E-Junk build.

[East_W1nd]

Budget (including currency): N/A

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: No real goal just want to see how far i can push this board as cheaply as i can.

Other details: Picked up a Dell Optiplex 780 (yes i know they are generally avoided ) for a couple of bucks. If i recall its the c27vv board with an lga775 socket so nice old cheap CPUs are plentiful. What my loose plan is to get the cheapest micro-ATX case i can find and upgrade this little turd to the max to see what it can do because....... well because i can (is there any better reason?). Should have the system in the next week or so. I'll update this with what is salvageable. In the mean time throw what ever helpful advice on this board and what it can handle my way. Or leave a snide comment 

 

[BondiBlue]

You've already made a bit of a mistake - you can't put that board into a standard case. It's BTX, not ATX. Unless you want to custom build something from scratch you're stuck with the case you have. 

 

It's a DDR3 based LGA 775 system, so nothing too special. It'll take up to 16GB of RAM, which is pretty nice if you have it lying around. You can also upgrade the PSU to a more powerful model, but there's not a ton of need for it. You're limited in GPU expansion options thanks to the clearance from the CPU cooler. 

 

How much did you pay for it? These old OptiPlex machines aren't worth much of anything these days. The OptiPlex 780 in particular is a nice platform for a Hackintosh project though, if that's something you'd be interested in trying. Mine runs El Capitan just as well as an actual Mac. 

[East_W1nd]

2 minutes ago, BondiBlue said:

You've already made a bit of a mistake - you can't put that board into a standard case. It's BTX, not ATX. Unless you want to custom build something from scratch you're stuck with the case you have. 

 

It's a DDR3 based LGA 775 system, so nothing too special. It'll take up to 16GB of RAM, which is pretty nice if you have it lying around. You can also upgrade the PSU to a more powerful model, but there's not a ton of need for it. You're limited in GPU expansion options thanks to the clearance from the CPU cooler. 

 

How much did you pay for it? These old OptiPlex machines aren't worth much of anything these days. The OptiPlex 780 in particular is a nice platform for a Hackintosh project though, if that's something you'd be interested in trying. Mine runs El Capitan just as well as an actual Mac. 

Whoops i overlooked the board size. And when i say a couple bucks i mean literally 2 dollars US That's why I'm open pretty much anything. Just something to tinker around with for a little bit.

[BondiBlue]

Just now, East_W1nd said:

Whoops i overlooked the board size. And when i say a couple bucks i mean literally 2 dollars US That's why I'm open pretty much anything. Just something to tinker around with for a little bit.

Ok, good. That's about what they're worth to be honest. It feels a bit odd to say that considering that several years ago my daily driver computer was an OptiPlex 780. 

 

If you want a bit of a project you could try the Hackintosh route. I've gotten everything from 10.7 Lion to 10.11 El Capitan to run on my 780, and IIRC they'll even run up to High Sierra. They'll also officially run Windows XP, and they should run Windows 11 as well. 

[Fasauceome]

Does the 780 use a regular 24 pin connector for the Mobo and standard PSU size? You wouldn't need a whole new case to get some decent upgrades in there.

[BondiBlue]

1 minute ago, Fasauceome said:

Does the 780 use a regular 24 pin connector for the Mobo and standard PSU size? You wouldn't need a whole new case to get some decent upgrades in there.

The MT model uses a standard PSU. There's not much of a need to upgrade it much though as I mentioned earlier - GPU upgrades are rather limited, even in the MT model. You could always use a riser though, in which case a beefier PSU would be great. 

[aisle9]

29 minutes ago, East_W1nd said:

Whoops i overlooked the board size. And when i say a couple bucks i mean literally 2 dollars US That's why I'm open pretty much anything. Just something to tinker around with for a little bit.

Everything here is written on the assumption that you have the mini-tower 780, not the DT or SFF version. The 780 uses a standard PSU pinout, so you're good with what's in there. Or, you can replace the one in there with an ATX unit if you want. It's not really necessary and it won't quite fit right, but if you want to go nuts it can be done.

 

Q6600 with the tape mod

8GB DDR3 (16GB if you want to overacheive)

SSD

Something akin to a GTX 750 Ti--about as powerful as you'd want to go with a C2Q, and be aware of power requirements and the amount of room you have. The cooler shroud can be hacked away some.

Be sure to replace the main system fan in front of the cooler. LEDs look nice, but my personal favorite was the time I put a Delta in there and made it a literal jet engine.

 

If you want to run on a budget, 780s are a perfect platform for a Windows XP retro gamer. Really any LGA 775 system that supports full-size GPUs is perfect these days, but the 780 is exceptionally perfect because of the designed purpose for those Opti 780s.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

38 minutes ago, East_W1nd said:

Budget (including currency): N/A

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: No real goal just want to see how far i can push this board as cheaply as i can.

Other details: Picked up a Dell Optiplex 780 (yes i know they are generally avoided ) for a couple of bucks. If i recall its the c27vv board with an lga775 socket so nice old cheap CPUs are plentiful. What my loose plan is to get the cheapest micro-ATX case i can find and upgrade this little turd to the max to see what it can do because....... well because i can (is there any better reason?). Should have the system in the next week or so. I'll update this with what is salvageable. In the mean time throw what ever helpful advice on this board and what it can handle my way. Or leave a snide comment 

 

Yea thats pretty trash ngl, 43 chipsets (q45 is basically p43/g43) can only do max ~440fsb cause they are brick walled

 

If you wanna be serious about overclocking these then get the 30 series boards cause they dont have this bullshit crippling, heck the last gen q35 could prob annihilate that q45 if you voltmod it enough, even g31 would still crush that q45, my g31m s2c does 542fsb max and it pretty much annihilates all 41 and 43 chipsets, it even annihilates or competes with lower end p45 boards like my p5q

 

 

For a real upgrade on that thing, either an optiplex board with a 30 series chipset or a gigabyte g31 board (voltmod required for both for stability at high fsb), you could be a lunatic and shove a gigabyte/dfi/biostar p45 board in it and run 600+ fsb but unless you can get those for cheap its not worth it xD

 

Cpu wise you may wanna go for a xeon e5450 (basically a q9650 but cheaper and better silicon for better overclocking)

[aisle9]

3 minutes ago, BondiBlue said:

The MT model uses a standard PSU. There's not much of a need to upgrade it much though as I mentioned earlier - GPU upgrades are rather limited, even in the MT model. You could always use a riser though, in which case a beefier PSU would be great. 

Not quite. The MT uses a BTX PSU, which is the same width and depth but slightly taller. You can swap an ATX PSU into a 780 pretty easily, but swapping the 780's PSU into a garden-variety mid-tower is a bigger pain