Showerthought: The way repair shops treat old Dell Optiplexes is hilarious

I stopped into a mom and pop shop in Akron last week to grab a SATA cable, and I noticed they had a whole shelf of used Optiplex 3020s stacked up. The owner told me he sells like 15 of those a month to small offices and schools. But he also said he sees the same models come back in for stupid fixes like blown capacitors or failed PSUs after 4 years. It made me think, we techs hate on these machines for being boring, but they literally keep half the small shops in business with repeat repairs. Has anyone else noticed how many of those old Optiplexes are still crawling around in the wild?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_diana7d ago

Honestly, these things are like the cockroaches of the IT world, right? Ngl, I still have a 3020 in my garage powering a file server I'm too lazy to replace.

parkerbrown7d ago

Is yours still running the original power supply? I've heard those 3020s can last forever if you don't push them too hard. Just wondering if you've actually tested the drive health lately or if you're running on vibes alone.

wyatt_mitchell261h ago

Call it what you want but parkerbrown seems to think reliability actually matters around here.