Greywolf1 wrote on 2024-04-12, 12:22:
Watch out for the dell’s and hp’s a lot of these are work or generic home computers and many are 64 bit.
And you will have a nightmare with obtaining cards to fit in them.
It shouldn't matter if the CPU is 64-bit, they still run 32-bit software and OSs perfectly as if they were a 32-bit CPU. They have a nice side benefit of accepting a 64-bit OS if OP ever decides to run Windows Vista or 7, for example.
There's shouldn't be much trouble putting single slot cards in a BTX motherboard like a lot of these OEMs use, though the cards will be upside down. It is an issue for dual slot cards though as the bracket won't be able to screw in unless the bracket/slot cover is removed, but then the card isn't supported properly. My friend and I came up with janky solutions to get dual slot GPUs running in Optiplexes, it was kinda fun.
tduncan212 wrote on 2024-04-09, 22:02:
Yeah I'll be going with the Dell most likely.
Does anyone happen to know the speed difference of XP with HDD vs SSD?
Thanks for the help.
SSD will be significantly faster for on any OS. Optiplex 960 has onboard SATA, so should be no trouble using a modern SSD. You may need to put the ports into compatibility/legacy/IDE mode during installation so XP sees it as a regular IDE disk and won't need special drivers. Otherwise, you can try to find the SATA drivers for it and put them on a floppy, then use F6 during setup to load them and have full SATA and AHCI support.
HDDs have the benefit of being more period correct and some enjoy hearing the HDD spinning up and doing work as the heads move around. You could also get the best of both worlds by using an SSD as your boot disk to keep the OS snappy, and use an HDD as your data/games disk.
tduncan212 wrote on 2024-04-12, 16:37:The ones I looked at are similar except ssd and hdd.
And I'm mostly interested in using for older probably pre 2005 software and […]
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The ones I looked at are similar except ssd and hdd.
And I'm mostly interested in using for older probably pre 2005 software and games.
Here's a description of one I was interested in. I'm not real computer literate these days.
Specifications of the machine are as follows:
-Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 @ 3 GHz (quad core processor)
-4 GB DDR3 RAM (around 3GB usable with Windows XP)
-AMD Radeon HD 3450 Graphics
-500GB hard drive
-Windows XP Pro, 32-bit
-DVD-RW Drive (DVD and CD recorder)
-8 USB 2.0 ports (6 back, 2 front)
-Gigabit Ethernet port
-Dual DVI Port (on included DMS-59 cable)
-Audio out/line in ports (front and back)
-Serial Port
-Parallel Port
Looks good!