Optiplex upgrades

[dalekphalm]

24 minutes ago, jefire411 said:

thats what I'm waiting on right now, for the windows setup process to finish. I have 4 sticks of 1gb of ddr2 ram I can use, giving it a total of 6gb.

As far as I'm aware, it only has four RAM DIMM slots in total.

[jefire411]

19 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

As far as I'm aware, it only has four RAM DIMM slots in total.

yeah, it already has 2 occupied with so far, a total of 4 gb of ram. If I add 2 sticks I have though I will have to suffice with 6. Would having 8 or even 16 gb or ddr2 ram help? whats the max speed it could run?

[dalekphalm]

32 minutes ago, jefire411 said:

yeah, it already has 2 occupied with so far, a total of 4 gb of ram. If I add 2 sticks I have though I will have to suffice with 6. Would having 8 or even 16 gb or ddr2 ram help? whats the max speed it could run?

Oh, my apologies. I misinterpreted your statement here:

Quote

I have 4 sticks of 1gb of ddr2 ram I can use, giving it a total of 6gb

to mean that you wanted to add all 4 sticks of 1GB RAM.

 

You can check the specs here:

www.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/global/products/optix/topics/en/optiplex_intel?c=us&l=en&cs=04

 

It supports up to 800 MHz RAM.

[jefire411]

1 hour ago, candle86 said:

easy upgrades for the 745 to make it viable for the modern web.

 

Core 2 Quad Q6600 

4x2gb DDR 800

Nvidia GPU, be sure it's nvidia, the newest AMD's don't support PCIe 1.1 due to the way the power mode works for AMD, they get very low idle power numbers but in exchange they dont support PCIe 1.1, its a bit complicated by just avoid AMD/ATI cards, anything new enough to have 10 drivers also doesn't work well on PCIe 1.1. I'd suggest looking for a used GTX 650 Ti/GTX 560 Ti as anything faster is wasted. 

SSD

 

Then you can run Windows 10.

for GPUs, I'd look at the lowest power consuming gpu that also strikes a good balance of performance for what the matching can handle. I was about to make a thread asking what GPU would be perfect for this machine under 80 watts! PCI-E x2, x4,x8,16 also has me confused, also the different versions. Also, should I connect an ssd to the sata port, or threw a PCI?

[jefire411]

8 minutes ago, candle86 said:

something else to consider if you don't mind a little modifacation you can cut out the rear IO with a grinding wheel and install an Optiplex 980 board into this sytem with an i7 860 or 870, the boards tend to be very cheap

oh, I though the optiplex 745 only had PCIe 1.0. Can I overclock with he stock board? Can I remove the cooler shroud and put in something like the Cryorig M9i?What gpu would be good for  fortnite and rocket league at medium/low maybe a few high settings at 1080p without AA? Also, I tried to install a small little fan I had in another prebuilt and wanted it to act as an intake fan, but I don't see any headers, or maybe there is one but the only one that might work has a plastic thing surrounding it so the plug won't fit in. 

[dalekphalm]

14 hours ago, candle86 said:

It's BTX it's designed to be used with a single fan, you can't really overclock, and no after market coolers will fit it. It's PCIe 1.1 not 1.0 but both have issues with newer AMD Cards that use PCIe 2.1 and 3.0 power specs

Not entirely correct. There are some low profile aftermarket coolers that will fit. But the problem is that they won't really give you any benefit over the stock Dell cooler, so why bother spending money on it?

 

The 745 and 755 are so old that I personally wouldn't dump any money into them.

 

Using an old Optiplex as the basis for a system isn't a bad idea, but the OP should be looking at something newer, like the 790 at minimum. Better would be the 7010 (or any of the 70x0 series), which includes USB 3.0, among other things.