Dell Optiplex 780 Upgrade

I've read multiple posts that explain issues with upgrading a Dell Optiplex 780, mainly due to issues such as a low wattage power supply and low gigabytes of RAM. What I would like to know is, what limits on upgrading could be removed if I upgraded my PSU/RAM.

My original specs:

CPU Intel E8400 RAM 4 GB DDR3 Hard Drive 320 GB PSU 305W

After upgrading:

CPU Intel E8400 RAM 8-16GB DDR3 Hard Drive 1 TB PSU 430-500W

If I would need to upgrade the motherboard to support higher end graphics cards, I may be able to do so.

g____g

Posted 2017-02-08T23:11:53.770

Reputation: 51

Optiplex 780 is a small form factor (SFF) PC, it may not fit a regular-sized motherboard. I suspect that PSU is non-standard too and can't be simply replaced with an off-the-shelf unit. – gronostaj – 2017-02-08T23:15:45.523

There's also a full sized varient it seems https://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/optix/en/optiplex_780_tech_guidebook_en.pdf

– Journeyman Geek – 2017-02-08T23:17:01.097

To be honest, if you are thinking of upgrading a ~7 year old PC with a new motherboard you would probably be better off just building/buying a new PC. Regardless, https://pcpartpicker.com/list/ is quite good at checking if your selected components are compatible.

– wysiwyg – 2017-02-08T23:22:51.403

1You shouldn't need to upgrade your PSU if you are just adding ram. With regards to adding a GPU, if it doesn't have a external power connector the power supply should be fine. – Clarus – 2017-02-08T23:30:26.553

I was feeling a bit skeptical about the PSU, and I thought that I might just have to start with a fresh build. I already have a computer built on pcpartpicker, but this was just another option that I had available. The performance wouldn't be great, but it would save me some money I thought. Might just have to build my own from scratch. – g____g – 2017-02-08T23:31:34.347

If you able to shop on ebay, you can get there complete computer with i5 cpu for around $100-120 or i7 for ~250. I think it would be better investment than upgrading your current configuration, you will spend more on upgrading than you can get cheaper with much more powerful PC. Just my 2 cents... – Alex – 2017-02-08T23:36:47.763

Well, I took the grandfather's axe approach to PC building. I started with an old dell from a dumpster and gradually replaced parts. I can relate to this somewhat – Journeyman Geek – 2017-02-09T01:36:06.200

Answers

Its an older system. The benefits you'd get from a high end video card would be limited.

Lets talk bottlenecks.

If its anything like the dell 530 I've worked with in the past, it would have a PSU with only SATA connectors. Desktop model Dells of that vintage fortunately use standard ATX PSUs and upgrading those would be an option. Dell typically has 3 sizes of the same model with variable levels of upgradability so that matters.

If you're running windows 7, or even 10, get an SSD. Its the single best upgrade you can do.

I believe the most you can upgrade the system is 8gb with 4 2gb DIMMS. While there are forum posts that claim you can go up to 16gb - Its not officially supported, and if it dosen't work, well, you would need to upgrade it anyway.

Looking at the stock configuration, any modern midrange card would work great. Hot Hardware threw in a gforce 660 (which is about 4 generations old) and had a big improvement in performance. I certainly don't see the point in throwing in a real high end card, like a 1080 or Titan into such a machine. Personally I'd go for the bottom end of decent video cards, or something slightly older, like say a nvidia gforce 750 (which runs off the PCI bus - or anything ending with a 50 anyway) or the aformentioned 660.

Journeyman Geek

Posted 2017-02-08T23:11:53.770

Reputation: 119 122

The 16gb of RAM was most likely to happen if I just had spare cash to spend, so 8 was really what I was planning to get. I had no plans of buying a card that was top of the line for this machine, but do you think my best bet is with the 750ti? I've heard it come up a few times, but someone else suggested a 1050ti Mini. I don't really know if that would be a good combination though, since my processor might not be able to keep up. Any input? – g____g – 2017-02-09T23:04:00.393

For specific hardware recommendations - try the hardware recommendations stackexchange site. I tend to go nvidia mid to high end, while in your case a medium-low end card makes sense, and you could go AMD potentially – Journeyman Geek – 2017-02-10T06:32:44.703

Good advice. My tower 780 with full RAM and an SSD makes a great Windows 7 64-bit system. It gets a bit confused when you try to use the BIOS-based RAID, but other than that it is nice to get older hardware at decent prices. I run a large HDMI monitor from the Dport and occasionally add a VGA for graphic design using a Bamboo sketchpad.. The only speed bump is that the system always boots directly to the VGA before Windows loads. – SDsolar – 2017-12-07T18:37:51.380