DELL OPTIPLEX 780 SFF

Tony1A

Tony1A

Never going back to Sky TV. Ever!
My Satellite Setup
Humax HDR1100S Freesat Recorder. Octagon UHD satellite box with Gibertini 1m motorised dish. Triax TD78 for Freesat. Triax TD64 for Freesat to 3 rooms. 2 Panasonic Freeview+ HD recorders.
My Location
North-East England, UK
HI EVERYONE & HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I am considering one of these computers as I can get a great deal on one from Ebay loaded with Windows 7 (not interested in 10). Does anyone have any experience with these PC's and can they tell me what they are like? Thanks peeps! :)
 
SFF is small form factor so if you have the need to fit any full size internal cards in your base unit they wont fit.
 
But I don't have much space available to put my tower PLUS another tower together!! Hmm. Awkward.
 
Ah.

Try to find a photo of the innards of one before you buy it - the mobos are very small on some of the sff units & expansion slots for add ons can be very limited forcing you go down the USB route..
 
I had a Lenovo small form PC, no normal size cards would fit, luckily I had a normal sized PC case, so I rebuilt my tower in to the full size case.

That way I could upgrade the gpu, and my tbs sat card, fitted blu-ray rw, upgraded psu, and I still have room.

Oh and I had to buy some headers, so I can have the rs232 working.

Good luck with your new PC.
 
Don't bother with dell hardware, they tend to mysteriously break down for no reason whatsoever, Lenovo SFF systems are pretty good, I have one under my TV and it works nicely, even for a low-end Core2Duo... :)
 
Hi -
I bought a Optiplex 760 win7 in december (£35.00).... and would echo everything that analoguesat said ..
otherwise its a great little machine --
i upgraded with a low profile graphics card (another £35 .00) so i could send DVI to a monitor and HDMI to a TV from it. very happy with the results for the cost ...

also been using a Optiplex 380 XP for 18 months or so .. ( slightly larger case )... did the same with that one re the graphics card ... and managed to change the fitting bracket on a skystar 2 sat card so it would fit in the low profile slot .... again very happy with the results ... :)
 
I have the larger 745 and it has taken a lot of abuse for about 3 years without too many problems. The issue you will have with the RAM slots for any upgrading, and the limits of the power supply (and in particular the connections) should you wish to add anything extra that is not standard. Dell seem to like keeping only the minimum number of connectors on the leads.

Fitting a second hard drive inside (a must in my household) is going to be exceedingly difficult.

Additionally I think the later 780 uses a proprietry HDMI port, which means buying a Dell specific cable.

Oh, and you will have to hoover out the fan assembly every month to stop it from overheating
 
OK! Thanks for the replies. I do have a spare PC where the case is not too big and I have had a word with my mate who says it should fine to put windows 7 on that and change the two 80gb drives (IDE) for a SATA 320gb. He's quite hot on computers and I know he'll do a great job.
 
Get yourself a solid state drive for the operating system - you will be amazed how much faster it makes the computer. If the bigger drives are too expensive stick a normal one into it for photos, mp3s etc.
 
SSD's too pricey :(
 
It's always best to make your own computers, or get some one you know to make it for you. Then you know what is going in and that it can be upgraded easily.

One SSD and one 3.5" or 2.5" storage drive is the way to go imho. 2.5" is much quieter because it is bolted to an additional bracket and is low power.

Whatever you get check the CPU Passmark, 900 is a sensible minimum for HTPC, general office and internet use.
 
Tony1A said:
SSD's too pricey :(
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I bought a 960GB SanDisk SSD from ebuyer (long delay in receiving, due to a yodel eff up) for about £150, which for an SSD of that size is as inexpensive as deep fried potato sticks, and it's now in my laptop which has improved it no end, much faster, more effective and doesn't have issues coming out of Hibernation like it used to (mainly getting stuck on the javascrap used for notifications on various websites, including this one), not to mention, they run a lot cooler than an HDD... :)
 
Yeah, that sounds good! But I have a pile of assorted SATA HDD's which are currently doing nothing so like I said before, a 320gb is going in my spare tower that my mate is going to change from XP to Windows 7. To put an expensive SSD into my (cheap) spare tower is not worth the cost and cannot be justified.
 
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Chris1979 said:
I had a Lenovo small form PC, no normal size cards would fit, luckily I had a normal sized PC case, so I rebuilt my tower in to the full size case.

That way I could upgrade the gpu, and my tbs sat card, fitted blu-ray rw, upgraded psu, and I still have room.

Oh and I had to buy some headers, so I can have the rs232 working.

Good luck with your new PC.
Click to expand...

We had an old linux pc based video playout box at work that connected to a couple of tvs. The (none standard) power supply failed on it after 10years and I couldnt find suitable replacement anywhere.

So I took one of my scrap network pc base units, changed all the innards over and fixed it for no more than the cost of a couple of hours of my time :)
 
Don't bother with dell hardware, they tend to mysteriously break down for no reason whatsoever
Click to expand...

Have to disagree with you 2CVBloke. All of my PCs in the house are Dell apart from my dinky HP one that sits under the TV . Never had a problem with any of them. I've usually only ever disposed of my previous Dell PCs when they have become outdated. I've only just chucked my Optiplex 170L that was my old Linux box.

I have a Dell Poweredge server, two Optiplex GX620's one Optiplex GX520, A Vostro 230 and a Vostro 220. All work really well, the 520 and 620 units are knocking on for 6 years old and are used every day.

Nothing Wrong with Dell PCs at all, its all i ever buy as its the only brand i trust.
 
Ive not had any problems with my 8 or 9 year Dell Dimension 5150 tower either. Its barely missed a beat since I bought it and its had heavy use - Ive gone through 4 keyboards!

Still running XP on it although thats going to be falling by the wayside in the near future. (Probably for win10)

I was given another 5150 recently & its been refurbished with Linux Mint on it & sent out to a young single mum I know.

Theres a third one in store at work and the offer of a fourth one which will also go into store when it finally makes it into work.
 
I'm impressed, AS: I wrongly assumed you were still using a Babbage Calculating Engine :mellow:
 
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