I cant get a straight answer on upgrades I can do on my old Dell Optiplex 3010

[nedac345]

So I am new here and know very little about putting together pc's. I have an older PC that I bought thinking that I could do some updates that would not break the bank and make an alright pc that could handle some light gaming and video and picture editing. I wanted to add 16 gigs of ram and a SSD and update the power supply and I wanted to add a cheap but decent graphics card.  The issue is that every time I walk into a pc store or a computer repair shop, they all give different information on what I can and cant do with this machine. 

 

Its a DELL OPTIPLEX 3010 in the large tower form. It has a 3rd gen I5-3470 @ 3.20 GHz processor. It is set up with Windows 10.  I guess the question that I have is, what graphics cards can I use that would be compatible that would still give me good performance that I could get even used that would be under $100.00.

 

Also, is a Thermaltake smart series power supply 80 smart 500w a good power supply that would be a plug and play in a 3010 or do I have to do something else to make it work? Is there a better power supply for the money?  I am trying to keep this budget pc no more then $300.00 if I can.  I paid 60 for the tower. 30 bucks for the 16 gigs of ram, 80 bucks for the 2 monitors set up used and 10 for the speaker set up. So I am 180.00 now. 

 

 

 

[RONOTHAN##]

2 minutes ago, nedac345 said:

guess the question that I have is, what graphics cards can I use that would be compatible that would still give me good performance that I could get even used that would be under $100.00

In the current market, not much. You might get a 750 Ti, or if you're lucky a 1050Ti, but I wouldn't expect much more than that.

3 minutes ago, nedac345 said:

Also, is a Thermaltake smart series power supply 80 smart 500w a good power supply that would be a plug and play in a 3010 or do I have to do something else to make it work?

I believe the 3010 was one of the dell units to use fully standard components, so you should be good with a standard ATX power supply. I'm not great with PSU quality, so while I think the smart series isn't bad, I wouldn't quote me on that would trust someone else on here more than me. Also, if you get one of the cards stated above, you don't need to upgrade the PSU.

[Mooshi]

I was ready to tear Dell a new one for being proprietary garbage, but this one is actually serviceable

 

As far as PSUs go, I'd personally go to Corsair for a decent budget unit. 

[mariushm]

Well, it seems the power supplies it comes with are  240w or 250w ... so with existing power supplies, you should stick to video cards that are slot powered. At most, maybe to video cards with a single 6 pin connector, which only consume a bit more than what the slot can give, let's say up to 100 watts. 

 

That CPU consumes 60-80w, your motherboard consumes maybe 10-20w, leaving maybe 100-120w for a video card but that's pushing it.  The 240w psu says on label that it can do max 12v x 17A = 204 watts. 

 

You don't say where you live, but you say dollars, so assuming US you could get some ok power supplies in the 30-50$ range. 

 

For example, EVGA BR 450w starts from around 28$ and it's not great, but also won't blow up on you and take the hardware with it : https://pcpartpicker.com/product/xDMwrH/evga-br-450w-80-bronze-certified-atx-power-supply-100-br-0450-k1

 

The Thermaltake Smart 500w is fine if you manage to get the $10 rebate and end up at $30 : https://pcpartpicker.com/product/Wbhj4D/thermaltake-smart-500w-80-certified-atx-power-supply-ps-spd-0500npcwus-w

 

If you want to try your luck, there's a $20 mail-in rebate for Corsair CX 2017 650w model  at newegg, making it $40 after/if you get your money back :  https://pcpartpicker.com/product/3F2rxr/corsair-cx-2017-650w-80-bronze-certified-atx-power-supply-cp-9020122-na

 

Not sure if that Dell 3010 has UEFI support in BIOS, do some research.  If there's no UEFI support, the system won't work with some video cards, for example anything RX 470 or newer from AMD (there were some OEM RX 460 that could work) and I believe anything after RTX 2060 but I may be wrong there. 

 

Either way, $100 -ish is not enough for a decent video card. I'd suggest saving a bit more until you get to 150-200

The RX 460 cards are about that much, see for example https://www.ebay.com/itm/334066701435?hash=item4dc7ed547b:g:hOMAAOSwtkBgwObP

But ... I don't recommend buying anything with less than 4 GB of VRAM memory ... a lot of games won't work well with less than 4 GB VRAM, even if you have plenty of regular ram 

RX 470 and RX 480 used to be cheaper, but they can still be used to mine so their prices are high, in the $250-300...

 

Look into 1060 or 1050, maybe a 1650, maybe a GTX 970 at around 175-200$ used...  

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to Laptops and Pre-Build Systems