Are these things a good buy?
www.ebay.co.uk/itm/FAST-DELL-DUAL-CORE-4-2-GHZ-4-GB-GAMING-DESKTOP-PC-WINDOWS-7-NVIDIA-GRAPHICS-/141369037102?pt=UK_Computing_DesktopPCs&hash=item20ea40512e
My five year old low spec desktop is beginning to creak a bit and rather than wait till it dies getting an upgraded replacement for a onner seems an attractive option. I'm not sure what life span I could expect from a refurbished pc, bearing in mind that when I do replace the current HP it will only be with whatever is the cheapest Currys have at that particular time.
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I wouldn't buy that particular AMD based desktop that's for sure. The description is dishonest and the spec actually quite low. It's got a dual core 2.2GHz CPU so advertised/described as 4.4GHz! And simply because it's got an old nVidia 8400GS graphics card they seem to think that's a good thing as well.
The hard disk is only 80GB as well. So how old is that then!
Last edited by: rtj70 on Sun 21 Dec 14 at 13:22
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There's Dell's own outlet:
www.dell.com/uk/dfh/p/
However, a Google search will reveal numerous retailers of refurbished Dell and other brands' desktops and laptops, such as:
www.itcsales.co.uk/
although tend to be a bit expensive...:-(
Last edited by: Stuartli on Sun 21 Dec 14 at 14:20
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>> I wouldn't buy that particular AMD based desktop that's for sure.
Yes it a pile of poo - probably no better than the one you have.
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Point taken, avoid.
I can upgrade to an SSD HD and double the memory of this PC for £105 from Crucial. Worth doing to give the thing a new lease of life?
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If I was getting an SSD again, I would again go for a Samsung device. But this time one of the newer V-NAND based 850's. It might cost you more but it will perform better and last longer.
You don't say what machine you currently have for us to say if it's worth getting an SSD and more RAM. And if the PC does not have at least SATA II for the disk interface, the SSD will be faster than the connection.
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As well as a couple of Samsungs for my system and main data disk, I am using some really old SSDs in my PC. One is solely for volatile stuff, like it's where all my downloads go and also where I've set up paging to. My PC gets used a lot - all day most work days, plus leisure stuff some evenings and weekends.
So although we all know life is more limited on older models, the limit must be pretty high. I must admit I also didn't see times greatly improve once I swapped the old SSDs for the newer Samsungs despite benchmarking showing they do perform significantly quicker.
So I don't think it's worth your average user pushing the boat our too far on price.
Last edited by: smokie on Mon 22 Dec 14 at 14:18
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The reason I mentioned the V-NAND based SSDs from Samsung is they are cheap but have decent life expectancy. And this is because of the V-NAND.
Up until Samsung brought 3D V-NAND to the market, drives were getting cheaper by shrinking the size of the cells. But the trouble with NAND based flash memory is the smaller the cells, the shorter the life expectancy before the drive will fail. They had got down to about 19nm. To boost capacity the cheaper drives also use three bit TLC cells so the voltage differences between the 8 states possible in a cell means you might have to rewrite a cell several times before it is holding the correct value.
So what is 3D V-NAND and why is it better? They have jumped back up to 40nm for cells and get the capacity by stacking the cells (hence 3D). So the process used provides for greater longevity for the flash memory.
The latest drives are actually held back my the SATA II interface (only 6Gbit/s) and SATA I is obviously slower than these drives. Hence many machines actually come with PCI Express based storage, e.g. Mac laptops. You can also get PCI Express SSDs for your desktops.
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>> Point taken, avoid.
>>
>> I can upgrade to an SSD HD and double the memory of this PC for
>> £105 from Crucial. Worth doing to give the thing a new lease of life?
Tell us the spec of your desk top?
Chances are a format and reload of windows on your existing one will probably give you a pleasant performance boost for nothing.
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Where I work we are stockpiling them up, old OptiPlexes, granted these have the WinXP licences on.
You cant give them away!
A few laptop users are using them turned round and decorated as monitor stands - seriously!
Last edited by: nice but dim on Mon 22 Dec 14 at 14:56
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>>
>> Tell us the spec of your desk top?
>>
>>
>> Chances are a format and reload of windows on your existing one will probably give
>> you a pleasant performance boost for nothing.
>>
2.4 GHz Celeron
2 Gb Ram
160 Gb HD
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How about this one? More expensive, but looks like a much better spec:
www.ebay.co.uk/itm/231419229356
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>> Intel Core 2 Quad
Still quite an old desktop PC then if it has a Core2 CPU. The first Core2 Quad CPU was released in January 2007. If this is using the process shrink to 45nm it's about a year later. So probably older than Robin's current PC. Might be a bit faster and has more RAM.
But Robin's not really told us about his PC yet. Celeron is just a brand. It has been used on various low end CPUs since 1998. It would more useful to tell us what it actually is. So try running CPU-Z:
www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html
It will tell us about the motherboard, and a whole lot more.
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>> How about this one? More expensive, but looks like a much better spec:
>> www.ebay.co.uk/itm/231419229356
>>
That looks reasonable to me, in general Dell desktops seem to cost more than other makes in this market. The 2010 vintage Core 2 duo Fujitsu I bought SWMBO for 90 quid over a year ago is still going strong, although I suspect an electrolytic will go pop at some point (also applies to Dells and anything else mind you).
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My Dell Inspiron 570 with an AMD Athlon II triple core 435 2.90Mhz CPU is four and a half years old, is on for most of every day and has yet to give even the slightest wobble...:-)
Replaced an AMD Athlon 3200+ with MSI KT6V motherboard self built desktop that proved equally long serving and reliable.
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>> My Dell Inspiron 570 with an AMD Athlon II triple core 435 2.90Mhz CPU is
>> four and a half years old, is on for most of every day and has
>> yet to give even the slightest wobble...:-)
>>
>> Replaced an AMD Athlon 3200+ with MSI KT6V motherboard self built desktop that proved equally
>> long serving and reliable.
>>
SWMBO's PC that I replaced with the Fujitsu is a Dell Dimension 5150 3.2GHz P4, powered on and off 3-5 times a day every day for best part of a decade. No BSOD ever, no hardware failures - upgraded the RAM to 2.5GB, that's about it. Now used by me for film scanning 'cos I can't be a***d to try and get my SCSI film scanner working in Win 7 - this machine is my last XP holdout.
The one AMD machine I inherited had been used for 5 years + by the original owner without problems, but I don't know if their recent stuff is worth bothering with - given the low cost and good enough for most performance of recent Intel Celerons for example.
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>> - given the low cost and good enough for most performance of recent Intel Celerons for example.>>
Depends, of course, on what you wish to achieve when using a system. Recall having a 400Mhz 370 pin Celeron for some time - it served me well for a couple of years...:-)
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>> >> - given the low cost and good enough for most performance of recent Intel
>> Celerons for example.>>
>>
>> Depends, of course, on what you wish to achieve when using a system. Recall having
>> a 400Mhz 370 pin Celeron for some time - it served me well for a
>> couple of years...:-)
>>
Indeed, I think Intel made marketing their recent non core i3/5/7 chips as "Celeron", given the use of the name for the cheaper chips 10 years ago. The recent Celerons have similar or better CPU benchmarks to Core i3s, so more than adequate for most.
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>Indeed, I think Intel made marketing their recent non core i3/5/7 chips as "Celeron", given the use of the name for the cheaper chips 10 years ago. The recent Celerons have similar or better CPU benchmarks to Core i3s, so more than adequate for most. >
AMD had the Duron, Opteron and Sempron as their cheaper equivalents..:-)
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>> AMD had the Duron, Opteron and Sempron as their cheaper equivalents..:-)
I had you down as smarter than that. The Opteron was the top end AMD 64-bit CPU of the time. So much faster than the Intel P3/P4 of the time that Intel adopted the 64-bit extensions AMD introduced. It took Intel much longer to introduce a CPU with it's own memory controller.
It was over 10 years ago they were beating Intel. And then Intel with their fab technology and smart Israeli team took back the lead.
In fact Opteron is still the server CPU platform for AMD isn't it?
Last edited by: rtj70 on Tue 23 Dec 14 at 19:56
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>>
I had you down as smarter than that.>>
I was going on memory...:-) Which, at my age, is supposed to have diminished beyond all reasonable use..:-) :-)
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>> 2.4 GHz Celeron
>>
>> 2 Gb Ram
>>
>> 160 Gb HD
Time for the bin then I think
If you are happy with your monitor and keyboard then this might be a good choice
www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Fast-Cheap-Desktop-PC-Computer-Intel-Core-i3-2-93Ghz-4GB-Win-7-HDMI-WIFI-/141514851632
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I'd agree that his old one is not up to being upgraded. Or rather he'd see little benefit. A clue to it lacking performance is the small disk drive. Processor is said to be a 2.4GHz Celeron so probably a 'Wolfdale' or maybe 'Clarkdale' and therefore old. Same CPU architecture as the Core2 Quad in the link I commented on.
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>> Point taken, avoid.
>>
>> I can upgrade to an SSD HD and double the memory of this PC for
>> £105 from Crucial. Worth doing to give the thing a new lease of life?
>>
Depends on the specification of your current PC. In general RAM is a cheap upgrade (although not as cheap as a year ago), but there's no point in going beyond 4GB if you Windows is 32bit - whish is quite likely given the PC's age.
In terms of SSD then I'd buy a Crucial MX100, although I'd wait 'til after Xmas as prices on SSDs are still falling quite rapidly. Given your PC HDD interface is probably SATA 1, or possibly SATA 2, you are unlikely to see much improvement in boot time with an SSD, but some programmes at least should run much faster.
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If you want a refurbished PC, this company, www.tier1online.com/ I have sourced quite a few fefurbs from them. I also use a company called Combro Technology, they are not to the same standard but I often get good trade discounts from them.
The PC on the original post is a complete rip off.
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>> If you want a refurbished PC, this company, www.tier1online.com/ I have sourced quite a few
>> fefurbs from them.
>>
Yeah that's the company I bought SWMBO's Fujitsu from.
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My current client has been getting rid of shedloads (a hundred or more) Dell 745/755/760 mini tower systems in their final push to get Win XP off the corporate LAN. Most of those were 5-6 years old and had been no trouble, just the odd one or two that needed re-capping. I picked up a 760 for nowt, added a HDD and 4GB of DDR2 RAM (cheap from CEX) and I'm playing with Linux Mint 13.0 Mate on it.
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That's cheap enough! No monitor though (which would suit many)
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Cheap because it's got a low end spec CPU from Intel. Fast enough for most people though. For the OP, probably good enough for them for sure and better than a tired old, under powered second hand Dell.
If a lower spec Celeron is fast enough, this one is even cheaper:
www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-3646-small-desktop/pd?oc=cd64610&model_id=inspiron-3646-small-desktop
It also has smaller hard disk which is slower (SATA 3Gb/s)
The Core i3 one is not discounted and is £359 - so the difference is greater due to the one linked to above is discounted at the moment.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Wed 24 Dec 14 at 19:00
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As a comparison on price differences:
- Intel Celeron G1830, S 1150, Haswell, Dual Core, 2.8GHz ~£39
- Intel Pentium G3220, S 1150, Haswell, Dual Core, 3.0GHz ~£42
- Intel Pentium G3460, S 1150, Haswell, Dual Core, 3.5GHz ~£68
- Intel Core i3 4160, S 1150, Haswell, Dual Core, 3.6GHz ~£88
When I got my processor for the PC I built a few years ago, it was a Core i7 2600K and was around £210. The equivalent model in the Haswell range is nearer £250.
These are all retail prices for a company I've often used.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Wed 24 Dec 14 at 19:07
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>> Cheap because it's got a low end spec CPU from Intel. Fast enough for most
>> people though. For the OP, probably good enough for them for sure and better than
>> a tired old, under powered second hand Dell.
>>
It ain't no Xeon E5 but even a low end CPU is pretty good these days, this Pentium G3240 benchmarks around the same as older Core i5s and suchlike.
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>>
>> www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-3646-small-desktop/pd?oc=cd64610&model_id=inspiron-3646-small-desktop
>>
>> It also has smaller hard disk which is slower (SATA 3Gb/s)
>>
>>
That looks ok, would it have built in Wi-fi?
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Don't forget eBay, including some on the Argos outlet:
www.ebay.co.uk/sch/PC-Desktops-AllinOnes-/179/i.html
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I was going to say no, but apparently it has
Dellâ„¢ Wireless-N 1705 @ 2.4GHz
so make that a yes then.
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>> That looks ok, would it have built in Wi-fi?
It does, BUT it has windows 8.1 - thats not bad, but it has windows 8.1 WITH BING! You'll need to do a wee bit of work to remove the bing store, the bing system wide search argument and the bing active desktop.
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>>
>> >> That looks ok, would it have built in Wi-fi?
>>
>> It does, BUT it has windows 8.1 - thats not bad, but it has windows
>> 8.1 WITH BING! You'll need to do a wee bit of work to remove the
>> bing store, the bing system wide search argument and the bing active desktop.
>>
Chapter and verse here:-
www.howtogeek.com/195934/what-exactly-is-windows-8.1-with-bing-do-i-have-to-use-bing/?PageSpeed=noscript
The full fat desktop for 230 quid ships with 'normal' 8.1 by the looks of it, maybe 200 quid is the maximum retail cost for 'with Bing'
Given a choice between taking a punt on a 3-4 year old ex lease machine for 100-150 quid and buying a shiny new machine with warranty for around 200 quid I'd certainly do the latter unless minimum cost was an overriding factor.
EDIT: until Boxing Day there's an extra 5% off using code 7GTBQ71V?30WM6 as well by the looks of it.
Last edited by: spamcan61 on Wed 24 Dec 14 at 20:26
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Ordered -
www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-3847-desktop/pd?oc=cd84701&model_id=inspiron-3847-desktop
£217 with the code, I'd already seen that on there.
Thanks to all for your helpful replies, quite right that shiny and new beats taking a chance on a used one.
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Never dealt with Dell before but so far so good. I was surprised to get a phone call this morning checking details and arranging delivery for Monday or Tuesday, to be confirmed by the courier.
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I found Dell's support staff to be excellent after I acquired my desktop Inspiron. Wanted a proper Windows7 installation disc rather than the "Recovery" option on the hard drive, but Dell normally charges around £25 for one.
However, after speaking to a member of the support staff on the phone, he promised to send me one free of charge, plus updated versions of other support discs that came with the system. They arrived a couple of days later and the support staff member rang me up a day or two later to check they had been received safely.
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Refurbished Dell - rtj70
