Dell Precision T1650 Tower Workstation Business Desktop Computer, Intel Quad-Core i7-3770 up to 3.90 GHz, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, DVD, WiFi, USB 3.0, Windows 10 Professional (Renewed)

“Refurbished” Isn’t a Bad Thing!
So Microsoft was ending its support of Windows 7, perhaps one of its most-durable and stable OSes since Windows NT. My problem was that I didn’t want to give up Windows 7, so I decided I would take my Win7 machine off the internet and invest in a “new” PC.First, I had considered building my own PC from the ground up. Not necessarily a difficult task, but more challenging now than it used to be as one needs to consider a wider range of technologies as PCs have evolved. (My PC building skills date back to the “USB-is-the-next-great-thing-coming-to-PCs” and Windows 95 days…) Once I had finally figured out the basic CPU/Motherboard combo, power supply, RAM quantity, internal storage, and OS I wanted, I was looking at a rather substantial sum of money… I have always been a fan of the full-tower and mid-tower profiles due to expansion options and more open airflow, even back in the day when CPUs didn’t need heat sinks or fans, and nowadays the possibilities from most suppliers focus on glass sides and RGB lighting/fans, which are features that I do not want or need. I don’t need to show off the innards of my computer or have flashy lighting, I just need it to sit there and perform.Next, I had considered looking for new PCs that had similar hardware as my ideal basic build. One look at the price, and I was done with that. Plus, they had the tower cases I specifically DIDN’T want with the aforementioned glass sides and RGB lighting.Then, I decided a refurbished model might fit the bill for me. After almost a month of back-and-forth decisions between models with slightly different specifications (and trying to untangle the clock speed/core count/multithread pros and cons), I finally chose the Dell Precision Workstation T1650. While many buyers may scoff at purchasing a machine that likely spent most of its life in a cubicle surfing Facebook in-between Excel spreadsheets, past experience with refurbished PCs has proven to me that Workstation-class machines are more durable than their home-user Desktop variants. Plus, the Workstation variant is a tower case, without peek-a-boo panels and flashy color-changing hoo-hah, just the Basic Metal Box I wanted my computer to be.The T1650 features an Intel i7 Quad-Core with Hyperthreading. For those who don’t know, this means basically that there are four mini-processors that can each perform two functions simultaneously. Computer programs that are written to take advantage of this technology “see” eight mini-processors, meaning that although this is an older processor, it can still pack a punch when it comes to many tasks.For instance, I am able to render a 1080p video at 60 fps while watching a YouTube video in 1080p at 60 fps without a glitch or a stutter in the finished video OR the playback from YouTube. Even after an hour of continuous rendering and YouTube watching, the CPU fan and the front case fan both spin at their normal “idle” speed, which means the machine isn’t even breaking a sweat. Frankly, that surprised the heck out of me, because I expected it to run much hotter under a load like that.When my particular machine arrived, it was packed well. The included power cord was shorter than the standard length, but that was of no concern to me as I have way too many extra power cords begging to be used. Having seen videos on YouTube about Walmart’s Gaming PCs being shoddily-assembled and wanting to make 100% sure everything was good-to-go after shipping, I opened the case before use.The tech from StallionTech that refurbished my particular machine did an OUTSTANDING job, as I was really hard-pressed to find anything to nitpick over. One tiny little dust bunny, barely visible, stuck between two fins on the CPU heat sink, virtually invisible unless you held the blades of the CPU fan in-between “notches” and looked in at a weird angle with your tongue stuck out juuuust so. One tiny little bit of “encouragement” from a plastic zip-tie and it was gone. AGAIN, I AM NITPICKING HERE, the tech really did get the inside 99.99% clean! I spent quite a bit of time remarking to myself how clean the machine truly was, the job was FAR BEYOND expectations! I could tell the front panel had been removed properly for cleaning behind it and reassembled perfectly, he or she really did take the time to get everything perfect down to the detail. I really REALLY had to work hard to find anything to be critical of, and this tiny little bit of fluff was all I could find.That, and the CMOS battery is dead, which to me is no big deal because, like the power cords, I have a few CR2032 batteries kicking around waiting to be used. It did cause a bit of confusion as I had to learn quickly about UEFI and Legacy BIOS settings to get my machine to boot to Windows 10. But hey, I learned something!I’ve had my PC running for almost two months now, and it’s been running flawlessly. It sits a little over a foot away, gently humming as the fans spin at their lowest speed. It’s a very quiet machine, quieter at idle than my laptop, quieter than my laptop cooling pad, even when the CD-ROM spins up you only hear the CD drive, no chassis noise. That’s something I’ve noticed with Dell’s Workstations, they’re designed to run quietly. Makes sense, can you imagine, in an office building, two dozen or more cubicles with noisy towers?If you do your own upgrades/maintenance, you’ll love the convenient latch on the left side that gets you inside in seconds. The front panel features your usual Headphone/Mic jacks, 2x USB 2.0, 2x USB 3.0, and that stylish diamond-shape grill covering the case’s air inlet fan. On the back, you’ve got 2 PS/2 ports for mouse and keyboard (backwards-compatibility for legacy devices), 4x USB 2.0, 2x USB 3.0, Audio In & Out, DB-9 Serial Port, 2x DisplayPort (I needed a DisplayPort-to-HDMI cable to use my HDTV as a monitor), VGA Port, Gigabit Ethernet. That’s a pretty full range of connection options!The seller included a generic USB WiFi 802.11N dongle, but I removed it upon arrival because I’m using Ethernet and have no need for it.Once I got the UEFI/BIOS thing squared away, the machine booted right up, asked me for my Microsoft login credentials (I have an account from a Windows 8.1 desktop), and Windows 10 activated itself. Haven’t had a problem since, the machine works and works flawlessly, and did I mention how quiet it was? Very happy with this desktop, worth every penny I paid!

A cheap start
My main PC was an old HP with a I5 3330 in it. Not a barn burner by any stretch of the imagination, but it still runs the games I want to play. I was thinking replacing the 3330 with a 3770 would make it an even better gaming PC — but finding a good used 3770 is still usually over $120 – and you’ll have a 3330 sitting there doing nothing. I saw this and figured for $50 more, I get what I was looking for, and still have a working machine to use for recoding videos while I kill wastelanders.Yeah – now the reason for the 3 starts on gaming — Part of the reason why the old 3330 still handles games OK is the RX570 video card in it. I was looking forward to putting that in a machine with a 3770 and stepping up my game. It wouldn’t fit. If you buy this to make a cheap gaming rig out of, make sure your video card isn’t too long (2 fans are a no no in this case). Fortunately I had a GTX 1050 sitting in another machine that fit just fine in the Dell. The CPU difference equals an almost 500 point better score in the Passmark benchmarks.It came with 8 Gig of ram in 4 DIMMs — When I get c chance, I’ll replace 2 of those with at least a 4 to help things out.Packing was an adventure — it came in a very large box. The CPU was secured in that injectable foam packaging that unfortunately seeped through the plastic meant to separate the 2 halves, leaving me to cut my way through the foam to get at the PC. Inside was the unit, a power cord, ans a tiny USB WiFi dongle.I may yet decide to swap the CPU’s in the two PCs so I can use my best video card with my best CPU. I’ll have to wait and see.Update 2/25/21: I updated the 1050 to a 1650 Super – fit like a charm and runs stuff twice as fast, so it’s a really nice upgrade if you can find one at a reasonable price (good luck). After a lot of reading documentation, I decided that my plan to upgrade the memory to 2-2Gb and 2-4gb sticks probably wouldn’t work, do I just bought 4 – 4Gb sticks. Worked fine (note, if you have this running a Xeon and using ECC memory you can go to 32Gb – go figure). Also, the cost is now $70 more than when I bought it. I guess it’s not just graphics cards suffering from price hikes).