Choose me a secondhand PC for gaming?

peckerhead

Son (15) wants a better PC for gaming than the ancient Dell he currently has. Money is tight so I'm looking on adverts.ie. Don't know squat about gaming specs (far too old). Had a quick look in the relevant thread in the B&U forum but it just made my eyes bleed.

Any thoughts on this vs. this vs. this? (I'm in Limerick, so looking at a bit of a drive either way...)

Or would I be better off hoping one of those Aldi desktop offers comes around again soon — gotta love that 3-year warranty, but are they any good for gaming?

Thanks in advance.

Effluo

How much money do you have, do you need a screen(what res is it?) and what games will you be playing?

swirlser

It would help if you could give names of the games hes playing or would like to play and also about how old ur current machine is (as its a bit of guess work as to which of those machines is really an upgrade to u)?


Well of the 3 links you listed;

Option 1 is pretty attractive, the additionals like 5.1 speakers and a 22'' monitor is a nice bonus and im sure would go down a treat , nice gpu, a little worried about that cpu (from the comments theres nice wiggle room on the price too)

Option 2 has a fairly dated gpu, which is key for playing games

Option 3 is top picking of these 3, but 2 little issues, 1> it doesnt come with an OS and 2> it looks like hes just sold it (keep an eye on it maybe if that falls thru :S)

Hope this is of some help

Effluo

Funnily enough at the time i posted although it says you had edited your first post i did not see the links...

Anywho adverts is certainly a good place to look, don't jump in and buy anything though as a lot of it's stuff is overpriced!

Answer the q's i've asked and we can look at what kind of system you should be trying to get!

peckerhead

Cheers, lads, sorry for the delay in coming back to you.

I guess I'm looking to spend in or around €400 or €500 (complete). I don't know what kind of games he wants to play on it. Mostly shooting people in the face stuff, from what I can see.

His old Dell is a Dimension 8250 (3.06 GHz internal / 533 MHz external)— stop sniggering, I bought it for about €200 off eBay with a 17" CRT monitor. Back then he thought it was Teh Sh1t.

Not really worth upgrading the RAM (the dear non-ECC type) as it's a crap ol' CPU/GPU. That's the problem...

P.S. What about this? No monitor/keyboard/mouse/OS ain't a problem, and he seems to have dropped the price a fair bit. Limerick pick-up would be very handy, too...

swirlser

No worries pecker,

That gives an idea of what you have atm, but tbh even giving 1 or 2 names of the FPS (shooting people in the face) games would give a great idea as to where your at or what you might aim for stepping forward.

Can only advise you on roughly what the machines are worth - not necessarily what you need.

Your most recent link to the AMD, I dont think your going to see your moneys worth at all on that (plus its been listed most of the year with some ppl making offers but no sale odd)

As per the original links, #1 has vanished, #2 is a good machine in all respects apart from the gpu (if u got a chunk taken off the price, for eg. 360ish, and stuck in a ~50eur gpu u would have a great go'er on ur hands) and id still favour #3.

peckerhead

Cheers, swirlser, I'll ask him tonight. Incidentally, and just to display my ignorance even further — is an old CRT any use for gaming, or should I be looking for a new monitor too?

Effluo

Why didn't you say you didn't need an operating system?

Here's everything you'll need for a good few years!

500euro delivered

this might actually be a bit cheaper here ebuyer.com

You could go for the 4850/4830 instead of the 4770 which ever is cheaper

swirlser

peckerhead wrote: »

Cheers, swirlser, I'll ask him tonight. Incidentally, and just to display my ignorance even further — is an old CRT any use for gaming, or should I be looking for a new monitor too?

If it ain't broke, dont fix it XD

(There are some technical differences, but to be straight up about it, its just a question of size)

peckerhead

Cheers again, Swirlser. Effluo, what do you make of their (very similar) 'extra value' offer? Slightly slower processor, slightly better graphics card and 500W PSU for £412.25 delivered...

Bob_Harris

Use the old case, mouse and keyboard, CD/DVD drive and hard drive and add these:

Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3
€60.75

AMD Athlon II X4 620
expected 8 pieces on 2009-11-10
€90.00

Crucial DDR2 BallistiX PC6400 2GB CL4
€44.00

Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3
expected 19 pieces on 2009-11-05
€93.00

Power Supply
€35.00

Total:
€322.75

Optional extras
Acer 21.5" Wide V223HQ
€149.00

Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB SATA2
€43

Grand Total:
514.75

5uspect

Bob_Harris wrote: »

Use the old case, mouse and keyboard, CD/DVD drive and hard drive and add these:

It's an old Dell so that may not be too easy. IDE drives etc.
And a decent case like an Antec 300 is only €50.

peckerhead

5uspect wrote: »

It's a Dell so that may not be too easy.

I have to say I'm liking the thought of the nice man delivering it to my workplace already assembled for €460-ish.

Also, I could recycle the old Dell to his kid sister.

5uspect

Well there's nothing wrong with the Dell as a bog standard PC!

peckerhead

Oh, I know! If it didn't take that mad dear Rambus RIMM stuff I'd bung some extra memory into it and tell him to get on with it...

Effluo

peckerhead wrote: »

Cheers again, Swirlser. Effluo, what do you make of their (very similar) 'extra value' offer? Slightly slower processor, slightly better graphics card and 500W PSU for £412.25 delivered...

Not so good. Those builds tend to use the oldest of the old

Here is some awesome value from ebuyer.com!!