I just got a Dell Optiplex GX270 (pic related) for free and idk what to do with it, specs are Intel Pentium 4, 512mb ram,20gb hdd. Is it worth re purposing or should I gut it and trash it? Maybe run Linux or a torrent box? I'm open for suggestions.
>>54985204
Killer sleeper PC
>>54985214
p much this.
or shove it up your ass
>>54985204
throw them away. they are literally trash.
>>54985204
It uses a proprietary board, you won't be able to fit anything else in that case without heavy modification. The full towers used btx so you at least had a chance with them.
>>54985204
Gonna be some shitty torrent box with only a 20GB hard drive that's probably slow as fuck.
>>54985204
Honestly a pi3 is more powerful.
>>54985214
how can you make a sleeper PC with one of these? I have a similar PC and the motherboard is a proprietary design, so I can't get modern parts in it.
>>54985275
Maybe external hdds? Idk
>>54985204
Fuck! Dell stole 360 design.
>>54985310
By using another motherboard.
>>54985204
Put the guts in this.
Probably only uses for it would be to upgrade the hard drive and make it into a Linux seed box. The CPU for that thing is fairly low power so it shouldn't waste much electricity. Anything other than a seed box is probably a waste of time and electricity.
>>54985341
Compatible?
Sell it!
>>54985317
That dell is older than the 360.
Use it as a Tor node.
I have a HP Compaq D530 USDT (pic related) and it runs well as a Tor middle node on a 50/50 FiOS connection (when I have my apartment when college is in session). Don't have a GX270, but it might be similar in performance
>>54985341
Why is this pic in almost every thread? Is this some sort of summer meme?
>>54985204
>Optiplex GX270
That thing's a ticking time bomb. Dell went full chink on the capacitors for this particular model, and as a result they have roughly a 50% failure rate. Sooner or later those caps are gonna burst and render it unusable unless you know how to solder new ones back on.
>>54985204
Install Gentoo
>>54985407
Just trollin guy.
Gotta have my (You)'s.
>>54985355
Good idea, have any suggestions for stat to ide adapters?
>>54985432
Ya idk this one is stil going.
Add a cheap graphics card with hdmi like a nvidia 210 and turn it into a media center. The fans probably are a bit loud but you can disabld them or change them
>>54985204
i found an optiplex 760 the other day and i'm gonna use it as a seedbox+file server+kodi player+plex server for streaming to my other tvs in the house.
mine had a core 2 duo and i found 4gb of ram to put in it though so yours might not be able to handle some of that stuff
>>54985487
This computer has a AGP slot not PCIe. I opened one up at school
>>54985456
Any with good reviews will work I assume. Could just use a USB hard drive if speed isn't essential. Files would be easier to get off the machine as well if you don't want to bother setting up a network share.
>>54985482
http://www.cnet.com/news/bulging-capacitors-haunt-dell/
Who knows, though. Maybe you got a good model from after Dell wizened up.
>>54985542
Alright now to figure out what distro to use?
>>54985576
Something light to cope with that dated hardware. I've used Crunchbang before and that was decent for older hardware. It's pretty stripped down though. I think it's called BunsenLab Linux now.
If the promotional material is anything to go by as well, your machine should have one SATA port. Might want to check the board out.
>>54985357
YES
>>54985431
YES
>>54985204
thin client
web surfer/email checker
office/document processor
active directory server
DNS server
experimentation box
legacy software box
torrent box
old games
controller
it still does the same shit it did when it was new, get creative, learn something, old hardware is great to experiment with when you're not worried to shit about breaking it and its physical nature is a little more motivating than some shitty VMs you'll never have a reason to open
>>54985282
not even, those things can barely match shit low-end chips from ten years ago, not to mention their I/O is horrifying and pi setups are usually ugly as sin
>>54985576
post the service tag so we can look up what's in it
the 512 MB RAM compliment tells me it's not as shitty as >>54985623 thinks it is and probably will run fine with whatever distro you want
>>54985817
>>54985623
Opening it up now.
>>54985910
>8ZJ4F41
wew
checking it out now
>>54985910
>>54985938
>DDR RAM
>P4 with 800 MHz FSB
>actually a 40GB disk
just avoid bloated cancer like Unity and you'll probably be just fine.
>>54985973
Oh well 40gb is better than 20gb, was just going by what the person told me.
>>54985623
It does have a sata port, I wonder why they chose ide over sata?
>>54985431
Cuz it's a nice case.
>>54986152
>Nvidia
>nice
nice try shill
>>54986152
>ricer shit is nice now
You could use it to lan old games like quake 3 or cs 1.6 if thats your sort of thing
>>54985204
nice, I have one of those, posted it in the battlestation thread. Use Lubuntu or Trisquel Mini and you'll have a decent machine for old games and general web browsing.
>>54986279
It's not good enough hardware to run Q3 or 1.6 on the thing. However it is good enough to run UR1 and the original Quake.
>>54985204
I used to have one of those, it was my dedicated space heater.
>>54986370
lol
>>54985508
Wow.
>>54985204
lol i have the same computer, sitting collecting dust. was going to use it as a "smart tv" for the living room but it cant play hd vids so...yeah
>>54986581
I'm not op but I have one to
a little off topic, but is it worth it to buy an old poweredge server on ebay for like $50-100 for some site/minecraft server/mumble host? been using a VPS offsite for like a year now, thinking to just grab one of those, toss debian and some extra ram and an SSD and have a new server basically.
>>54986645
something like this.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-1950-III-2x-Xeon-E5430-QC-2-66GHz-16GB-RAM-1x-250GB-Sale-/231958424446?hash=item3601ccab7e:g:GiUAAOSwY0lXSKFn
like are there any downsides?
>>54985204
trash, they cost more to run than they're worth, a raspberry pi could probably out-perform it.
>>54985421
Remember:node, not a exit relay.
>>54986674
Only real downside I could think of might be power consumption. Seems breddy gud to me.
>>54986762
how bad do you think it is? i leave my computer on almost always anyways.
>>54986693
Are you seriously comparing early 2000s Dell prebuilts with single core processors and barely any RAM to modern Pi's with quad core processors and up to 4gb of ram? No shit it's going to outperform the dinosaur you fucktard
>>54986813
I have no clue, just shitposting. Probably not super noticable, but I wouldn't know.
>>54986674
Ya the power is a bit more, heat and noise, I have a tower server that I love but I am sure it pulled more power than a simple desktop seeing as it run 450W PSUs(two but that's for redundancy mostly), and it sounds like a jet when working. But I wouldn't trade it in!
>>54985204
Not worh it, even for free. Got this at microcenter for $99 and does more + less power.
>>54987041
Nice, awesome. Yeah I live in a house where everyone has their own high end build, so I dont think another machine will be that crazy. I think it's worth it to have the constant uptime though.
>>54985432
There is a VERY small percentage of these that have good capacitors. The problem also extends to the GX260 and GX280 models, though not as severe as the GX270.
>>54986142
Most GX270s only have IDE on them. Most of the ones with SATA didn't ship with SATA drives. Dell is effing weird.
>>54986855
Higher-end GX270s support 4GB of RAM and Hyperthreading.
>>54986142
Other than it probably being cheaper, those boxes were usually used as public fleet boxes, kiosk systems, web surfers and other applications where disk performance wasn't really important.
