Were they that bad?? Exploring some e-waste 'Entry Level' PCs... 

i really like when people give mundane machines like these the time of day. things that aren't high powered or rare, or are in the awkward spot between just being old and being retro. good video 👍

I remember web browsing being the biggest reason entry level systems were so derided, plus companies selling them with bare minimum specs, like Vista with 512MB RAM.

I have a soft spot for entry level machines. They are the machines we used back in the day, and likely the ones we had our first computer experiences on. They also make good canvases for later upgrades.

I used to build sleeper PCs out of those Dells, since there were a ton of Dimension 2400s and similar models that people would just give me for free back in the early 2010s. The cases were constructed very solidly, although the front I/O stuff needed to be rewired and the fan replaced if a case fan was desired. Despite that, a relatively modern mATX board would drop right in. Lately, though, I've been trying to preserve any that I come across. I have a 2400 that's bone stock other than the RAM being upgraded, even still has the factory install of Windows XP on the original drive. Other than installing a Pentium 4 as an upgrade, I'm going to keep it as-is.

Thing with Dell’s of that age, especially the 530, replacing the CMOS battery will do wonders. I have a few Dells from that era and that has always done the trick.

I used to work at the University of Iowa surplus, they were getting Dell Optiplexes -- I think this Dimension is like a Optiplex GX240 or possibly GX260 equivalent or so. I probably personally refurbed like 10,000 of these things. (The main difference on the Optiplex was Dell would guarantee fixed hardware for some number of years, so places like the University hospital who wanted to make an image and just keep using it.) I mean, they were solid and reliable, and did have PCI slots in them (and later on PCIe) so you could pop in cards if you wanted. I will note regarding the video -- the BIOS says 1MB, but that's just what you get preallocated so if you were running DOS or had no video driver it'd show up as a 1MB card. Both Linux and Windows, the 865G driver would give it up to 128MB on demand. The 3D was slow as hell on them though even for the time. In modern era, this GPU is too old to have gotten ported to Linux "Gallium" -- barely. Mesa Gallium's Crocus driver actually supports back through the 965 and GM45 still (4th gen Intel GPU) while this 865G is 2nd gen. "Mesa Amber" has the old driver that does support 865G still, but (at least on a Core 2 Quad my Dad was running until recently with a 3rd gen Intel GPU) the GPU was actually slow enough that leaving Amber off and letting it do software rendering was actually faster than having the GPU do any 3D (luckily, he was not trying to run anything 3D on it and the 2D and video scaling and whatever compositing support a modern desktop might use all run fine even on modern Ubuntu. He even ran Zoom conferences on it -- CPU and power usage were brutal, 200% CPU usage and it's a 110W chip so it was sucking down like 50W+ just running Zoom... but it did run smooth. He now has a Coffee Lake so it's sucking down about 1/20th the power now.)

I used to have a similar HP (bought refurbished @ Staples in Canada) to the 1 in this video however mine had a i5-3470 CPU, 12 GB DDR3 1600mhz RAM, 128GB SSD & a 2TB HDD. I added a MSI 1050 ti (4GB) low profile GPU, upgraded the RAM to 16GB, upgraded the ssd to a 500GB to play light e-sports on & took the HDD right out. Mine also never came with a sd card reader but really didn't need it anyway. It worked quite well for a while 'til I sold it a couple years ago & bought a full on Gaming Pre-built PC.

i used to have a dell dimension 4400 with a 1.4 ghz pentium 4 and some amount of RDRAM... it was my tradition to have pcs with hard to source ram. my first pc had hard to source non-parity edo ram in the time of sdram. and then i had this dell with rdram in the time of ddr. but the dell did have a 4x agp slot, which i did populate with a radeon 9550. i played san andreas on that dell... or maybe i started there and then got a cheap hp pavilion with an athlon 64x2. it's all a blur.

This video is right up my alley, because I love entry-level prebuilt pc's (and have a few myself). And yes, you hit the nail on the head; different machines for different needs. Grandma didn't need a blazing-fast processor and hot rod graphics, she just needed the ability to do stuff like email, pay bills online, etc. I love the case on the HP--I'm a sucker for piano-black finishes lol This was a fun video, thanks

I have and still use a Dell Inspiron 530 for messing around with Windows Vista. The only upgrade I did with it was upgrading the RAM from 1 GB to 4 GB. That made a big difference in the performance.

These PC's were designed to sell fast and burn out faster. In the Tech community HP stood for Horrible Products even hough they were just ok. Usually the only part still working in these designs was the CPU, the MB, PSU and Ram usually the first to go and all together in most cases. These were heat boxes and while the CPU had cooling the MB VRMS and other components often slowly cooked to death. These were the bread and butter for Techs back in the day and these PC's kept steaks on the table to the unfortunate experience of the owner. I still have a stack of old working parts from these units and a few cases as well. Even made a retro build from one using an nVidia 550ti lol. Great look back, these were very basic but did serve a niche part of the market.

I grew up with entry level systems back in the 2000s and I've never had a problem with them. My main PC during that era was a Gateway 310 S (I still have it, too) and I played a ton of games on it without a GPU, browsed many websites (including classic RU-vid), and messed around with various software and it still served me well.

I picked up a Dimension 2400 for $200 in a clearance sale from Dell Small Business. It had a 40gb drive and 256mb. I couldn't upgrade the video card because it lacked an AGP slot soldered on the board. I added more memory and used it as a headless games server and to learn linux with.

System Nr. 2 properly needs a new CPU. I had a similar computer showing the same behaviour. After replacing CPU it came back to life.

The Dell Inspiron 530 Power Supply is the Bestec, one of the worst power supplies that can make the computer not work, it is one of my power supplies i hated, i recommend getting the different branded power supply that is compatible with the motherboard on this computer as a replacement and hopefully it'll work again.

Ahh man, this brings back memories. Back when I first got into computers, I had PC number 2 here. An identical (albeit later model) Dell Inspiron 530 with like... A roll of toilet paper for a graphics card. It was curbside-rescue; I slapped a 2TB hard disk drive in it and installed Windows 7 Ultimate on it. It hardly ran most games AT ALL, but I played the crap out of them anyway until that thing died from -- big shock (quite literally) -- a PSU failure in 2018.

Honestly I feel like upgrading is a mindset that gets compulsory and never ends so Also I look to see when others do builds with the low minimum or a few updates to see what they used like what games and what os, in the end it's all part of the user personality. For example I never saw much videos of using os2 along with dos for retrogaming and stuff. Or some people choose windows me or 2000

That first machine was indeed everywhere back in the mid 2000s. It was an okay web browsing machine.

I used an Inspiron 530 for years. I bought it from the Dell Outlet as a return, I picked on with a Core2quad, 256MB or RAM and IIRC a 240GB HDD. I immediately upgraded the RAM and added a 500GB HDD I already had. Eventually I did add an AGP Video card but have no idea what it was. It really a workhorse of a PC. I believe at one point I Had to replace the PSU, but back then a standard PSU worked.

I have four of the second system cases in all black instead of grey and white. The I/O area is proprietary for one motherboard layout; a half-hour of careful Dremel'ing and filing fixed that problem. Socket 775 is nostalgic so three systems now have q6600's, 4GB DDR2-800 and a mix whatever old gpus I've kept. If your looking for gpu's, those scam 1050ti's (actually GTS 450's) work quite well for WinXP sibling LAN partying.

I used to rebuild towers and sell them at the flea market. I would put Linux and load them with games and apps to have everything. That middle pc from Dell was one of my best sellers. My Debian based machines would get so many compliments. No complaints and every app I'd add links to RU-vid videos on how to use them. Yeah those machines were awesome.

The Pentium 4 Dell Dimension was our family computer in the 00's! It was replaced by a newer Dell with an AMD Athlon in 2010, then a Dell with a 7th gen Core i5 and a terribly slow HDD in 2017. In 2021, I re-used the case from the 2010 Dell to build a new PC for my parents with an AMD Ryzen 5600G.

Awesome retro PC video!😊

The Dimension 2400/3000 was truly a solid little unit from Dell. The downside was a lack of an AGP slot. I had to rebuild a few of them, using retail Intel desktop motherboards. All the pins lined up perfectly, seeing that the Dimension 2400/3000 was using a stripped down variant of an Intel desktop motherboard.

that inspiron 531 still my daily driver, that celeron chip holds up like a tank and runs w11

Ive still got an old dimension 8100 still workd to this day. The date inside i believe is july 2001 spent many a nights msning and downloading on it as a kid. Its got a really cool case design a bitton thr front and the side hinges upwards to lift away and then the power supply is on a actual hinge so swings out to allow access. Im guessing it was a more mid range pc had a upgraded sound card aswell. Bought off a friend whos family werent short for money and were musical i believe had a studio in the basement so im guessing this maybe what the pc was originally for.

love those dell dimension p4 's great chassis , great for retro computing , solidly built , still have two working examples.

My first PC ran windows ME or as I called it More Errors! It had a CD rewriter and a floppy disc with a 40Gb HDD which for the time was a large capacity.

To be honest that HP is running slow, because avast is on it, Win 10 doesn't help also and those A4 are kinda slow now a days so, good video !

a 2004 pentium 4 dell dimension in one of those purple cases was my first computer i ever owned myself, i played so much neverwinter nights on that thing

Nice to see these. I must have at least a dozen of the old Dell Dimension series of systems. Nobody wanted them in the past.

MS deciding to kill Win-7 was the best thing that happened to me.. it put me onto Linux and I've never looked back

My grandma had one of those Dimensions, I had one of those Inspirons (and earlier a BTX Dimension E510) and the frustrating part for me was always how close they were to being completely standard mATX machines and yet how far -- the Dimensions had the cooler brackets in the case metal, both had non-standard front panel connectors and pinouts, but both were otherwise completely normal. You could swap the power supply fairly easily -- good thing, because you would when they went pop and you'd be praying they didn't take the boards with them.

Another excellent vid👍🏼👍🏼

glad to see you're back again and I have some fond memories of the dell dimension 2400. I upgraded it over the years to have a SoundBlaster Audigy 2, 2gb of DDR Ram, 200gb and 80GB HDD, DVD/CD-RW drive & a floppy drive/bracket from a similar model while working at good will. The only issue I ran into using this computer was the lack of of an AGP slot and the weak onboard intel chipset. Granted it was good for dos, 90's gaming but anything pass 2002 pushed it way too hard. Edit: Oh yeah that's not a stock PSU for that dell, it wouldn't have switch or SATA ports at all, it must've been replaced because the OEM went out over it's life.

The best one is the silver dell inspiron 530. That thing has been amazing since I bought it in 2008 and with upgrades it’s still in use to this day running windows 11 hooked up to my TV.

You said you thought the third system had a BTX motherboard but it doesn’t, it’s just upside down. If it was a BTX motherboard the expansion slots would still be at the bottom. In the first Dell, the Cooler Master PSU is definitely a replacement because the cables are too long and Dell would not put in a PSU with an 8 pin CPU power connector for this motherboard.

Ugh, another video with Dull's...I mean Dell's? Just kidding 😊 Amazing video as usual dude! ❤

It's interesting, the Hhgregg I used to work at almost certainly sold that model of HP. I probably handled several dozen of them working in the stockroom. I also bought a HP laptop from the store using my employee discount that had similar specifications but (luckily) was loaded with Windows 7. Not a bad system for what it was, and definitely leagues better than not having that integrated Radeon graphics. Lots of games would run on it, on the lowest graphics settings.

The only one of those systems that I would personally call "That bad" would be the HP, In my opinion HP hasn't made anything good since the early 2000s. Those old Dimension systems are some of my favorite desktops from the Windows XP era. I have worked on hundreds of those, and that is not an exaggeration. What always gets me is that people seem to really hate those systems, they say that they are unreliable and not upgradable, both of which are false. As far as unreliable, I have only seen 1 or 2 dead ones. As far as not being upgradable, some of the lower end models didn't have a spot for a graphics card, but you could still upgrade the CPU, RAM, and storage, and it was all standard parts. Look at lower to middle class desktops today, most of them have soldered on CPUs, and either take laptop RAM or just have soldered on RAM; some of them even run off of a laptop power supply, those are truly junk. The Inspiron 530 was also a pretty popular machine which could be configured as a lower or middle class machine. Those aren't as solid as the old Dimensions, but are by no means bad.

i have the middle inspiron 530 a mid tower version and the sff version , i ended up putting the 1156 motherboards in both of them , the dell inspiron 580 board fits in them all you have to do is put a piece of electrical tape on the io plate where the hdmi was on the original board

. . . Microsoft Windows GUI desktop stability was considered a luxury; and the support for massive items like paper clips a very valuable asset . . .

I work as office computer guy since 2005 or so. These dells were supper common. Decent price, full package, good warranty. Also very reliable/low maintenance. Worked long past expected life wo problems. As its government, these had to be destroyed/recycled. Wish I could had saved some :( Some had coppermine/tualatin, pop up front panels and board with AGP. Bit more ram, decent AGP card and it plays time appropriate games very well.

I have everything here from 1978 to 2016. No, not everything is retro yet, even if I often call it that, but it is on the way there, even if it will take a while for some machines. I don't think it's so bad if there are newer ones. The last one I have is from 2016, an A10 7890k, the fastest FM2+ model (which only offers average gaming performance, though). It's just an entry-level office platform. All the ones that came after that are based on AM4. But you're right, with Linux you can definitely continue to use the device for a few more years.

I bought the silver Inspiron new in 2006 or 2007. It had 2gb of ram. Cost almost 1,000 before tax and software. Had it a long time, it served it's purpose.

I used a Hp pavillion like #3 (A5 quad core , original 8Gb, upgraded to 16gb, replaced the hdd with an Ssd 5 years ago ) until about 2 or 3 years ago when my software was just running too slowly on it. Well built and reliable machine. Eventually I started operating it without the case for heat reasons.

I usually find it less expensive to build your own system than to buy a manufacturer's pre-built PC. But because hardware for PCs is universal, you can always upgrade components when the need arises, no matter what the manufacturer. When I build a PC, I try to future proof it to prolong the interval when games require an upgrade. Being a PC gamer, and playing current games, you need a lot of horsepower. It's an expensive, but fun hobby😁 Have a great weekend👍

Another Walmart Inspiron 530 user here. It was touch and go briefly when I wondered if it would be better to spend money on Windows 7 near the end of its life, or to upgrade to something more modern. Windows 10 was out, but was too heavy on the old mechanical HDD. I rode out Windows Vista as long as I could. Eventually SATA SSD prices made upgrading affordable, and I was able to install Windows 11 on it. I was working in I.T. at the time, and my office upgraded to Surface Pro devices, which meant that I had to follow suite in order to keep providing support. I spent $1,000 on a base model Surface Pro 4 with a dock, a thermally limited dual core, less RAM, and weaker GPU than the upgraded Inspiron 530. Personally, I found it to be a largely pointless upgrade, despite the novelty of the Surface tablet form factor. A "luxury" computing device to be sure, but poor performance to price value compared to a Walmart PC.

Hi! Great video as always :D 28:11 - The system doesn't start because you probably forgot to plug in the 4-pin connector for the CPU power. I'm only seeing 24 pin connector from other PSU. Maybe there is a reason :) Have a nice day!

That Dell Inspiron 530 holds a strong place in my heart, it was my first computer after all and is what got me started in Vintage computing. My Inspiron 530 is actually still running and I still have it, it did have the power supply issue that yours was having. So for me when my supply failed the motherboard light would come on and nothing else, same bestec supply. But after a replacement it got going again, what I'm thinking your systems problem is has to do with Ram slots, mine has always been sensitive about those I had to clean them out with rubbing alcohol to get it running again. Mine has the specs of a gtx 550 TI, 4gbs of ram, and a core 2 duo 2.66ghz, it ran games pretty well and can sometimes even run more modern titles.

At least we had installed optical drives, rather then, now, companies expect you to purchase separately as external drives.

lol, i missed my dell dimension 2400, and recently bought one for $30. Funny how at the time i wasn't the biggest fan of the case, but now i love it.

this was the exact computer i had when i was a kid!!! it looked the exact same except it was a dell dimension 2300

You can quite easily play Arena with a Pentium 1.0 Gig and higher. I remember those games quite well, as that engine was used to power the massive growth of online pc gaming RTCW, COD, HL, etc

Awesome

I don't know if you would consiger it retro but, I took a HP Pro with a I7-3770, 16GB DDR3 1600 memory, added a GTX 780 Ti, a WD Blue SSD 1TB and built a Windows XP machine with. It will run old Windows 98 games like Midtown Madness and play upto games like FEAR 2. Very cool XP build, and support Opengl hardware mode with the GTX 780 Ti. Awesome end life XP build.

#1 I had one. That Dell was a tank! Worst thing I ever did was get rid of it!

Btw, standard tech procedure is to test the power supply BEFORE starting the system... Less magic smoke that way 😁

my 2nd PC was a dell dimension 8400 and at first is was great . but just after a few years the fans went into jet engine mode. replacing gpu did nothing as it was the p4 cooking itself or rather the temperature sensor. it stopped booting properly and when it managed to post then windows struggled with bad ram as it couldn't correctly load ntldr and winlogon from hdd so I had run them from a floppy. I'm amazed it lasted 8 years. good times watching movies on my crt tv from the svideo out on gpu. maaaaaaan what a furnace it was though as my room felt like a sauna when it was on, cpu fan power connector also look burned.

So I definitely have 2 or 3 of those 1st Dells sitting in my basement on my workbench... and I agree with you, as much as I dislike Dell, some of them were randomly built like beasts. That 2nd Dell system, I had worked on quite a few back when I was a worker at the local repair shop, and we used to run into a lot of problems... it was also when Dell *supposedly* was using *bad/failed/likely-to-fail* hardware in their systems, although we usually had just issues with the HDD or the RAM. Almost always was a nightmare trying to get those assessed and fixed in a reasonable amount of time. The HP, that seems like something I would've sold when I worked at Staples in the mid-2010's... actually I'm pretty sure I did. Never had any issues with them, and it was when AMD was trying to make a big push back into the market, especially regarding affordable GPU options. All-in-all, really cool look back at the options that many of us, especially with those Dell systems, saw daily.

On the 1st pc The power supply has been replaced at some point as originally they came with dell psus and the ram was 128 when it was new so has been upgraded

They really aren't. If any could handle a decent amount of web browsing I'd say they are awesome! The silver one is my favorite due to nostalgia.

I'd definitely looking to make one of those systems into a very-high-end Windows 98 gaming PC :) Linux is very backwards compatible and I have a modern linux system, so I wouldn't need old hardware to run old linux, but that is just me, if I was giving the system to someone who just needed a browser terminal maybe....

Just put Win98 SE on a dell dimension 3000. It runs great as a 98 retro gaming setup. It would have probably struggled in XP but on 9x I'm very happy with it!

I recenty upgraded a Dell Dimension E520 from the Pentium D to the Core 2 Quad Q6600 and it is very fast with Windows 10. It can play youtube at 1080p and it only takes a few seconds to boot up since I added a SSD and 8gb RAM. Once your Inspiron 530 is up and running, you can do the same if you have the G33M03 model motherboard. It would transform it into a great modern PC to use today for any basic web task. The new CPU is only $7 on ebay so its a great deal for over 4x the performance.

I took my childhood PC, a Compaq Presario CQ5700Y, gutted it and turned it into a complete monster of a PC 😆

I saved up for months and gave dell £800 for one of those dimensions and a flat screen monitor. As much as the system worked well, when it came to adding a video card, the asshats at dell had desoldered the AGP port as a cost saving measure. Also, only discovered the front USB whilst using the flap as a handle whilst throwing it out ....

The first one reminds me of my dell optiplex gx280 I use for work 😂

Great video, those gray box Dells really are everywhere selling for dirt cheap nowadays. My first computer which was a hand me down was one of them. Now I have 3 of them in my collection haha! Still pretty good if you wanna do some retro gaming.

When we put out those Dimensions at schools we maxed out the ram, even if they didnt utilize it. I would upgrade bios and max ram.

I still have my Dimension 3000. Damned thing still works too. Used it from new until about 2015 to run CAD/CAM software and machine emulators to program CNC milling machines. Was a solid machine, though I ran Windows 2K on it rather than XP for compatibility reasons. My biggest gripe with it, was the cooling fan had an atrocious pitch to it. Thing would incessantly ramp up and down in RPM even when the system was idle. Drove me nuts. One evening after the shop had closed, I was working on a project and had enjoyed a few “adult beverages” … well, I lost my shit on that damned cooling fan. Took a 3” hole saw to the side panel and installed a 110 volt muffin fan wired in with a 12v relay to power it on with the PC. Did it stop the CPU fan from revving up and down? Nope. But I couldn’t hear it over the the 110 volt fan anymore!

psu was definatly replaced!!! i noticed sata power connectors at the bottom of the case! these computers didnt even have sata ports let alone power plugs for them!

S1 had the PSU replaced at some point. The original PSU probably went out like many of them did, at least in my experience. S2 might still be in the "capacitor plague" era, so be wary of that when you get back to that unit, even if you don't see the usual signs. S3 is in fact *not* a BTX, but an ATX that was rearranged to compete with BTX systems. It was probably a cost cutting measure in the manufacturing process.

The last desktop we ever used as the family computer was a P4 2.8Ghz HP Pavilion before we all moved over to our own laptops. That 1st Dell has all the legacy ports so that's nice for anyone who might still like to use those. I'm hoping that 2nd system doesn't have a fried chipset from that bad 5V line, cheapo PSU's can be a real issue! For the 3rd system I'm thinking Linux Mint with the Cinnamon interface, it has that familiar Windows look & feel.

Several years ago I was given a Dimension 3000. I cleaned it up and bumped up the RAM and my wife used it happily for a few years.

that last case is not btx. it's just an inverted atx case which you can still go out and buy new. it's a useful configuration if you have the left side of your case resting right against a wall

turned around matx on the hp , btx would have the i.o still on top but gpu slots down and cpu further in the front

always nice to see these older machines of yesteryear end up on your bench. Also, is it me or did you upgrade your audio setup?

In my older school, I had the computer at the left to play games from 2006 until 2010

I have the upgrade old computer sickness. Which is why my Inspiron 530 has 8gb ram & a quadro p400, and a 2tb evo 870... It's actually pretty usable, I just need to find a Q9550S that's real and not $lolprice and it'll be complete.

I have one of those white Dell cases myself, they look pretty slick, I don´t use it though. I would begin testing yours with a different CPU and reset the bios if possible to rule out those to begin. since it does not execute any code at all the CPU is a suspect in this matter. that system would probably be possible to overclock but since it is a Dell it will be locked for that but it should be possible with the tape mod on the cpu instead if you get it running again

I would like to get one of these cases and do a sleeper build but I'm just worried about the atrocious air flow

I have had all 3 Dimension 3000 with 52-32-12 CDRWwith a Celeron 3ghz Inspiron 530 with ubuntu and the last one well I still have

I have a Dell Dimension 3000 that had a Celeron. I eventually upgraded it to a 3.0GHz P4 HT. Maxed out the ram and put the best GPU I could in in it. I want to say it's a 256MB GeForce 6200PCI. it gives my Dimension 8300 a run for its money in performance.

Yeah these same exact dell I had in high School

No, no, and no. Never owned any DELL. I bought recently cheap second-hand business machines. An HP Elitedesk 8300 which has a i7-3770, it had 8Gb of RAM and I upgraded it to 32GB max. I didn't yet put my hands on a Geforce 1030 and these utilise PCIe 3.0 bus. An HP Elitdesk 6300. It had 8Gb but added the 8gb that came out of the HP 8300, total 16GB of 32GB max. Added a multicard reader and changed the dvd burner. An Lenovo thinkcenter m700 tiny. Added a 2.5" spinning disk. All these 3 system replace old ones from 2000's and they still have plenty of room for upgradings. Money... simply doesn't stretch. Old systems are now resting in the attic. Me or someone will play with them in the future. Regrading to those systems, they are ok for they were intented for. With some hardware upgrades, they will perform better at level of mid-range PCs. Cheap SSDs whenever possible will improve things and there are tons of RAM, CPU, and GFXs offers.

I have dell pentium 4 ht from 2002. I'm happy with dell. My dell comes with a gpu graphics card, and I'm going to upgrade with 2 ssds, 2 adapter from 2.5 to 3.5 to fit into the cages. 1 ssd is 128 gb for windows 98 se, and the second ssd 2tb ssd for windows xp. Windows 98 2nd is for physical media rom discs I collected over the years,and still do collect physical media rom dics

Cool

I still got my old dell optiplex 360 that i use for Older games i upgraded it to a core 2 duo and a new low profile graphics card it still works perfectly since 2008

You should show the FPS in quake3. Hit the tilde key and type /cg_drawfps 1 and hit enter. Now you have your frame rate in the corner. I can't believe I still remember all those console commands. lol

I have a AMD HP hibiscus mainboard but I want to sell it together with a hard drive with XP installed. It has 8gb installed but only 4 is visible cuz 32 bit XP. It’s the top of the line FM1 based chip so the integrated graphics is great. It also runs PCIe slots and XP likes them. Could stand to have a good dGPU but the integrated runs or launches almost everything.

The HP systems are actually great, because they use standard a standard ATX power supply, and take standard mATX motherboards. I have an 8 core Ryzen 5800x with a RX 6600 XT gpu in a HP case that originally came with a 2.00 ghz pentium dual core! The case is actually made pretty well, and has decent ventilation. I've got a be-quiet 90mm heatpipe cooler, and 90 mm case fan installed in it too. Dell however.... never use a standard connector or form factor when you could make everything just different enough to be un-repairable and un-upgradeable.

on the 2nd system, I'd suggest testing the CMOS battery and clearing it as the first step in diagnosing why it won't even POST

The little Dell was nice as everything you could upgrade

I have the third system, i put an i7 3770 cpu, a gtx 1650 and 16GB of ram and it runs pretty well.

Most all computer systems had their uses in the generations they were created and their configurations were designed and built for a specific market. Example; PC's built for the business environment were never intended nor designed to perform in other markets like engineering, scientific or gaming even though there was quite a bit of "overlap" back in the early days. Just as "server" type systems were never intended to be used in a home environment. In the late 90's, early 2000's most OEM systems were still based on the standard ATX architecture so upgradability was still pretty universal. Then came the "proprietary" system configurations that pretty much killed that. In context, these systems weren't "that bad" in the early 2000's but by today's advancements they have been rendered mostly unusable.

I don’t have much good to say about these early 2000s entry level computers. They were pretty slow (SSDs weren’t really in people’s pcs even in the mid 2000s) and even low specced Pentium 4‘s were hot and loud. I had few those and they were only pleasant to user after a fresh install of XP. They only got better over time, Core 2 was a massive step up especially for the low end, SSDs became commodity goods in the 2010s. Today, you’ve got a market full of used i5 and i7 systems that are plenty powerful and you can get stuff like mini pcs with fairly powerful laptop hardware for a couple hundred bucks at most.

Just grabbed an old case from my basement. Had a new in box Socket A Soyo Motherboard, have had it for years. Still have 2 New in box PIII Slot 1 MB's 1 Intel and 1 Tyan. Installed the Soyo an AMD Athlon, 2 256MB ram sticks. Got it booted into BIOS just need to get DOS and Windows or Linux installed this week. Had an ABIT MB and another Athlon turned it on and POP the socket fried the CPU. Though I still had 2 Athlon and 1 Sempron for Socket A. The difference between the ABIT and the Soyo is a 4 pin CPU power plug. Need a retro for old Serial and Parallel Hardware I am playing around with. My first PC was an 8088 at 12MHZ both floppies, no HD 640KB mem. Got that in 1989. That started the disease. In the last 6 months Built My desktop 2 extras, upgraded the desktop, built my Niece one for Christmas. All AMD systems.

I have a 530s with a concerning power supply that has to kinda charge up until it boots up and it does this pulsating light thing where both the front power and psu led flash

I think I have two of those in my cellar.