Traps for Buying Second Hand Desktop?

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  FrugalFrella on 12/02/2018 - 14:11

  Any budget in particular? Older second-hands can be a bit iffy with failing drives/ram.

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  SlayKingWhiskey on 12/02/2018 - 14:15

  -1

  You need to get at least 8gb of ram. anything less and windows and chrome will slow down. A SSD is highly advantageous, but it may be cheaper to put one in yourself, go for 240gb+. If you buy local try and get a look at the power supply inside. The power supply has no effect on performance at all but is one of the parts most likely to fail, alot of the cheap ones have low efficiency, have unsafe specs and high failure rates. Dont buy water cooled if is second hand just to be safe. Try to run prime 95 on it before purchase to check if its stable.

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  ItsNotMe on 12/02/2018 - 14:22

  Brandiano, I have been looking at deals around $200-$350 but this is Ozbargain…

  SKW, I'll be using Windows 10, not Chrome. What is Prime 95? How do I check the power supply, other than making sure the PC turns on, and checking that smoke isn't pouring out ;-) ?

  • 

    Typical16-bitEnjoyer on 12/02/2018 - 15:55

    Your budget is small. Your requirements are not heavy. You don't sound very experienced with PCs (otherwise you'd know Chrome is a web browser that can be installed on a Windows install)

    You might be better off just buying something new from a retail shop. That way you'll have warranty and support.

    • 

      ItsNotMe on 12/02/2018 - 16:14

      +1

      I must have been distracted when I read SKW's post. I was thinking of Chromebooks, which is not what I need. Yes, I do know what Google Chrome is.

      I am reasonably experienced with PCs, just not with issues related to buying them second hand.

      But thanks for your response.

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  [Deactivated] on 12/02/2018 - 15:13

  +1

  Just buy one of the dell
  Optiplex ones

  • 

    ItsNotMe on 12/02/2018 - 15:26

    Thanks, tuzii

    Any particular reason for buying only Optiplex?

    There are a range of different Optiplex models with different generations of chip. What would be the limits for buying one of those?

    • 

      [Deactivated] on 12/02/2018 - 15:37

      They last long time

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  Butt Scratcher on 12/02/2018 - 17:00

  +1

  +1 for optiplex. I've just bought myself a refurbished i7 3770 8gb sff recently. The hdd indicates that the system has been used for 100 days worth. Barely used compared to my main which is a 3570k and has been on for 1.6k days worth.

  Plenty of life left I'd say, and all for 220 bucks. I had to chuck in an ssd for another $60 though.

  Even by today's standards, it's still a very good system for general use.

  I went for a gen 3 instead of gen 2 because of the fairly significant power efficiency gain

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  ItsNotMe on 14/02/2018 - 09:53

  Thanks for all your responses. In your view, what would be the oldest model/age PC that would still be worth buying?

  • 

    scrimshaw on 15/02/2018 - 23:33

    +1

    4th generation Optiplexes, generally around $300+ mark,

    if you want something for video editing you're going to want a system with Intel Quicksync. This feature was introduced starting with the 2nd generation Core series, "Sandy Bridge", and then it saw significant improvements when you moved onto Haswell (added H.264/MPEG-4 AVC support) and another bump in Skylake when they added VP9 / H265 support.

    Quicksync improves the speed of your video rendering projects. You can google it and easily find out what it does and how well it performs on various different generations of Intel CPU's.