DELL Desktop PC 990 Intel Core i5 2nd Gen 2400 (3.10 GHz) 8 GB DDR3 320 GB HDD Intel HD Graphics 2000 Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Pros: This CPU is awesome with 4 physical cores (no logical cores). The CPU fan and system fan that came with it work great. Set fan at 100% in bios. According to RealTemp temperature has not gotten above 49 degrees C and that’s while playing Skyrim on Ultra High Settings for about 5-6 hours non stop.

Cons: Broken on arrival. Did not meet Microsoft refurbished guidelines. Would power off and screens would have static and random colors and lines, nothing wrong with the different monitors tested on this system. Turns out wrong type of RAM was installed, not even appropriate for this motherboard. Now has 4GB RAM as that’s all I can afford till next month. Also came with a rootkit virus infection. Was able to remove malicious files but some windows system files were not found on system after that which are needed for windows update. It does have a recovery partition but that didn’t work either. Complete OS reinstall needed in order to work properly. I’m the one doing the refurbishing.

Overall Review: Installed a MSI nviida GTX 750 Ti (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127783) and as this card does not have or need a 6-pin plug for power from the power supply I installed a EVGA 400 watt power supply. Recommend getting 90 degree SATA cables as any gamming GPU is going to go over the SATA ports on the motherboard. Hours of Skyrim at Ultra High settings and the GPU never got above 26 degrees C according to log. It works because I fixed it. Edit: But I did spend less money than on a comparable retail system overall.

Pros: I have 2 of these 990’s and a 790 both pretty much the same except the 990 has RAID option, all 3 have i5-2400’s, 1 I put an Amd R7 360 with a Thermaltake 600w power supply and boy does it run nice playing wvery Steam game in my library including, Skyrim, Shadow of Mordor, MK X, etc with no problems. Another 990 has an Amd 6350 and also runs games well. the mother boards will support up to 16gb ddr3 ram, but d9nt count on overclocking the ram or cpu, which doesnt seem needed at all. my third is for beat making which i do as a hobby and it works excellent. love the processing power to proce ratio, jist think about it, go to to your local big box or staples, best buy and compare specs overall, not even close in comparison for the price, the 990 is an optiplex pc used for business originally but can be converted for other uses such as gaming. Im a certified technition and proud to say even though dell has had there ups and down due to its choices on some products(bad caps on old opti’s) this series seems to amaze me even over the HP 400/800 series.

Cons: Not much of a con but i dont think newegg has up to date bios, if you notice lag on startup or video card problems try updating, you may have a revised A06, dell has the A19 out but you cant just update directly, first you need revised A10 then you can shoot straight up to A19, which can easily be done at there website, i suggest manually installing, dont let them auto update, this fixed one of my 990 on startup it would hang forever and make it seem like an cpu or some kind of hardware failure due to the fact that the number led lights would show as if it was in fact hardware but it is not, dont be fooled thinking you have bad pc just need the bios update. This be the only reason i had to take an egg off and trust me it was hard to do,lol.

Pros: So far I can do everything I want to do. I like the fact this refurbished unit comes with WIN7. Otherwise I would have had to do some ugly SSD swapping.

Cons: Other than the 4.5 inch PSU limitation, I have had none, and as you are going to see even that was not an issue.

Overall Review: I had also purchased a Corsair CX750M along with this unit since I knew it only came with a 265W PSU. But I had not realized at the time that the case has a limit of a 4.5 inch PSU. I did some looking around on the net and there were suggestions to chop part of the latching mechanism off. There was no way I wanted to do that. But on examining the plastic part that makes up the latching mechanism, I saw there was a hold back latch. Too remove it, I would also have to unclip the hold back spring. I was able to unclip the spring using 2 small Kobalt augers (one hook shaped). Then the hold back latch was easy enough to push down. Once I had the plastic mechanism out the PSU slid in nicely. I didnt bolt it in until I had the plastic mechanism back in place. Once again the 2 Kobalt augers (little pin screwdriver like things) helped me reconnect the spring. Then I bolted the PSU in place. Of course it will be permanently pushing back the little metal clip that is supposed to hold on to the back of the PSU, but for that I dont care. Even though the PSU is six inches, it still does not interfere with the actual operation of the latching mechanism, so I am happy. I just wrote this in case anyone else has the same situation.

Pros: This is a very fast multi-core processor for a very low price. There is also loads of room inside the case for expansion cards of all types. The only reason I subtracted a star is because of Intell inside. You see, many many moons ago I switched to AMD EXCLUSIVELY! But this was a deal that I just could not pass up. I did check “some” of the processor specs before I bought it, but I NEVER DREAMED that Intell would have the Houtsap to name a 4 core processor and I5. Now I must admit I would have bought this unit anyway, 4 cores certainly met my requirements… but Come On Guys!!!!

Cons: No real “Cons” for this desktop. Don’t expect USB 3.0 or SATA 6 on the motherboard, but it does have PLENTY of USB 2.0 ports and excellent performance.

Overall Review: I would recommend this to almost anyone. No issues activating the onboard Windows 7 at all (a big reason for my purchase). I did shift over to an SSD just to give it a little more UMPF, but it ran nicely on the included HDD. Now there for backup.