Anyone have one Dell OptiPlex 990

Smart86 · Jan 17, 2016

Palladin said: ↑

I was considering the same purchase when I wanted to upgrade my trusty Dell 530 last year. The one thing that I wanted in a new system was support for USB 3.0 because trying to copy any large files became agony with USB 2.0. I figured the 10x performance was pretty much marketing hype, but any improvement would be welcome.

Then I come to find out that Windows 7 doesn't natively support UBS 3.0 so I was really annoyed. But I was assured by Dell that the Inspiron 3000 series of computers had hardware support for USB 3.0 and Intel supplied the drivers. I was skeptical at first, but a little searching calmed my fears.

I ended up getting the Inspiron 3000 i5 and I can report that the USB 3.0 support works just fine. So what's the big deal with USB 3.0 you might ask. My backup partition with data files, and software is about 80GB and once a week I like to copy it to an external drive. With USB 3.0 it takes 20 minutes, with USB 2.0 it took over 2 hours, and it was easier to remove the drive from the enclosure, and connect it to the system bus and use Acronis to image the internal drive to the USB drive, and then put it back in the case. Somewhat of a PITA but I was used to doing it that way.

If you get a USB 3.0 flash drive the performance is as if you had the drive connected to the system bus. I get about 5GB/min transfer for multi gig transfers and 7-8GB/min for just a few files. The downside is that you will have to get all new USB 3.0 cables, new Flash Drives, and a new USB 3.0 enclosure if you want to have an external drive. And if you get a Dell 3000 like I did, you will be disappointed it the fact that Dell didn't put any of the USB 3.0 ports on the front panel, and you only get 2 on the rear panel so you have to fumble to insert the flash drive and/or the external cable.

To solve that problem I got a USB 3.0 Male/Female cable along with the standard Male/Male cable so I can plug in the USB 3.0 flash drive without having to fumble around at the back of the case. And While I was at it, I assembled a System Bus extension cable, so when I want to image/clone my internal drive to a backup drive, I don't have to open the case to attach the cables.

As the old saying goes..."If it's worth doing, it's worth over-doing"

If you don't do any large file transfers, then USB 2.0 will be fine, but for my setup it's been worth the upgrade. And you can save yourself some money not having to upgrade cables and enclosures.

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Thank you for your input but in my case I wouldn't be using the usb ports, well only for wireless mouse/keyboard. I'm just planning to stream movies / tv shows off the net . Also, I like using those cloud services like Mega and OneDrive for storing, it much safer I find than flash sticks or HDDs

sebus · Jan 17, 2016

Get yourself Raspberry Pi, it has HDMI already build in

Smart86 · Jan 17, 2016

sebus said: ↑

Get yourself Raspberry Pi, it has HDMI already build in
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But that would require me to understand linux, yes, if so? no thanks, I'm having hard enough time teaching the wife windows lol ...

sebus · Jan 17, 2016

Not at all, with Openelec it is appliance, like tv, satellite, freeview etc

Smart86 · Jan 17, 2016

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Anyone have one Dell OptiPlex 990

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