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My two children have been using Optiplex GX150's for the last 4 years and they were 3 04 years old then, but I've tweaked them for years and managed to keep them working fairly well. Unfortunately, they have came to the end of their road and I need to replace them.
My question to anyone with a good opinion - I'm a Dell person and just very familiar and like them and want to try and purchase a couple of used desktops for my children. What is a good Dell desktop configuration to look for that would be in the 3 year old range? I know he Optiplex are the tried and true versions so to speak, but I know some of the Dimensions were good as well. I want a Tower with a little bit of room for expansion (maybe a PCI-e slot for video card if needed). Like for it to have SATA hard drive and hold at least 2 gigs of mem. So, was there a particular Optiplex, Dimension, Precision Workstation or XPS model that stood out back then and I would also consider some minor overclocking if I needed to?
Thanks ahead of time and I know this a very broad question!
Darrell WV
2 Intern
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482 Posts
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Posted February 13th, 2009 12:00
Great advise.
Darrell WV
Alexandra_P
4 Apprentice
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2554 Posts
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Posted February 13th, 2009 12:00
SATA, at least 4GB memory capacity, and PCIex16 for video have been standard equipment for a few years, so that won't be a problem.
New PC's have gotten pretty inexpensive, and you can save more buying one from Dell Outlet if you want to go that route.
http://www.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/desktops?c=us&cs=22&l=en&s=dfh&dgc=IR&cid=11343&lid=543238
If you have to buy used, I'd stick with a model new enough to use either Core 2 Duo or Athlon X2 CPUs (late 2006 or so); the new CPU architectures blow all the old Pentium-type designs out of the water (faster, cooler, and less power consumption). I have an XPS 410 I picked up from Dell Outlet for a really good price a couple years ago and am quite happy with it. If you do come across a promising find, you can look up the basic specs in the manual to see what it will support:
http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/my_systems_info/manuals?~ck=ln&c=us&cs=22&l=en&lnki=0&s=dfh
Something to keep in mind is ports - newer PC's don't have parallel or serial ports anymore, only USB, so if you have any old peripherals you want to use (e.g., an old printer) you'll need to get adapters. Another thing is operating system - Vista's been out since 2007, and the newer the model the more likely it will support only Vista.
As far as overclocking, only the high-end XPS models (600 and 700 series) allow it; most Dell models are not over-clockable.