New pc options

jamesbil

Hi all,

Its time to retire my old Vista machine. Just too slow to use now, daily blue screen crashes too.

Options..

€250 ish from laptopsdirect.ie with delivery for a refurbished

Dell Optiplex
Processor - Intel Core i5 3470RAM -
4 GBOperating System -
Windows 10 Professional
Hard Drive - 320 GB

Or...
€315 delivered from Dell for a new

Dell Inspiron
Intel Pentium J4205 Processor (2MB Cache, up to 2.60 GHz)
8GB DDR3L 1600MHz
1TB (64MB Cache) 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s
Win 10

Not particularly focused on dell, open to any brand.

Thoughts?

TerrorFirmer

You can get one like your first option from Ebay for about €150, it would be significantly more powerful than that Dell.

Of course, the Dell has a warranty and is brand new.

I would aim for something with an SSD to start. Makes a massive difference.

wheresmahbombs

One thing to note: the Inspiron has a weak CPU that is actually a variant of the Atom line.

BailMeOut

I just bought an excellent HP 8200 Elite with i7 CPU, 16GB RAM, 2TB disk, dual monitor video card and Win 10 pro and from these folks https://kelsusit.com/ for less than €400.

Worth checking out as they have some nice machines.

jamesbil

Nice to be able to customise them too, doesn't say if they have wifi and bluetooth tho..

Gerrymandering reborn

Keep on eye on dell outlet.
You will get a refurbished i5 7400 for around €350

BailMeOut

jamesbil wrote: »

Nice to be able to customise them too, doesn't say if they have wifi and bluetooth tho..

My workstation came with Wi-fi which I have no use for. You could however add Bluetooth for about €10 with a simple USB dongle.

jamesbil

Gerrymandering reborn wrote: »

Keep on eye on dell outlet.
You will get a refurbished i5 7400 for around €350

Gave them a call today, i3 machine was 349 sterling plus vat!

Gerrymandering reborn

jamesbil wrote: »

Gave them a call today, i3 machine was 349 sterling plus vat!

Have a look at this http://m.dell.com/h5/m/uk/SecondaryInventorySearch?p=%2FOnline%2FSecondaryInventorySearch.aspx%3Fc%3Duk%26cs%3Dukdfh1%26l%3Den%26s%3Ddfh%26sign%3DPXhcOSHtr1T4IOw%252fPR7UdUC2XXCrBrcVAm3UitHrvDEpDRCzl1ewaDIka1FOYDJxLy9AA8WfSwjY2CYeja5PbNXf9%252b%252bq6rLxUUCbzxGnzOrni5WV92E0uDONJ8OegQ9SV%252fPk1GCDu75OPuHNRCEAfEkywrw7YfBTzULaaj6aAl75AX7T99zWcFRXX7LoNxeDud%252blAKfizx99KGAteRcaiDz9e%252b2rVmP0ZhctTpu1o2d9sVafUhA9tg%253d%253d

Not too sure how delivery works. A while back they had a new customers discount of 10%

jamesbil

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

You can get one like your first option from Ebay for about €150, it would be significantly more powerful than that Dell.

Of course, the Dell has a warranty and is brand new.

I would aim for something with an SSD to start. Makes a massive difference.

Struggling to find similar on ebay..

TerrorFirmer

Ah come on, you're surely not really looking - one of the first result I found HP 6200 i5-3470, 4GB, 500GB, Win8 for less than €150 delivered!

https://www.ebay.ie/itm/HP-Pro-6300-Core-i5-3470-3-2Ghz-4GB-500GB-HDD-Windows-8-1-SFF-COMPUTER-PC/273058260699?hash=item3f938a66db:g:B5kAAOSwdAxZbgZo

TerrorFirmer

This one even had an SSD for €20 more.

jamesbil

Looked at so many!

Its either a good cpu and ram but small storage, or big storage and cpu but small ram and wrong windows version.

Can something like this be upgraded if the storage is too small?
Would inserting the 500gb hd from my current machine be an option?

HP Elite 8300 SFF Quad Core i5-3470 3.20GHz 8GB 256GB SSD DVD WiFi Windows 10 Professional
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B071YNPF12/?coliid=IGEMD8FB3NZ8S&colid=1RJU9LV8UUDK1&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

€330 delivered with 1 yr warranty

BailMeOut

jamesbil wrote: »

Looked at so many!

Its either a good cpu and ram but small storage, or big storage and cpu but small ram and wrong windows version.

Can something like this be upgraded if the storage is too small?
Would inserting the 500gb hd from my current machine be an option?

HP Elite 8300 SFF Quad Core i5-3470 3.20GHz 8GB 256GB SSD DVD WiFi Windows 10 Professional
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B071YNPF12/?coliid=IGEMD8FB3NZ8S&colid=1RJU9LV8UUDK1&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

€330 delivered with 1 yr warranty

The HP Elite here will come from https://kelsusit.com/ so you might be better ordering directly from them. I got an i7 quad core 3.4GHz with 16GB RAM and 2TB disk (+dual monitor graphics, wifi and Windows 10 Pro) from them for just around €400 delivered and it is an excellent system.

TerrorFirmer

jamesbil wrote: »

Looked at so many!

Its either a good cpu and ram but small storage, or big storage and cpu but small ram and wrong windows version.

Can something like this be upgraded if the storage is too small?
Would inserting the 500gb hd from my current machine be an option?

HP Elite 8300 SFF Quad Core i5-3470 3.20GHz 8GB 256GB SSD DVD WiFi Windows 10 Professional
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B071YNPF12/?coliid=IGEMD8FB3NZ8S&colid=1RJU9LV8UUDK1&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

€330 delivered with 1 yr warranty

You could just add a 2nd drive as storage. SSD's tend to be small compared to normal drives as they are way, way more expensive (but way, way faster).

That said, unless you plan downloading or storing a lot of big movie files or whatever, for an average home PC 256GB is plenty.

My parents have a 120GB SSD and it's plenty for them, they just use it for browsing, office, netflix, downloading a few photos etc.

TerrorFirmer

BailMeOut wrote: »

The HP Elite here will come from https://kelsusit.com/ so you might be better ordering directly from them. I got an i7 quad core 3.4GHz with 16GB RAM and 2TB disk (+dual monitor graphics, wifi and Windows 10 Pro) from them for just around €400 delivered and it is an excellent system.

An i5-3470/8GB/256GB SSD will be way faster to the average user than an i7/16GB/2TB HDD though.

For normal home users, once you have at least a half decent CPU, the SSD makes the biggest difference by far.

Often when people complain about a modern PC being slow, it's actually a slow hard disk, not the inherent PC.

jamesbil

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

You could just add a 2nd drive as storage. SSD's tend to be small compared to normal drives as they are way, way more expensive (but way, way faster).

That said, unless you plan downloading or storing a lot of big movie files or whatever, for an average home PC 256GB is plenty.

My parents have a 120GB SSD and it's plenty for them, they just use it for browsing, office, netflix, downloading a few photos etc.

Thanks for taking the time to advise, I'm finding it a minefield!.
Just want to make sure I get something quick enough, reliable and future proof to an extent.

I'm hoping I can strip my pc for things like DVD, WiFi, H/D etc.

This one has no DVD,
https://www.laptopsdirect.ie/refurbished-lenovo-m91p-intel-core-i5-2400-3.1ghz-4gb-240gb-ssd-windows-10-t1-m91pi54gb240gbw10p/version.asp

but will mine fit? Ive just opened mine and cleaned it, everything looks to be plug and play.
Would adding my 2gb DDR2 ram to it benefit it?