio/usb cable I zip tied to the bottom pci slot to keep from moving.
Holy shi I just bought a dell precision and a gtx 1050 ti for $220 on Craigslist and look who uploads while I’m making a list of things to buy to upgrade it 😂
Dude I look up tp you like crazy, thats why I started my own channel and this is literally gonna be a life saver!! Thank you Tech Yes City!
I have a Dell Optiplex with an i5-4590, R9 Nano and 12gb (4x4gb) ddr3, it's excellent for a budget build and the R9 cards are still relatively cheap due to their bad rep, but with a bit of undervolting and a sturdy 500/600W PSU it'll run fine given that you buy the PSU adapter for a proprietary Dell board. If all you play is ~5 year old games or esports one of these builds are great.
Nearly all of these headaches can be solved in a couple of seconds with some front panel adapters. Not sure if you're aware of them, or just wanted to show people how to bypass all the crap on the cheap. I keep the temp sensor... but the biggest issue with these systems is the fan controller. It's stupid levels of picky. Still can't seem to find a pattern of fan that will and won't throw an F1 error.
I don't really look around at others content when it comes to making my own. Though I don't think I will bother with adapters unless it is the 8 pin to 24 pin power converter. As the front panel audio / rear audio sounds garbage on these boards, and the two pin jumpers are inexpensive.
As for the fan error have you tried an adapter on that and it still spits out an era? Could have something to do with the fans PWM and variance of voltage.
@@techyescity Yep, I've tried the fan adapter, and I do think it has something to do with the PWM signal, and some variance with these aftermarket fans. Tested a bunch of fans and only found the Corsair ML 120/140 Pro LED fans would work without throwing an error. Pretty much any other PWM fan I tried doesn't work. But DC fans seem to work just fine. I'd also wondered if it was a minimum start up voltage thing as well. Still not sure, but that fan controller is stupid picky.
And I was just wondering if you'd heard about the front panel adapters. I just figured they were worth mentioning... but you're right. You're only really missing the onboard audio, which is genuinely trash.
@@TheGameBench It's funny you say that, I heard about the power connectors and knew they existed for years actually, though the front io and audio I didn't know, as I usually check aliexpress for adaptors/connectors, basically the meaning of that is; if it's worth it for ali sellers to push those connectors then it means people are mass converting them. Though since only the power connectors are sold in bulk on Ali, I figured people would be doing cheap workarounds. I guess this video finds those cheap work arounds.
As for the fan, that is really strange, the 80mm fan actually isn't loud at all! Neither is the CPU fan with the i7-2600S at least while running all the tests here. So I think I will just keep pulling them out of the original builds to save myself the headaches.
@@techyescity Yeah, the front panel adapters are made by some small company here in the states. And I don't see them being nearly as mass marketable as the PSU adapters have been. You can find those everywhere these days. I just found em' while looking for otpi's on ebay and they poped up. So, I don't imagine we'll be seeing them cheap from several sources any time soon... and yeah, $25 is a bit spendy for both. Far cry from a couple of jumpers.
I agree, the stock fans are absolutely fine. I don't swap them out in my flips. I'm just seeing more people that want to swap the coolers on these and add RGB fans, and they end up being disappointed, but it's all for that bling since a new cooler isn't going to make a difference on a locked i7 like these come with anyways.
I ran a single wire from the front fan header input plug to the cpu fan header plug and killed the Wait for F1 error from popping up.
Ghetto fix tho..
man I love these videos I want to see a lot more use/budget builds for techtubers
I have an Optiplex 790 and the on board audio is actually quite good. Better than what many mainstream boards have.
Tips and workarounds around Dell motherboards are great. Not a lot of people are touching this subject, i hope for more maybe with higher Dell models. Workaround with fans could be great in those bigger 2 socket towers.
This is awesome, I picked up an optiplex from my neighbor who was just throwing theirs out earlier this year before the snow fell. Been sitting in my room and I've been meaning to clean it, but I just never knew looking at the parts what I'd end up doing with it. Thanks for the inspiration, I'll see if I can flip this.
Did you build it?
what a great video TYC managed to help me with many issues I've had in past
I have done an optiplex case swap two times in the past, was an absolute nightmare without adapters
Thanks for making this video. Very detailed n most importantly, it solved my headache regarding the power button issues where other videos failed to do. Bless u mate
I found the lenovo motherboards to be the best standardised oem boards. The only thing that needs an adapter is the usb 3 connector. You can work around the hd audio connector by removing a pin
Which pin are you removing to work around the audio connector?
I sell a crap ton of these in my state. Dell 3010s is probably my favorite prebuilt(close second would have to be a z620). E3 1245 v1 or 2 is arguably the best bang for buck cpu for this system. NZXT h510 cases did the job for me as far as front output (took a bit of trial and error but it works flawlessly each time).
What about using E3-1275 v1? Price is comparable to an E3-1245 v1... Got me rethinking. I have an Optiplex 3010 SFF and another Optiplex 3020 medium tower. Both are i3s with 4 Gb RAM. I just ordered some video cards for them.
@@johnross8939 I see them floating around for the $75-90 price tag and the small 2-400 MHz increase you get is honestly not worth it vs $35-50 max for a 1245.
I got two E3-1275s for $58 on epay plus $6 SH and tax. So no more expensive than the E3-1245s I saw listed. Seller has more of them as well, initial list price $32 each.
@@johnross8939 2 for that price??? That’s a steal. Scoop them up before they’re gone!!
Discovered the Xeon E3-1275 Ivy Bridge CPU won't fit in a Dell Optiplex 3010 or 3020 socket. They're Sandy Bridge and incompatible with that CPU. However, I successfully installed a Xeon E3-1275 in a Dell Optiplex 7010. Upgraded RAM to 8 Gb, installed a Seagate 1 Tb HDD, and a AMD Firepro w2100. 64 bit Linux Mint Cinnamon 20.2. Works like a champ! Built it last Friday and sold it today... for a tidy profit.
I want to see a lot more use/budget builds for tech-tubers, please keep up the good work.
personally love these kinds of builds the extra problems experienced with proprietary connectors is all part of the fun but in the instance i don’t have a or can’t afford a case swap oem case modding is just as fun
I love Optiplex builds, I usually keep the stock case though, I kind of like the “sleeper” look with them. Good video man 👍
You are limited to gpu options though
@@samuelmccoy5505 not if you remove the hard drive cage like me in the optiplex 7010mt
@@MF.Shadow thats for mt I was talking about sff
All depends who the end user is going to be, kids wants LED bling.
Thank for this vid bud actually doing similar build right now helped a lot mine ended up bit lower end mid you with 260x and only 11gb ram but still holds up for esports with that i7 👍
Bryan your knowledge with this pc's are incredible man
Another thing you forgot to mention is that a lot of the old Dells use 5000RPM Delta 120mm fans, which absolutely kick ass on an AIO. They're loud as hell, but you can't beat the airflow and pressure with any other "gaming pc" fan, considering almost none of them even do 2000rpm, let alone 5000. It even destroys the A12x25 Noctua fan.
Yeah, fans on prebuilts sometimes are great!
Great guide Brian! The pin bridging was new to me, but l've dealt with censor and fan before. Maybe a future video on finding good motherboard power adapters (24 to x pins) with the various newer OEM machines?
I remember I did an experiment on the Optiplex once. The power button jumper (5 pins one), 2 pins are designated for power button, the other 3 pins is designated for power LED. The LED is dual colour, if not mistaken, having 1 common ground and 2 inputs to signal the system is switch off, standby or hibernate in amber colour and the system is switch on in blue or white colour.
And as for the Front Panel IO, it is possible to use the existing Front IO port, and you can cut those cable and solder jumper pins so you can just plug in the USB cable from the case into it, but you need to check the connection.
Anyway, As for Dell desktop system (Vostro or Optiplex or Precision) up to third gen Intel Core i series can actually move to a new case with a few tweaks, but most of them uses standard stuff.
Thanks for putting up this video. I just got the motherboard for one of these (the MT model) to make a decent low end gaming pc for my nephew. I can stick an i7 2600 or the K variant in it and pair it with a gtx 750 ti or 680. As long as it can play Minecraft, Among Us, Fortnite and some emulated games, he is happy.
Brian, the man of miracles. Man loved the video and the PC
Awesome video Bry 🥰👍🤩🤯🏆! This was a time when “pc tinkering” was an art form of the more technically inclined with pc’s as was the traditional overclocking 🥰🥰. Ahhh, the good old days 🥳🥳
Acer veriton x2631g. No proprietary connectors, just a quick motherboard transplant and you're golden.
Thanks for the video! Have been living with those 4 errors for the last 2 years. Might be time to actually fix them next. Cheers
Just an fyi to anyone looking for a super cheap lga 1155 motherboard, Look for the Dell MiH61R. These boards normally float between $15-20 but I find them all the time for only $10-12! It has a non-proprietary front panel pin layout for everything.
The green-conscious, sustainable DIYer does it again folks! Brilliant work, Bry!
new member to the tech yes loving ,hi all. love the work. been following for some time . just was lazy lol
Yes, time for some Tech Yes loving.
So cool you came with this one out ✌️
thanks for this Brian it was much needed.
to get around the fan error just jumper the speed signal wire from one fan header that is used by an actual fan to all fan headers that need to see a speed signal. the other pins aren't needed to be used just the speed signal pin jumped to any fan header that needs to see an rpm signal. temp signal bypass is simple as a resistor jumpered in place of the sensor to act as a bypass if not needed.
Did this recently with an optiplex 3020 and an RX 570. Needed a 24-pin ATX to 8-pin Dell PSU adapter, but that was 14 Canadian bucks shipped. Got it sold within a day. These are a great option regardless of the GPU. An RX 550 will do you just fine for gaming on the cheap.
Cool to watch these transformation vids. Have done a few recasings. Usually end up having to swap out the power supply in adding a proper gpu anyway.
Crazy you got that working. Well done.
This video is so helpful!!! I had to keep the old front panel because of these connectors on the motherboard. Now I can get around that!! Thanks!!!
Jumper plugs to the rescue ;) I did this very same thing with a Dell optiplex 790 board. Jumping pins 3+4 on the power port fixes the power cable issue. the front usb header errors can also be bypassed by jumping the 4th set of pins from the left. can then use a PCI-E X1 slot to add a USB 3 card so there is a header for the new case front I/O. Dell fan header adapters are cheap luckily.
Happy new year Bryan and everybody.
Love your videos mate, have done a heap of these from 9010 sff, I just rewire everything, no adapters
I have done this in the past... i even tore out the front io on the dell optiplex and did EVERYTHING i needed to do to get rid of ALL the errors.
Great work on all the Dell proprietary stuff!
Regarding rewiring power button connector (at 8 min position in the video), you can connect Power LED of your new case to 3/4 and 5 pins of the MB power button connector (check the polarity).
I don't know if you celebrate Thanksgiving in Australia but Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow or today their its really important to feel gratitude in your heart have a wonderful day.
My absolute favorite builds to do. TechYes=BudgetKing
HAHA!!!!! YEAAAAAHHH!!!! I LOVE When the B man does budget builds...This is what Tech Yes City is all about!!!! But you should check out the case swap videos from DLM Tech Garage and Tech 215!!!!!
Dope vid I have struggled with this in the past - v. useful tips and knowledge. Thank you
I recommend doing this to an Optiplex 3010, as it's much more easier (Don't get an SFF, else you need a PCIe extender cable and it comes with just two PCIe slots, x1 & x16 ) . Front IO header are standard, got the case front IO to work with the proprietary motherboard (with a few slight modifications on the connectors) , Front Audio works and the two front usb 2.0 works as well. The only problem is the fan error which only disappears if the fan is running. I didn't think about using extra jumpers on the power switch. Great tip on using those motherboard jumpers LOL.
This video is EVERYTHING!
There’s actually some pin outs online and a guide for Optiplex conversions. There’s a Reddit post as well stating which boards use the same IO assemblies, etc. I’ve built two 990 systems a couple years ago having picked up the boards for $10 each. The 790 and 990 are very similar even among the SFF models. Of course, the older Optiplex boards like the 380, 745 and 755 are fun to mess with as well because there are modded BIOS releases for them to use socket 771 Xeons. People dump on Optiplex, but I love using them. I have two 380 MT found on the curb for bulk trash pickup. I modded one, tricked it out with replacement fans and RGB, and then threw in a descent GPU to make a pretty good XP retro machine. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure 👍
Great work mate! I do really hate this Dell to convert in Gaming Case, but now I'm confident! Gonna try this soon! Thanks Brian! =D
Another adapter that may be needed if the board came from a USFF (Ultra Small Form Factor) model would be a miniPCIe to PCIe x16 (or x4) as for the USFF models the spec sheet (for the Optiplex 790 & 990 for example) shows the only expansion slots is a microPCIe instead of a x16 (& x16 wired x4) of the larger form factor models.
a bit late but im working on an optiplex 9010 that im pretty much doing the same with except Ive been meaning to dabble with it for about a year now but i had other projects to do. the mother board is similar minus the 34-pins connector. if you want, before i get further into it, i can provide some details on it and you could make a video on it
Nice one dude, thats pretty much what im gonna do, ive took pictures of your fixes por el power switch and the other stuff, Cool!
man good deal! i been wondering what to do with the fan case lol great place and thanks for the idea!!!!
I did a Case swap for a Customer’s HP PC as HP wanted £150 for a replacement PSU, I do have 2 x Dell Optiplex 790 SFF PCs here and neither have working PSUs, Another one of my Customers needed a PSU for his Office PC, I was able to use a Standard ATX PSU and leave it dangling outside the Case although it’s not ideal but it did work, I also installed a Standard 750 TI Graphics Card in one of the PCs and that worked fine too although the Side Panel couldn’t be put back in place, It was a bit of a Frankenstein PC and I only used it for Folding@Home, I do want to transfer the Components into standard Cases so Standard PSU’s could be used, That 5 Pin Power Connector, Surely 2 of the Pins will be used for powering the Power LED at: 7:10 ? Good Video! 🙂🇬🇧
the old jumper pins :O havent seen them in forever, when we use to use them to set a hdd as master or slave... forgot about them. thanks for that trip down memory lane lol
Ty sm 4:15 been trying to fix my pc for days was about to hang omgg
Nice guide. I didn't realize these Dell motherboards were such a pain. The HP Prodesk 400 boards are way less work to mod in my experience. You just have to solder a bridge wire on the USB ports and cut a little piece off of the case fan header plastic then they work like a standard ATX board.
Just did this with a 990 SFF Dell OptiPlex $60, I5-2400, 8G 1333 {Lol}, 1TB HDD
Bought separately 1030 $90 - 2 Extra fans Installed via USB hub $15.
It hasn't struggled to play any game yet, new or old. Unless I cant clock the CPU to let the OS even recognize that I can load the game.
All games that worked on Medium settings had an average range of 52-118 FPS.
Forza Horizon 5
Rogue company
Destiny 2
Back 4 Blood
NBA
Madden
ESO
For Honor
Blood souls universe games & also Elden Ring Beta (While Overclocked GPU)
GTA 5
Paladins
Smite
and many more.
Great video! Thanks for all the info!
Long Live The OptiPlex!🤘
I was given an old Optiplex last year. I turned it into my homes Storage and Media Sever.
thank you so much for this video, cause i moved my old pc in a new case and had to use the old power button and it was kinda wiggling up on the case ports, and now i could use the normal case cable
I would like to thank you for the tips, it worked very well on my pc, thank you very much
love this sort of content, tech yes city you are the goat thank you for the video
I love builds like this, I did a used part build last year with ebay and local seller parts. I was able to get a 6600k, Z270 mobo, 500gb ssd, 16gb of ram and a gtx 980 classified for about $250, The best deal I ever had in my life was the 980, bought it locally and the seller only wanted $50 for it and it was in pristine condition, I almost felt bad about using it. It came in the original but opened box looking brand new, with all the original documentation, manual, driver CD, sli bridge, and unused stickers + EVGA badge. All of that just so my girlfriend can fire up robolox and Minecraft lol...
Your a clever little duck! subbed immediately Bryan, you know way more than me bro and that's heaps ;) G'day from west QLD
Thanks for the sub!
i got a dell precision t5500 with dual cpu and 32gb ram for free from my friend and i changed the internals to a phanteks p400s case i got used for 20€. works perfectly and had no issues except mounting the board as it is BTX
TYC you are the magic man!
Love the vid Bryan. Did almost the exact same with my girls rig a couple years ago down to even the add in sound card, only thing I did different was I wasn't sure how to short that 34pin connector, so that ugly front I/O hung out till her upgrade recently! Those sff optiplex can be some used bangers
Hehe, "2nd gen optiplex in a cooler master case" is exactly my current PC lmao! Currently an RX460 and E3-1275, it can even handle VR games just fine.
That i7 CPU in this system is a 2600S, that is a 65W TDP part with 2.8GHz base clock. There is also the regular 2600 which is 3.4GHz baseclock and 95W TDP. You can get a bit more performance by changing out the CPU if you can find one cheap or in the junk.
Fantastic video, thanks for posting this. Subscribed 😊
All the optiplex moders now use Harbin Repairs adaptors for case swaps. Let's you get rid of the messages and allows hookup of usb and front audio.
Brilliant vid! So many people throw these out for vergeside pickup. I think I might have one lying around and already have the adapters needed :)
Arduino wires are excellent for modding, and are cheap and available where you buy your electronics supplies.
I have a Dell mobo too! If you want to bypass the error message (for servers purpose) just unplug the keyboard when booting up
Would love to see you trying working magic on more modern Dell pcs
The YES is back with the dealz!
Sir! You're a legend!