Question Dell optiplex 760 for gaming

May 5, 2019
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My PC Specs are

Processor : Intel(R) Core (TM2) Quad CPU Q965 @ 3.00 GHZ 2.99 GHZ

RAM : 4 GB

I currently have tower casing, I am planning to use this pc for gaming by installing high power supply and graphic card . I have 3 questions



1) After upgrading the PC , will I get good gaming results in games like GTA5 , Far cry 4/ 5 , Assasin creed ?

2) Since i wont be able to put power supply in original casing , can i shift the hardware to any new casing with sufficient space ?

3) Shall i upgrade this pc for gaming ?
 
May 2, 2019
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1. Invest in a refurbished Nvidia GTX 1060 3GiB, has worldwide the best-bang-buck-wise at the moment and is almost everywhere available.

2. No. Yes. No. Dell Optiplex are like any industrial PCs built for business. The form-factor used is ATX-B. It is basically mirrored. Asides that you won't find easily another case, that would give you more space and definitely not the possibility to install another PSU. - But there is also no need to. The Optiplex Series are genius, perfectly tailored. The PSU has a high efficiency, delivers guaranteed 150 Watt alone for the CPU and Motherboard, delivers 60 watt for drives and the rest is all there for one target: PCI and PCI-e. That you leaves you with guaranteed 150 Watt, which will likely not be used at all by your new to-be-graphics-card.

3. Do it. Why not. You have it already. The CPU is more than enough for the games you target. Let alone that most of the work will be done by the GPU.

The CPU you got is the maximum of that line. Yeah i know there are two models Black edition, theoretically above it, but another 23W for not even 3% more boost?

If you are interested in Hackintosh, the Dell Optiplex is fully compatible with Mac OSX up to Sierra. If the proposed Nvidia 1060 does work with macOS i don't know, you must research that by yourself.

Although there are many proper cases where an AMD graphics card is the better choice, for gaming it isn't. Don't even think about it. Some models are blasting 3 to 5 times the Wattage of Nvidia cards with the same performance.

I recommend you treat the Optiplex as it is meant to be used. Meaning: do not let that case open, do not remove the blinds from the slots. These systems have a very neat airflow if - and only if - they are closed.

The only problem with your machine is the amount of RAM. I can't say for sure if more then 8 GiB can be adressed, you have look in the tech spec on the Dell Support site. Use the Service Tag that should be glued|stickered on top; else you can find it in the BIOS, first page. Enter that number on the support site of Dell and it will show you how that PC was ordered and delivered.

Oh, not to forget, the Nvidia graphic cards are almost all in 2 to 3 different setups available. You have ones with GDDR3 or GDDR4 RAM, which have sometimes twice the amount, for example 4 or 6 GiB GDDR-modules; Do not buy those. Look out for the GDDR5 versions with 3 GiB. Any greater size does not make sense. Let's assume you upgrade the RAM to 8 GB, which is good, then you have 2 GiB for Windows (min.: 1 GiB), 3 GiB mirror of the graphic-cards-RAM, leaves 3-4 GiB for the applications. you see, that's where it gets to its limits. Those games will run fine, if you do optimize the OS. for example i always recommend to use Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2019, simply because asides Windows Server 2019 (which is identical to LTSC, but with server roles) it is the only Windows 10 that does not contain Cortana. Cortana alone eats up to 1.5 GiB of your precious RAM if you let it roam freely, while you effectively do nothing with the PC. Let alone that it constantly scans all your data, compresses it for hours anytime you leave the PC 5 min alone and is comparable to a classical CPU Burn-In.

So yeah, do it.

Nvidia GTX 1060 refurbished 3GiB.

If that is not in your budget then choose the GTX 960 with 2GiB.

A 760 doesn't make sense, because it is a 50/50 split regarding support for games and 3d-applications in general.

The main point is, do not try to work on the case, let the PSU, the cooling, etc. as it is, just use it.

And the most notable upgrade besides the graphics-card will be upgrading the RAM to 8 GiB, whereas i believe there was even a possibility to use 12 GiB asynchronous or 16 GiB synched. Oh and be careful, some Modules do only work for AMD.

You didn't wrote what kind of disk-space you have; You should buy refurbished SSDs. It doesn't matter if they are from a decade ago, the main difference is switching from HDD to SSD. refurbished 512GB SSD from 2016/17 are around 60-70$; you shouldn't buy a SSD that is smaller than 240GB, which is the lower bound when it comes to multimedia-creation, game-design,application-programming and gaming, which all have similar requirements.

Yeah, do it. Simple as that.

Oh and by the way, the machine is a reference model, means: You can run nearly any OS available on it: Windows, all GNU/Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OSX, macOS, Genode SculptOS, Solaris, SmartOS, OpenIndiana (Illumos in general), esxi|vSphere, Oracle UEK, OS/2, DOS, Haiku, ReactOS, etc. ...

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Hope it helps. Have fun! Thanks for reading.
 
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