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Repurposing/reconditioning a Dell Optiplex gx270

A

ajrietveld

Junior Member
A coworker of mine gave me her old Dell Optiplex gx270, minus her hdd. I plan to put in an 80gb IDE hdd I have laying around. After doing some research online, in the bios, and opening it up, it looks like it has a 2.8 ghz pentium 4 and 1 gb of DDR ram.

When I took it I was thinking of using it as a simple PC to putz around online in the guest room. Maybe even attempt to use it as a DVD player, Netflix streamer, or media extender for the HTPC in the living room. But now that I have it I can't help but wonder:

1) Will the hardware support anything other than XP? I hate vista, but like 7, but could the processor/ram handle it?

2) Would the integrated graphics be sufficient for what I hope to do? If I were going to put in a video card what low to mid budget card (PCI or AGP only I believe) should I go with? After 4 years with a laptop and recently using the integrated graphics with my Sandy Bridge HTPC I'm fairly clueless when it comes to discrete cards.

3) Is the hardware so old that I should just scrap the idea and walk away with a free 15" LCD monitor?
 
I would max out the RAM, drop an old HD in there, reinstall XP and update it with the latest patches. Might be useful for guests to browse the web, email, etc. I wouldn't bother trying to make a HTPC out of it though.

Good luck!
 
gsaldivar said:
I would max out the RAM, drop an old HD in there, reinstall XP and update it with the latest patches. Might be useful for guests to browse the web, email, etc. I wouldn't bother trying to make a HTPC out of it though.

Good luck!
Click to expand...

Thanks. Thats what I'm thinking I'll end up doing. I couldn't help but be curious though.

I'm thinking I could probably build a new machine/buy a dedicated box to act as a basic web streamer/media player for a little more than I'd spend on upgrading this old machine.
 
4GB of ram. sata card (i got some raid for sale if it has pci-e) and 1 ssd and a couple of 2TB drives and you have a nice business machine/nas. you'd be suprised how fast that machine for business use with an ssd. the PATA has to go however.
 
gsaldivar said:
I would max out the RAM, drop an old HD in there, reinstall XP and update it with the latest patches. Might be useful for guests to browse the web, email, etc. I wouldn't bother trying to make a HTPC out of it though.

Good luck!
Click to expand...

If you added some RAM, Windows 7 would also run well on it as long as you didn't try running anything more complex than a web browser on it.
 
ultimatebob said:
If you added some RAM, Windows 7 would also run well on it as long as you didn't try running anything more complex than a web browser on it.
Click to expand...

This is true, however, OP is likely to run into driver problems by jumping to Windows 7. XP is still very capable and efficient for basic web browsing, emails, documents, etc. And in most cases the license was already purchased with the machine, so no cost to do a simple reinstall.

Other than the new UI, there is little to gain by upgrading to Windows 7 on such an old machine, and there could be several hours wasted solving driver issues if they occur.
 
gsaldivar said:
This is true, however, OP is likely to run into driver problems by jumping to Windows 7. XP is still very capable and efficient for basic web browsing, emails, documents, etc. And in most cases the license was already purchased with the machine, so no cost to do a simple reinstall.

Other than the new UI, there is little to gain by upgrading to Windows 7 on such an old machine, and there could be several hours wasted solving driver issues if they occur.
Click to expand...

I plan to install XP on it this weekend. You are correct the license key is still attached to the tower. If my coworker was savvy enough to use that key on another machine, which I'm doubting, I think I'm gonna give Ubuntu a shot as it's free.

Windows 7 would be nice because it'll play recorded tv from my htpc in the living room - if the hardware supported the play back. I think I read somewhere that the recorded tv file type changed in Windows 7. I'm thinking XP might not want to play the new file type.
 
Stay with XP. I used to have an old IBM PC at work that was a Pentium 4 3GHz with HT. It was decent with Windows 7 if it has at least 3GB of RAM. Of course it helped that I was using a Velociraptor drive and then later an Intel X25-M 80GB G1.

It will play some 720p MKV but will start to stutter when the action picks up. So no, not good for HTPC.
 
Before you spend any money on it check the motherboard capacitors for bulging and leaking. This model was notorious for that problem. Even if they look ok I wouldn't spend too much on it based on what you will use if for.
 
Get it going and pass it on. these keep tempting you to do one moere thing
Click to expand...

Before you spend any money on it check the motherboard capacitors for bulging and leaking. This model was notorious for that problem. Even if they look ok I wouldn't spend too much on it based on what you will use if for.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the good advice
 
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