Dell OptiPlex 760 160GB SATA Desktop Price: $99.99 Shipping Options:: $5 Standard Shipping Estimates: Ships in 3-5 business days. (Monday, Mar 09 to Thursday, Mar 12) + transit Condition: Refurbished
We use this model for a majority of our libraries out here. They run okay but I personally wouldn’t recommend them, unless it was just for the OS. They might work well for someone who just uses this to browse the web, check their email, etc…
The motherboards on these machines tend to have swelling capacitor problems i would really recommend against these for anyone intending. I have had two of these machines i used as HTPC units in bedrooms both exhibited the same problem in about a years time. They also in addition tend to use shoddy PSU’s that cause all kinds of issues on their own including random Shutdowns reboots the like.
Here is one of hundreds of threads about these machines on the dell forums from people who have purchased 2-200 of these.
The hardware itself is reliable, we have tons of these still ticking away at work doing science-type-stuff with people who never power them down or let them rest.
When buying this, think of max memory and an SSD as required upgrades. A graphics card is not totally necessary but is good to have. It’ll work just fine.
Wow, I can’t believe they still hadn’t fixed that by the time these rolled around. We made Dell come in and replace hundreds of motherboards in the Gx260 -> Gx280s we had deployed at our company. At least I think it was up to the 280s…been a while since I thought about it.
Same here… Tons of 760’s. We have upgraded all ours to 4GB RAM and are this year replacing all the drives with SSD’s and fresh images. They are solid.
On a side note: I am glad these are finally seeing a more realistic price for these. $140-150 is WAY too much. $99? That’s about what I sell them for when these C2D class computers get retired.
Can confirm - I get these from campus surplus with full memory, throw in a 120Gb SSD, use the VGA port and they’re great for students in the lab to do the usual things with (compiler, write up data, some graphics work etc.). If they get screwed up (as only students can do) I’m out the cost of the drive and the annoyance of getting them off inventory. So far so good.
Plenty fast with the SSD and don’t take up a lot of bench space. If you need a “workbench computer” you could do a lot worse.
I was running OpenELEC on one with a generic Radeon video card with HDMI for years. Worked great, I just pulled it recently as I’m running all Roku 3’s with Plex now… They’re low power, have a smallish footprint and more than enough power for an HTPC.
