Scenario: want to plan for novemberish purchase of potential GPU (and maybe RAM) upgrade for i7-11700 system.
My completely tech illiterate in-laws made some comments about my nephew being frustrated with trying to game on his Christmas present PC. He is doing Fortnight and Minecraft, not exactly blazing edge titles. I told them to send me (semi-tech literate) the specs of what they got him. Ummm, utter dogE36 M3. It's a 10 year old HP SFF box with some stupid LED lights on it being sold "refurbished" on Amazon currently for $300. i5-6500, no GPU, can't support any worthy upgrade. Can't run Windows 11.
I had sitting around some computers these same in-laws had toss from their dental practice 16 months ago when they went to the cloud. I had turned one into a beast, one had been sacrificed to the gods of overclocking science, one was a shell from donated parts, and the last was massive overkill for my nostalgic games (more on that later). So here is the system I dropped off for the 9 year old boy.
OptiPlex 5090: 01/2022
https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/servicetag/JZ412G3/overview
Warranty support ended 02/2025
Intel Core i7-11700 processor
2.5GHz, 4.90 GHz max
Intel Q570 Chipset (Rocket Lake)
LGA1200
Micron 2300, 256GB NVMe Storage
32GB DDR4-2666 (Can take max 3200MHz)
Nvidia Quadro T1000 4GB PCIe Graphics Card (PCIe 4.0 max) EDIT:4.0 not 3.0
PSU Dell crappy 300W.
it's upgraded to Windows 11 Pro, and he couldn't believe how much better it was for what he's been doing than he old computer. If he wants to get into heavier games do you think faster ram will help, or just a heavier GPU. If that is so, is there one better than the T1000 that wouldn't require replacing the PSU?
Thanks for all the thoughts!
Not sure if it's better than the T1000 or not since it's been quite a while since I cared about knowing specs but I get by just fine with a GTX1060 6gb. Recently upgraded from 16gb ram to 48 and that helped a lot.
GeForce RTX 3050 6GB vs Quadro T1000 vs GeForce RTX 4060 [videocardbenchmark.net] by PassMark Software
The RTX 3050 is about as cheap and low-power as you can get, $200 and 70W, comes in a variety of shapes and sizes to fit the case.
That said, the RTX 4060 is a huge leap forward for an extra $100 and a few more watts, but you'd very likely want a bigger PSU.
Yah, for gaming, it's all about the GPU. Assuming what's there now isn't enough, buy new Nvidia card that suits your budget, and upgrade that PSU. 300W just isn't enough.
And for heaven's sake, don't buy an AMD Radeon video card. I made that mistake a couple years ago, and while the 5700XT is still performing adequately, it doubles as a space heater, which is fine in Winter, not so much in Summer.
Finding video cards without a 6 pin connector is really difficult. The T1000 is the business equivalent of a GeForce 1650. There are a lot of cards that are both worse and more expensive, so it's kinda a minefield.
The two upgrade options I see on pcpartpicker that are both possible to find and aren't $1000 would be either the Intel Arc A380 for a little over $100 or the GeForce RTX 3050 for about $200.
If you're someone suggesting a PSU upgrade, keep in mind that:
- This Dell uses a modern, efficient, 12V only power supply, so upgrading is limited.
- The existing power supply can run 75w from the PCI express slot just fine.
I think the only games that could benefit from more than 32GB RAM right now would be MSFS2020/2024. Even 16GB is enough for most these days. +1 for an RTX3050 or Arc A380.
Thanks all. The PSU/Case is a bottleneck so I may just chuck it all into another case in the future. The RTX3050 6GB sounds like the ticket! It still may just put me over the PSU limit, but I think it will be ok. I'll have to use the Kill-O-Watt to measure consumption and make sure I have the 25W headroom needed. I feel like I'm working the Voyager Program power limits!
I wouldn't get more RAM, contemplating moving from 2666 to 3200, even if dropping from 32GB to 16GB. This current setup I think will be just fine for his needs for quite sometime.
For comparison, pretty much all my gaming occured in DOS, Windows 95, or XP. I'm able to use Boxer on my Macs to run things like Commander Keene, Harpoon 2 Admirals Edition, Hannibal, and my favorite - Steel Panthers. For Starcraft (OG and Broodwar), Mechwarriors IV, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Worms World Party, and Sim City 2000 I have my air-gapped XP rig. 1998 me could only dream about such performance! I've never had interest in getting really into gaming, so for the past 3 decades I've just rotated these. Now it's fun getting my son into them also.
AMD Phenom II X6 1100T
ASUS Crosshair IV Formula
4GB PC3-12800
Zotac GeForce GT730 4GB DDR3. (The HD6950 was just too huge and hot)
Cheap 120GB SSD
All on a 3D printed standoff board, and the PSU was the only thing I bought.
red_stapler said:
If you're someone suggesting a PSU upgrade, keep in mind that:
- This Dell uses a modern, efficient, 12V only power supply, so upgrading is limited.
- The existing power supply can run 75w from the PCI express slot just fine.
Thank you. I see the error of my ways.
bbbbRASS said:
The RTX3050 6GB sounds like the ticket! It still may just put me over the PSU limit, but I think it will be ok. I'll have to use the Kill-O-Watt to measure consumption and make sure I have the 25W headroom needed.
The existing video card draws 50W so you're only adding like 25w of load going to the 3050. I'll bet there is still 50-75w of headroom after you upgrade.
For comparison's sake, I just measured a 13th gen i5, rtx 4090, 42" TV as a monitor (4k 60Hz) and stereo w/ a subwoofer together. I could only get it to draw about 700 watts max from the plug while nearly blowing out my ears. (Tried running Forza Motorsport and Mechwarrior Clans) The TV took about 75W, and the stereo maybe 50W. I've been trying to make a plan for power protection in the room.
Big PSUs are cheap, so I'd look for a 750ish watt platinum PSU if you can. It'd run cooler than a bronze/silver/gold and have plenty of room for expansion.
scardeal said:
Big PSUs are cheap, so I'd look for a 750ish watt platinum PSU if you can. It'd run cooler than a bronze/silver/gold and have plenty of room for expansion.
A reminder that the Optiplex 5090 is a 12vO system and you can't just chuck a 750 from Microcenter in there.
