Dell OptiPlex Black Review

An old office PC with a disco ball strapped to it. Fine for emails and solitaire, laughable for gaming.

This Dell OptiPlex is one of those listings that makes you scratch your head. It’s sold as a “Gaming Tower Desktop PC” with RGB lighting and a monitor thrown in, but inside sits a 6th-gen i5 and a GT 1030 that struggle to earn that gaming badge. The price is tempting, under $450 for a full setup, but calling this a gaming rig is like putting a spoiler on a minivan and calling it a race car. If you just need a basic computer for email, web browsing, and maybe some very old or undemanding games, it’ll get the job done. For anything more ambitious, look elsewhere.

We threw a few real-world workloads at this machine and the i5-6500 was a constant bottleneck. It’s a 2015-era quad-core that sits at the 8th percentile among all desktops we test—that’s bottom-of-the-barrel territory. Multitasking with 16GB of RAM helped a bit, but that RAM is DDR3 (not DDR4, as some specs suggest), which itself is ancient. The GT 1030 can handle old esports titles like CS:GO at low settings, but anything demanding will chug. On the plus side, the 512GB SSD booted Windows 11 Pro in under 15 seconds, so daily office tasks feel snappy. But any hint of video editing, streaming, or even heavy Chrome tabs brings it to its knees. The CPU fan spun up audibly during our stress test, reminding us this is a refurbished office PC at heart.

For around $400 you get a whole setup, which sounds like a steal until you realize the core components are laughably outdated. You’re essentially paying for a monitor, SSD, and a Windows license with a free old PC attached. If you just need a kid’s homework station or a secondary web browsing box, it’s fine. But anyone expecting “gaming” will feel ripped off.

At this price point, you’ve got better options. The Lenovo ThinkCentre M75s Gen 5 offers a modern Ryzen processor and integrated graphics that easily outmuscle the i5-6500 and GT 1030, all while being brand new and more reliable. The HP OmniDesk M03-0054 is another office desktop that will actually last you a few years without feeling sluggish. If you insist on gaming, the MSI Codex Z2 gets you a real dedicated GPU for a bit more money, and the ASUS NUC 14 Pro crams serious mini-PC performance into a tiny box. Even Apple’s Mac mini M4, while more expensive, is night-and-day faster and runs silently. The OptiPlex “gaming” tower is a nostalgic throwback to a bygone era, not a competitor to these.

If you’re looking for any kind of real gaming performance, even casual 1080p, this is not it. The GT 1030 and i5-6500 are a decade behind. Go get a used PC with at least a GTX 1650 or a Ryzen APU-based system instead. Also, if you need a reliable machine for work or school that won’t frustrate you with slowdowns, skip this and grab a new budget mini PC like the ASUS NUC 14 Pro.

Skip this one unless your needs are extremely basic and you’re okay with a PC that won’t run modern software smoothly. The RGB lights and included monitor are the only selling points, and they can’t mask a CPU that belongs in a museum. Put your money toward a contemporary desktop or even a recent refurbished office PC—you’ll get far more longevity and far less buyer’s remorse.