£200 for upgrading a Dell Optiplex 780 sff

The Year1988,

Given the limitations to the level of processing power of the Optiplex 780, the size (due to the SSF case) and power of the graphics card (limited power supply), consider the advantages of something along the lines of:

Dell Precision T3500 Tower PC Intel Xeon W3505 2.53GHz 2.0GB DDR3 FREEP&P Sold for £56.00 (29.12.16)

Dell Precision T3500 specifications

The T3500 is a beautifully made system with extremely high reliability, can use up to 6-core, hyperthreadeing LGA1366 CPU, the RAM is DDR3-1333 instead of the very hot-running DDR2-667, and with a 525W power supply, is rated to use two 150W graphics card. the case dimensions and case cooling mean these can be full size GPU's.

Add to that system a Xeon X5677 4-core @ 3.47 /3.73Ghz (about £50-60 now), 12GB of RAM, a GTX 750Ti, 120GB SSD and Western Digital Blue 1TB. For your £200, the system would have much better performance, upgrade potential, and better resale value. Plus, the upgrades are easier than changing a motherboard and/or power supply.

That kind of system can run software on a quite high level. At my local linear accelerator, the 18m supercooled accelerators are partially drawn on Precision T3500's using Siemens NX- although to be fair the GPU's are £3,600 Quadro K6000's. At the other end, there are people putting quite fast GTX cards for gaming.

I have two Precisions from this series:

Analysis /Simulation /Rendening:

Dell Precision T5500 (2011) (Revised) > 2X Xeon X5680 (6-core @ 3.33 / 3.6GHz), 48GB DDR3 1333 ECC Reg. > Quadro K2200 (4GB ) > PERC H310 / Samsung 840 250GB / WD RE4 Enterprise 1TB > M-Audio 192 sound card > Logitech z313 > 875W PSU > Windows 7 Professional 64> HP 2711x (27", 1920 X 1080)
[ Passmark system rating = 3844 > CPU = 15047 / 2D= 662 / 3D= 3550 / Mem= 1785 / Disk= 2649] (12.30.15)

Business / Office / Backup

Dell Precision T3500 (2011) (Rev 2) Xeon X5677 4-core @ 3.46 / 3.73GHz > 12GB (6X 2GB) DDR3-1333 ECC > Quadro 4000 (2GB) > PERC 6/i + Seagate 300GB 15K SAS ST3300657SS + WD Black 500GB > 525W PSU> Windows 7 Professional 64-bit > 2X Dell 19" LCD
[Passmark system rating = 2751> CPU = 7236 / 2D= 658 / 3D=2020 / Mem= 1875 / Disk=1221]

> and these have had 100% reliability.

If the Optiplex 780 SFF was chosen due to space limitations, I have an Optiplex 740 SSF and in comparison, the footprint of the T3500 is not tremendously larger:

T3500: (HxWxD) 17.6" x 6.8" x 18.4"; 44.7cm x 17.2cm x 46.8cm
Optiplex 780 SFF: 12.4" x 3.65" x 13.4" / 31.4cm x 9.26 x x 34.0 cm

Cheers,

BambiBoom