Not exactly happy with Dell right now

"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
11/27/2016 at 12:37 • Filed to: None

OK, I’m a cheap bastard, I’ll admit that. A few months ago I picked up an Optiplex 980 at the Goodwill outlet for next to nothing and started using it as my main computer. It is actually pretty decent, but the size of the SFF case is somewhat limiting when it comes to expansion. I recently found a barebones desktop tower version of the same machine, again for next to nothing, so I thought I would use that to get around the problems with the SFF case, but I discovered that it has some crazy limitations/annoyances:

1) PCIe x16 slots - it has two, but here’s the problem: if you try to use a full-size video card it smashes up next to the ductwork for the CPU fan, so the card is at a bit of an angle with unnecessary added stress (and this is after removing two screws on the duct to make it fit). The other slot, the one with clearance, is wired only as x4, so you don’t get the full bandwidth. It also blocks the internal PCIe x1 slot when a video card is installed, so it’s a double loser.

2) No Molex power connectors - thankfully I had an adapter that I made that converted SATA power to Molex, but it still seems kind of stupid to have to use a kludge like this in a system that has so much expansion potential. PCIe x16 video cards are going to need power, so where does Dell suggest I get it? Perhaps those slots really aren’t for video cards after all, which makes them seem kind of pointless.

3) Proprietary drive mounts - seriously? I now need to find some annoying bits of plastic in order to properly secure the drives.

4) Four expansion slots with four blanking plates - if I need to run cables from the inside to the outside I have to either use the opening for one of the expansion cards thereby eliminating that slot from use by a card, or I have to cut into the case and make my own opening. This should not have to be a choice I need to make.

Yeah, I know I should just build my own system using non-proprietary parts, but again, I’m cheap . With less than $100 invested I’ve got a 12GB 3.6 GHz Core i5 system running Windows 10 with a speedy video card. I’m just ticked that Dell made a machine that appears to be designed for expansion but really isn’t, placing all sorts of restrictions on you to use the capabilities that it looks like they gave you. I will find a way to make it all work, but it ain’t gonna be pretty...

DISCUSSION (18)

CB > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
11/27/2016 at 12:41

We had some older Dells at school that we got to take apart in computer engineering. You would not believe the amount of proprietary shit in them (well, I suppose you would now). I know it’s tempting, but I’d never buy a used computer from them as a base for a new one.

Probenja > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
11/27/2016 at 12:54

Aren’t the Optiplex for buisness use only? That might explain why they are not upgradable, I’m guessing the Inspiron and XPS ones are a little bit more friendly when it comes to that.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > Probenja
11/27/2016 at 13:00

You’re probably right that these are mostly for business use, but they’re really the only ones that show up in the used market at a reasonable price. My main complaint is with the appearance of being designed for expansion but really being horrible in that regard.

Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
11/27/2016 at 13:03

This strikes me as buying a Toyota Camry and complaining it isn’t a drift machine. The Optiplex is supposed to be a factory-configured “it-just-works” business desktop. Maybe someone would put a Quadro graphics card in there for CAD but other than that they’re pretty much designed to be used for six years then thrown out. Upgradeability is the very last thing on anybody’s mind when they designed these.

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > CB
11/27/2016 at 13:05

HP might be even worse about that, but Dell is way up there. So much proprietary shit that makes it difficult to maintain them.

Grindintosecond > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
11/27/2016 at 13:10

I bought a $150 corsair case and changed out parts as required over a decade. its sound insulated and breathes easy and isnt glaringly out of place. saves problems.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To
11/27/2016 at 13:38

It feels more like buying a full-size pickup and finding out that the bed has a maximum capability of 175 lbs - the appearance of capability without the capability actually being there. It’s really light-duty for a machine in a tower case, but if you’re just throwing in a sensor card or some unusual communications interface it’ll do just fine. I know that I’m pushing it to its limits, but I was expecting it to be laid out a bit better. Perhaps it’s just the compromises and obvious cost-cutting that I find annoying.

The SFF and USFF machines are fine for what they are; we’ve got a tonne around the office and they are great for basic office duty. I keep a few around the house for background grunt work (downloading, media server, etc.), and for that they’re great. It’s probably the kind of machine my mother should be using instead of her minitower.

dogisbadob > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
11/27/2016 at 13:46

I have a 980 tower too! I got 4GB RAM in it now, but eventually plan to upgrade to 16GB, and I might get an upgrade video card and power supply, but it’s still kind of low on my priority list. Aren’t there some good low-profile cards available?

Supposedly, the 990 is better in terms of shit like this, though.

Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
11/27/2016 at 14:05

The only benefit I’ve found of the full-sized towers over the SFF ones is all of the ducting lets them run REALLY quiet. I have an HP workstation that I tossed a better processor, video card, and 20gb of RAM into and it’s whisper quiet.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > dogisbadob
11/27/2016 at 14:14

A 990 would probably be better since it uses a newer generation of chip, and that would help extend its useful life. I can’t complain about my 980 too much as it is a pretty decent performer, especially considering the initial purchase price was about what I would pay for two fast food lunches.

I’ve used the same low-profile Radeon HD7570 in a few machines over the last year or two, including the SFF 980. The specs and actual performance seems pretty decent, and I think the price was less than $40 back in 2015. There may be faster LP cards nowadays, but they would most likely require more power than the stock PS could handle, and good luck finding a higher-capacity PS that would fit your case. I’ve got the full tower 980 now so I’m using a spare 9800 GTX I had laying around since I’m no longer limited to low-profile cards.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To
11/27/2016 at 14:18

I feel a bit better about the extra space for airflow and the big-ass fan blowing over the CPU heatsink. For the last month I’d been running the SFF machine with the cover off because of heat issues. I had every expansion option used on that machine and there was little room for proper airflow in that configuration.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
11/27/2016 at 16:56

Wow...where the hell did you find a system that you could upgrade to those specs fir that cheap? 0_o

bhtooefr > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
11/27/2016 at 17:19

1: It’s BTX, which made weird decisions as far as GPU mounting goes, as a result of the inverted motherboard. But, it’s really meant for low-end video cards that aren’t long and don’t need PCIe power, if you want a bigger GPU, they want you to go to a Precision. 990 went back to Micro-ATX, though. (Be careful if you go up to a 9020, BTW - they went to a non-standard PSU.)

2: See 1, they didn’t intend high-power GPUs for this. The highest-end GPU that Dell offered for it originally was this thing: http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gt-330-oem

3: For the enterprise application that the 980's aimed at, those proprietary drive mounts are freaking fantastic. No tools, I can quickly slap a drive in. (Disclaimer: I work for Dell, supporting OptiPlex 9 series machines for a specific enterprise client. So, slapping drives in similar machines is (well, was, my client skipped the 980, and they’ve retired basically all of the 960s) my day job.) If you don’t have all of them, though... yeah, that’s a problem. That said, the screws for retaining optical or external 3.5" drives are actually screwed into the lid that you remove when installing that drive, if you want to stick things up there.

4: How often are you really running cables from the inside to the outside on a machine made in the past 15 years? Literally the only reason I can see to do that on a modern desktop build is for watercooling hoses (the case I built my desktop into has grommets for that, actually), and I really doubt you’re watercooling an OptiPlex 980. Even on a modern enthusiast’s case, if you really need to do this, I think the expectation is that you’ll break out the Dremel.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > bhtooefr
11/27/2016 at 18:13

For what it is, it really is an OK computer. I know that I’m really pushing the limits of what it is supposed to do and that I’m not really the intended type of user, so the fact that it isn’t configured like a typical power-user system is OK. If I could find a decent LGA1156 motherboard for pennies I’d dump this thing in a heartbeat, but until then I’ll be fine.

Having worked corporate IT back in the day, I can appreciate the factors that go into making an easy to service office computer. If you’ve got dozens or hundreds of the same machine around, being able to get parts in and out in a hurry is a godsend. For the home user, the use of proprietary parts is a hassle. Again, this machine isn’t meant to be a home computer.

The cables running out to the back are a little unusual, I will grant you that. Normally I wouldn’t need to do this, but I’ve got a USB 3.0 card stuffed back in the slot where a wireless card is supposed to go; I wasn’t going to let that slot go to waste. I had to run cables for a couple of external hard drives from this remotely mounted card, something that 99.982% of computer users would never do. Since it’s buried, there is a remote header for other two ports, and that would normally block one of the slots. In the other PCIe x16 slot is a TV tuner that was pulled from some fancy HP system, and there is a breakout box that has some extra inputs and outputs that I wanted to use. There isn’t a mounting location on the Dell like there was on the HP, so it dangles outside of the machine with the cables sticking out of the PCI slot area.

I tried to use one of the PCI slots to install a FireWire card (yes, I still use it, mostly for old video equipment). Booting was an issue, although I can’t really remember what the error message was. I don’t really have anthing I need to put into the PCI slots, so running cables and headers in those spots is proving to be less of a problem than I originally thought.

The machine seems to be running just fine now and is all sealed up. I’ll try a few programs and see if it works OK, which I suppose it will due to my experiences with the SFF version of the same machine. Now I just need to figure out why my mouse clicks don’t register if I switch back to this machine on the KVM switch. Probably just another Windows driver conflict, but again is something that is probably self-inflicted since I insist on continuing to use a 16 year old Kensington Expert Mouse Pro, the greatest $100 trackball ever invented.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars
11/27/2016 at 18:19

Goodwill Outlet. Stuff there sells by the pound. Apparently they’re really not supposed to sell computers, but sometimes they make it out to the floor. Just don’t let the manager see it in your cart and you’re OK.

I also run a pretty sweet, albeit slightly older, MacBook Pro that I picked up for $4 or $5 at the same place. It was beat to hell, but a little time on eBay and the Low End Mac swap list and I restored that into a fantastic little machine, again for next to nothing.

Being a cheapskate can really pay off if you know where to shop...

wiffleballtony > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
11/27/2016 at 21:31

HAHA. Welcome to my personal hell. My facility pretty much only uses 980s.

mcseanerson > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
11/29/2016 at 20:03

Dude, all the modern big name PC manufacturers have come pretty close to being proprietary with their system designs these days. I know that BTX tends to be a pretty popular form factor for them and they come up with some pretty interesting designs from and industrial design standpoints like using one giant fan as both case ventilation and the CPU cooler but they’re pretty limiting when it comes to expandability.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > mcseanerson
11/29/2016 at 20:28

I got lucky a few months back when the PS died in a cheap Inspiron 530s. I had a crappy HP/Compaq sitting around, also found over at Goodwill, and thankfully the PS slapped right in brought the Dell back to life. I need to do an OS upgrade on that thing as XP is really holding it back, but I’m in no great hurry. I figure that even Vista would be a step in the right direction.

The 980 is now working just fine with all of the crap I threw into it. I do need to troubleshoot the hub/eSATA/FW bay thingy that I connected to the internal USB header; I can’t find the documentation so I don’t know if I accidentally hooked up the FireWire cable to the USB header. I’m guessing that I did since I don’t think you can run 4 USB ports off of one four-pin header. This means that I’ll need to find a cable to go from header (on the MB) to the header on the 3.5" bay thingy - wish me luck on that task...

The machine is a little noisier than I was expecting. I thought that the big fan that cools the CPU would mean quieter airflow, but I guess that isn’t the case. The machine is on the desk right now, but when on the floor it probably won’t bother me. I guess I could replace it with a quieter fan just to be certain. Years ago I added a fan controller when I built my gaming rig, but as it turned out, the fans that I used were so quiet that I couldn’t hear them even when cranked up to full speed.

Windows did pitch a hissy fit after swapping the hard drive into the new machine, with errors about it needing to be activated subtly popping up in the lower right corner of the screen, but it did reactivate once I selected the option that said something about a hardware change. It is technically a motherboard swap, and I don’t have any plans to use the same license should I rebuild the original 980. I was just so happy not to have to reinstall the OS; in a way it was almost Mac-like, although I suspect that it would freak out if I didn’t use an almost identical system.

Now to track down those drive brackets. I’ll probably have to add in a PCI card if I want a second hard drive installed internally as I used the last port for the front-mounted eSATA port. I will also need to split off more power to drive a second hard drive, but this should be OK since the tower has enough room for the piles of spaghetti I’ve got running around inside of this thing. It was a challenge to get everything to fit in the original SFF machine which is another reason why I just prefer big-ass cases whenever possible.