Dell OptiPlex 5060 Review

The OptiPlex 5060 SFF is a killer deal for basic office work if you find it around $300. You get a capable i7, tons of ports, and a clean Windows 11 Pro install—but the OS version in the listing doesn't always match reality. Don't buy this if you need any kind of GPU horsepower or plan to spend more than $350.

The OptiPlex 5060 is a refurb office PC that knows exactly what it is. It's a small, quiet box with an 8th-gen i7-8700, 32GB of DDR4, and a 1TB NVMe SSD. For email, spreadsheets, and a dozen browser tabs, it's quick enough that you won't feel like you're using a six-year-old machine. And with a pile of USB ports plus DisplayPort and HDMI, you can hook up your monitors and peripherals without a dongle graveyard. But the spec sheets and actual listings can be a mess. Some buyers get Windows 11 Pro, others find themselves stuck with 11 Home. The included Wi-Fi is a tiny USB dongle, not built-in. When everything matches the listing, you get a clean, capable workhorse that hides its age well.

The i7-8700 sits at a modest 28th percentile in our database, so don't expect it to keep up with modern chips. For everyday office apps, though, it's plenty snappy. The integrated UHD 630 graphics are one of the weakest we've seen for anything beyond YouTube, landing in the 32nd percentile. File copies and boot times fly thanks to the NVMe SSD, and 32GB of RAM is overkill for basic tasks but means you won't run out of headroom. If you try to game or edit 4K video, you'll hit a wall fast. But for Outlook, Chrome, and Slack, it's a surprisingly smooth ride.

Price spans a wild $305 gap across vendors, from $295 to $600. At the low end, this is a steal for a turnkey Windows machine with a warranty and fresh SSD. But if you pay anything close to $600, you're doing it wrong. For that much, you can grab a much newer mini PC with a modern APU that destroys this old i7 in every benchmark. Stick to retailers around the $300 mark and you'll get a lot of bang for your buck.

Next to something like the GMKtec K12 or Minisforum UM760 Slim, the OptiPlex gets smoked on raw CPU and GPU power. Those boxes pack newer Ryzen chips with Radeon graphics that can actually handle light gaming. But they cost $400 and up, and they skimp on ports. The HP OmniDesk M03-0054 is a more direct competitor, but it's often pricier with similar aging hardware. The Apple Mac mini M4 is in another universe performance-wise, but it's $599 and runs macOS. If you just need a pile of USB-A ports, Windows, and don't care about a lick of GPU performance, the Dell holds its own as a budget bruiser.

Skip this if you need to run anything beyond browser-based tools and Office. The integrated UHD Graphics 630 can't handle games, 3D modeling, or even smooth 4K video editing. If you work with large data sets or do heavy multitasking, a newer 12th-gen Intel or Ryzen mini PC will run circles around this old chip for about the same money.

This is the ultimate no-frills office companion. If your workload is spreadsheets, email, and maybe a little light photo editing, the OptiPlex 5060 at $295 is a fantastic deal. It's compact, quiet, and comes with the port selection that modern mini PCs often ditch. But if you have even a hint of creative or gaming ambition, walk away. And absolutely triple-check that you're getting Windows 11 Pro before you click buy.