The RX 6600 is a pretty good, lower power option as well. The XFX model I have only pulls down about 110 watts, which is even less than the 1660 Super/Ti, which I also love for Optiplex flips. Also, it's worth mentioning that you can totally swap the power supply out with one from the XE3, which has a 6-pin PCIe connection, that can safely be adapted to an 8-pin and it has the same pinout, and will just drop right in, which is great for people that don't want fuss with modifications. I should note that it will NOT work in the 40 series as they use the same 8-pin power as the previous 20 series systems. For those than don't mind a little modding, or a little jank, an SFX PSU fits nicely in these or a Flex ATX or a GaN power supply like the HD Plex units are options as well.
@@ThatPaulGuy Yeah, it's definitely a tight fit. I'll have to see if the XFX model would fit in the 7050 I have here. I'm pretty sure the PowerColor fighter would. I think it's the smallest RX 6600 on the market.
I'm thinking of using a flex ATX power supply with it. Did you cut the exterior of the case or the aluminum bracket on the inside that holds the HDD cages?
@@ThatPaulGuy i cut the aluminum fold out section so i could fit a larger card in. if you don't need too much juice you can use an actual dell psu, they make a 360w that is a straight swap L360EGM-00 K38XP
Not an Optiplex story, but I was recently handed down an Intel Desktop Board DH67bl with a Pentium Dual-Core. I got an i7-2600 and a GTX 960 4GB, and now it’s my XP god-tier machine that moonlights as a modern Win10 budget gamer, minus games that require AVX2. Perfect for Steam Proton too! It’s my favorite computer amongst my collection, even with my beefier gaming rig.
For older Pre-DX9 games, I sometimes have to shave off two cores *and* limit the CPU to 1600MHz, unless I wanna hear the worst coil whine ever. I accidentally killed my old HD6870 before I realized, “Set a 300fps global frame cap, and throttle your CPU!”
I have had quite the battles with GPU size and Optiplex. Many hard drive cages have been destroyed in the process. 😂😂😂😂 GTX 1650/1660 (and or Super) is still my favorite Optiplex low power draw bang for the buck GPU. They fit nicely and run cool. Not the best in the world but the difference is so slight that most casual users wouldn’t notice.
🙂 yes the 1660 Super is a good sweet spot, also the 2060 or 3050 or something around there in performance, the new 3050 6gb is a bus powered card and supposedly it runs close to a 1660 Super which means its a pretty strong bus powered card, not bad at all
🙂 checkout the new bus powered 3050 6GB, supposedly it trades blows with the 1660 Super, the 1660 Super or 2060 or 3050 with an adapter is also a decent option but it depends on how many watts the oem power supply is and how many watts the motherboard is allowing the cpu to rev up to, it would be a good idea for everybody to purchase a watt meter so ur not guessing as to how many watts the computer is pulling from the wall, gives u piece of mind, i leave one on my main pc and i keep another one for testing builds
I'm running a Ryzen 5 3600 with a GTX 1650 super and PC Builds says it has 0% bottleneck. True or not...don't care because it does everything I need. Take care Paul
That means 0% CPU bottleneck. Your PC will be bottlenecked by the GPU. But that does tend to work out better than pairing a GPU with an insufficient CPU. A 4th gen i7 would be unlikely to bottleneck a 1650 Super.
That's the important part. As long as it does everything you need it to do, its perfect. The 3600 and 3600x are definite go to CPUs and can handle a wide range of tasks. They also pair well with most graphics cards. I love that the 1650 doesn't need external power.
🙂 i really wouldn't worry too much about bottleneck, whats more important is that the game runs without any major stutters, down the line ur probably going to upgrade ur pc parts again and again anyways
That's all that matters. I've got a 2600X (zen+) and an RX 470 4GB. So, similar _performance_ to your specs. It does everything I ask it to do, and does it quickly. No complaints. I found an RX 5700 (non-xt) on ebay for $50 bucks that I'm _learning_ to repair. I have it repaired to the point where the fans will spin and lights will come on when the system is powered on, but still no video out. Baby steps.
I've put a 4080FE in an "optiplexic" prebuilt, one of these that are externally or internally alike just with different brand marked on them from the outside, I cut part from the front of the case to pass the GPU through, was thermally limited at first, so I put an AIO on the CPU and custom air-cooled the VRMs, As any prebuilt with BIOS as deaf as a brick, ending up being current limited is peak of what I can attain, not much bottlenecked, good enough for me.
🙂 yup, some of the oem boards limit the cpu power to something really low like 25 watts which is ridiculous, so the only way to get ur i7 to run at it posted speed is to use a retail motherboard
I'm thinking as soon as the price on used ones sort of bottoms out, I think we'll see s lot of these in prebuilts with low wattage power supplies, both newer and older.
The RX6600 is an acceptable 1440p GPU but only if you can enable SAM and only draws 100W. A 4c8t CPU will work better at 1440p than 1080p. I've done my last 4c8t build (except for retro builds or the odd general utility machine). If you take a look at what is going on with upcoming hardware, it really just looks obsolete in 2024. Maybe you can get the parts to put something together and sell for $350 or so and not spend a lot on the base system but I can't so I'm not messing with that stuff anymore. I only got $350 for a 3rd gen i7/1650 rig recently and I was actually surprised to get that much at this point. I'm moving to all new builds. IDC if I only make $100 on them, it is way better than messing around with old junk. That's something I do for fun as a hobby. I don't want to do it to earn money. Even with a new build, there is always at least one thing that goes wrong. On a used parts build it could easily be half a dozen things going wrong at once. I just don't want the headache. We're entering a period of rapid PC development and what was fine yesterday isn't fine today. If someone just wants to play esports or older AAA titles, those old parts are still usable. But not something someone is going to buy in 2024 if they know even the slightest bit about gaming PCs and want something that will last awhile for new releases. Also, putting an RX6400 in something so old it can't even run it properly just turns a bad GPU into a horrorshow. They will perform way worse on a 7th gen intel system than on something with PCIe 4.0. Objectively way worse than any other GPU you mention because those have 3.0x8 interfaces and the 6400 has a PCIe 4.0x4 interface. A PCIe 4.0x8 GPU like the RX6600 won't incur a performance penalty in a 3.0x16 slot, which just barely has the per lane bandwidth to make it work, if you have reBAR support, that is. Without it, you lose about 15% performance. You'll lose another 15% for using PCIe 3.0. I call that throwing money down a hole. You're paying $120 for $80 worth of performance. When next gen GPUs launch, all bets are off and you're gonna want PCIe 4.0 even for a budget GPU. The 6400 was designed as a recent gen workstation GPU with PCIe 4.0 support. It is a basic display adapter for a recent server. It is not some magic device you can use to transform an old POS Optiplex into a gaming PC. This is why it is configured the way it is. I wouldn't build with a GPU with less than 8GB. That 6600 is fine for 1440p for now but as soon as that new Indy game launches later this year, it probably won't be anymore for new releases. I consider it a 1080p entry level GPU moving forward. I was even getting the odd VRAM warning when playing FC6 on it at 1440p. Never actually exceeded 8GB but still. Goes to show you that if a 5 year old game can use nearly 8GB at 1440p Medium, the era of the 8GB GPU is drawing to a close, not to mention 6GB GPUs. You need a 12GB GPU to run the HD texture pack on FC6. No, you can't get away with 8GB, even at 1080p. I expect GTAVI to have similar requirements if they were genuine about the trailer being all in game rendered footage. You might be playing that at 720p on an 8GB GPU. Dragon's Dogma 2 needs at least 12 CPU threads to run at any resolution. I'm not trying to rag on you, I am trying to give you a heads up so you don't end up with a bunch of PCs you can't sell.
I dont think the goal of anyone trying to rebuild or buy an older refurb Optiplex is to run 2024 triple A releases at 1440p. The 6400 does have a severe limitation of its PCI bus being 4x4, but there are actually worse options, like the Arc A380 that won't even run some games, and tanks in performance with others because of the resizeable bar option. All in all, building a budget rig with 10th -12th gen lower tier cpus is almost as cost effective but the old hardware is still out there.
🙂 im rebuilding my Devils Canyon 4790K rig, I only use it now as a spare computer for a bedroom, Windows 11 works and windows updates works on it, Cyberpunk 2077 works just fine on it, im feeling for graphics card performance something between a 3050 or 3060 or equivalent should be ok for most games, anything stronger i imagine the cards usage will taper off and wont run any faster but depends on the video game in question too. But yeah I feel you. To build something super cheap and new I guess something like a ryzen 4500 6/12 and a simple b450 or a520 board would do and any cheap graphics card, you can still play alot of games with a little 750ti
@@ThatPaulGuy 🙂 yes the 3050 3060 seems decent for all the older i7 computers all the way back to first gen i7-870 or the Xeon equivalent. The 3060 is number one in the world rite now on the Steam Hardware Charts.
7:22 no, you wouldn't be able to stream with the RX 6400. However, if you were to enable the built-in Intel graphics, just for the QSV encoder, by using a null monitor cable or just simply attaching a VGA cable to your monitor, and disabling the output in display properties, then you would have enough for QuickSync to work as your encoder. You could stream with that, although it would require a bus transfer from the GPU's framebuffer to the CPU in order to encode a stream, hence a slight performance hit. I have personally streamed video this way with OBS, a GT 1030 (which also lacks an encoder) and i5-4590 (on a Dell Optiplex 3020 SFF, LOL) so I can confirm that this DOES work. Some of the earlier videos on my channel employed this method, until I upgraded my card. Certainly, this does not work as well as a GTX 1050 with NVENC, but it DOES work.
Thats a great work around and very creative. I might have tried streaming with the 6400, but would never have considered the GT 1030. Proof that if there's a will, there's a way.
@@ThatPaulGuy Why? Neither card has video compression. One is faster than the other, by a lot. But they aren't the factor. It's all about Intel QuickSync doing the encoding.
People are obsessed with doing this nonsense... if you want to do the "turn an office pc into a gaming desktop" thing, go buy an hp z420, I get these questions all day long even on ultra micros that can't take a card period.
The waters are also muddied by all of the misleading products on Amazon and eBay for a 'Gaming' PC that barely runs Rocket League or Fortnite. Cheap is not always best.
Hey relax there bud… I like Paul’s videos. Sometimes we just chat about that is going on at the time. Whether it is long or not we all appreciate the effort.
Just got a open box 3050 6Gb for $135. No external power needed. Perfect for Optiplex build.
Thats on my list of 'have to try" 's. 135 is a great deal on it, congrats. If you don't mind a follow up on how it does, I'll be looking for it.
The RX 6600 is a pretty good, lower power option as well. The XFX model I have only pulls down about 110 watts, which is even less than the 1660 Super/Ti, which I also love for Optiplex flips. Also, it's worth mentioning that you can totally swap the power supply out with one from the XE3, which has a 6-pin PCIe connection, that can safely be adapted to an 8-pin and it has the same pinout, and will just drop right in, which is great for people that don't want fuss with modifications. I should note that it will NOT work in the 40 series as they use the same 8-pin power as the previous 20 series systems. For those than don't mind a little modding, or a little jank, an SFX PSU fits nicely in these or a Flex ATX or a GaN power supply like the HD Plex units are options as well.
I was actually thinking about getting a flex ATX to try in there.
I love the RX 6600, and its price and power, it just didn't fit in the case.
@@ThatPaulGuy Yeah, it's definitely a tight fit. I'll have to see if the XFX model would fit in the 7050 I have here. I'm pretty sure the PowerColor fighter would. I think it's the smallest RX 6600 on the market.
i cut my case with a dremel so the card fits better btw they make a higher watt psu for these models too
I'm thinking of using a flex ATX power supply with it. Did you cut the exterior of the case or the aluminum bracket on the inside that holds the HDD cages?
@@ThatPaulGuy i cut the aluminum fold out section so i could fit a larger card in. if you don't need too much juice you can use an actual dell psu, they make a 360w that is a straight swap L360EGM-00 K38XP
Not an Optiplex story, but I was recently handed down an Intel Desktop Board DH67bl with a Pentium Dual-Core. I got an i7-2600 and a GTX 960 4GB, and now it’s my XP god-tier machine that moonlights as a modern Win10 budget gamer, minus games that require AVX2.
Perfect for Steam Proton too! It’s my favorite computer amongst my collection, even with my beefier gaming rig.
For older Pre-DX9 games, I sometimes have to shave off two cores *and* limit the CPU to 1600MHz, unless I wanna hear the worst coil whine ever. I accidentally killed my old HD6870 before I realized, “Set a 300fps global frame cap, and throttle your CPU!”
Sounds like it was quite a find and a great project!
I have had quite the battles with GPU size and Optiplex. Many hard drive cages have been destroyed in the process. 😂😂😂😂
GTX 1650/1660 (and or Super) is still my favorite Optiplex low power draw bang for the buck GPU. They fit nicely and run cool. Not the best in the world but the difference is so slight that most casual users wouldn’t notice.
3050 6GB doesn't need supplemental power.
And the price is right for that type of build. Especially if you find a used one.
🙂 yes the 1660 Super is a good sweet spot, also the 2060 or 3050 or something around there in performance, the new 3050 6gb is a bus powered card and supposedly it runs close to a 1660 Super which means its a pretty strong bus powered card, not bad at all
@@MrSamadolfo 1660 was my favorite. It was like a 1060 but ran way cooler.
🙂 checkout the new bus powered 3050 6GB, supposedly it trades blows with the 1660 Super, the 1660 Super or 2060 or 3050 with an adapter is also a decent option but it depends on how many watts the oem power supply is and how many watts the motherboard is allowing the cpu to rev up to, it would be a good idea for everybody to purchase a watt meter so ur not guessing as to how many watts the computer is pulling from the wall, gives u piece of mind, i leave one on my main pc and i keep another one for testing builds
The 3050 is definitely on my list of cards to test.
I'm running a Ryzen 5 3600 with a GTX 1650 super and PC Builds says it has 0% bottleneck. True or not...don't care because it does everything I need. Take care Paul
That means 0% CPU bottleneck. Your PC will be bottlenecked by the GPU. But that does tend to work out better than pairing a GPU with an insufficient CPU. A 4th gen i7 would be unlikely to bottleneck a 1650 Super.
That's the important part. As long as it does everything you need it to do, its perfect. The 3600 and 3600x are definite go to CPUs and can handle a wide range of tasks. They also pair well with most graphics cards. I love that the 1650 doesn't need external power.
I am running the similar setup but with a 1060 6gb. Still very capable in 2024😊
🙂 i really wouldn't worry too much about bottleneck, whats more important is that the game runs without any major stutters, down the line ur probably going to upgrade ur pc parts again and again anyways
That's all that matters. I've got a 2600X (zen+) and an RX 470 4GB. So, similar _performance_ to your specs. It does everything I ask it to do, and does it quickly. No complaints. I found an RX 5700 (non-xt) on ebay for $50 bucks that I'm _learning_ to repair. I have it repaired to the point where the fans will spin and lights will come on when the system is powered on, but still no video out. Baby steps.
I've put a 4080FE in an "optiplexic" prebuilt, one of these that are externally or internally alike just with different brand marked on them from the outside,
I cut part from the front of the case to pass the GPU through, was thermally limited at first, so I put an AIO on the CPU and custom air-cooled the VRMs,
As any prebuilt with BIOS as deaf as a brick, ending up being current limited is peak of what I can attain, not much bottlenecked, good enough for me.
Cool idea, and very creative. Yeah, the BIOS of these, are definitely a drawback, with almost no options at all.
🙂 yup, some of the oem boards limit the cpu power to something really low like 25 watts which is ridiculous, so the only way to get ur i7 to run at it posted speed is to use a retail motherboard
those optiplexes have a 9.5 inch GPU clearance
I wonder how longer before the new rtx 3050 6gb becomes the go to card for OEM pc's.
I'm thinking as soon as the price on used ones sort of bottoms out, I think we'll see s lot of these in prebuilts with low wattage power supplies, both newer and older.
@@ThatPaulGuy Check out B&H Photo for them, they're selling them for MSRP so you'll need to backorder them but a good place to score a 3060 6GB
The RX6600 is an acceptable 1440p GPU but only if you can enable SAM and only draws 100W. A 4c8t CPU will work better at 1440p than 1080p. I've done my last 4c8t build (except for retro builds or the odd general utility machine). If you take a look at what is going on with upcoming hardware, it really just looks obsolete in 2024. Maybe you can get the parts to put something together and sell for $350 or so and not spend a lot on the base system but I can't so I'm not messing with that stuff anymore. I only got $350 for a 3rd gen i7/1650 rig recently and I was actually surprised to get that much at this point. I'm moving to all new builds. IDC if I only make $100 on them, it is way better than messing around with old junk. That's something I do for fun as a hobby. I don't want to do it to earn money. Even with a new build, there is always at least one thing that goes wrong. On a used parts build it could easily be half a dozen things going wrong at once. I just don't want the headache.
We're entering a period of rapid PC development and what was fine yesterday isn't fine today. If someone just wants to play esports or older AAA titles, those old parts are still usable. But not something someone is going to buy in 2024 if they know even the slightest bit about gaming PCs and want something that will last awhile for new releases.
Also, putting an RX6400 in something so old it can't even run it properly just turns a bad GPU into a horrorshow. They will perform way worse on a 7th gen intel system than on something with PCIe 4.0. Objectively way worse than any other GPU you mention because those have 3.0x8 interfaces and the 6400 has a PCIe 4.0x4 interface. A PCIe 4.0x8 GPU like the RX6600 won't incur a performance penalty in a 3.0x16 slot, which just barely has the per lane bandwidth to make it work, if you have reBAR support, that is. Without it, you lose about 15% performance. You'll lose another 15% for using PCIe 3.0. I call that throwing money down a hole. You're paying $120 for $80 worth of performance.
When next gen GPUs launch, all bets are off and you're gonna want PCIe 4.0 even for a budget GPU. The 6400 was designed as a recent gen workstation GPU with PCIe 4.0 support. It is a basic display adapter for a recent server. It is not some magic device you can use to transform an old POS Optiplex into a gaming PC. This is why it is configured the way it is.
I wouldn't build with a GPU with less than 8GB. That 6600 is fine for 1440p for now but as soon as that new Indy game launches later this year, it probably won't be anymore for new releases. I consider it a 1080p entry level GPU moving forward. I was even getting the odd VRAM warning when playing FC6 on it at 1440p. Never actually exceeded 8GB but still. Goes to show you that if a 5 year old game can use nearly 8GB at 1440p Medium, the era of the 8GB GPU is drawing to a close, not to mention 6GB GPUs. You need a 12GB GPU to run the HD texture pack on FC6. No, you can't get away with 8GB, even at 1080p. I expect GTAVI to have similar requirements if they were genuine about the trailer being all in game rendered footage. You might be playing that at 720p on an 8GB GPU.
Dragon's Dogma 2 needs at least 12 CPU threads to run at any resolution.
I'm not trying to rag on you, I am trying to give you a heads up so you don't end up with a bunch of PCs you can't sell.
I dont think the goal of anyone trying to rebuild or buy an older refurb Optiplex is to run 2024 triple A releases at 1440p.
The 6400 does have a severe limitation of its PCI bus being 4x4, but there are actually worse options, like the Arc A380 that won't even run some games, and tanks in performance with others because of the resizeable bar option. All in all, building a budget rig with 10th -12th gen lower tier cpus is almost as cost effective but the old hardware is still out there.
🙂 im rebuilding my Devils Canyon 4790K rig, I only use it now as a spare computer for a bedroom, Windows 11 works and windows updates works on it, Cyberpunk 2077 works just fine on it, im feeling for graphics card performance something between a 3050 or 3060 or equivalent should be ok for most games, anything stronger i imagine the cards usage will taper off and wont run any faster but depends on the video game in question too. But yeah I feel you. To build something super cheap and new I guess something like a ryzen 4500 6/12 and a simple b450 or a520 board would do and any cheap graphics card, you can still play alot of games with a little 750ti
@@MrSamadolfo I think my next experiment might be the 3050, well, after the Arc A380.
@@ThatPaulGuy 🙂 yes the 3050 3060 seems decent for all the older i7 computers all the way back to first gen i7-870 or the Xeon equivalent. The 3060 is number one in the world rite now on the Steam Hardware Charts.
heee heee heee, no one will get the squirrl reference :D
I did, from the UP movie right?
Only a few, lol.
7:22 no, you wouldn't be able to stream with the RX 6400. However, if you were to enable the built-in Intel graphics, just for the QSV encoder, by using a null monitor cable or just simply attaching a VGA cable to your monitor, and disabling the output in display properties, then you would have enough for QuickSync to work as your encoder. You could stream with that, although it would require a bus transfer from the GPU's framebuffer to the CPU in order to encode a stream, hence a slight performance hit. I have personally streamed video this way with OBS, a GT 1030 (which also lacks an encoder) and i5-4590 (on a Dell Optiplex 3020 SFF, LOL) so I can confirm that this DOES work. Some of the earlier videos on my channel employed this method, until I upgraded my card. Certainly, this does not work as well as a GTX 1050 with NVENC, but it DOES work.
Thats a great work around and very creative. I might have tried streaming with the 6400, but would never have considered the GT 1030. Proof that if there's a will, there's a way.
@@ThatPaulGuy Why? Neither card has video compression. One is faster than the other, by a lot. But they aren't the factor. It's all about Intel QuickSync doing the encoding.
People are obsessed with doing this nonsense... if you want to do the "turn an office pc into a gaming desktop" thing, go buy an hp z420, I get these questions all day long even on ultra micros that can't take a card period.
The waters are also muddied by all of the misleading products on Amazon and eBay for a 'Gaming' PC that barely runs Rocket League or Fortnite. Cheap is not always best.
@@ThatPaulGuy oh god... I want to destroy every GT 710
@@dragonsystems5973 and every 1030 with DDR4 instead of DDR5.
I have a 1660ti
It was painful to watch the entire video. We don't have that much time to waste for nothing! You could have said all that useless stuff in one minute!
Hey relax there bud… I like Paul’s videos. Sometimes we just chat about that is going on at the time. Whether it is long or not we all appreciate the effort.