Building a budget PC vs Dell Refurbished

[fabific]

Hey guys I wanted to get some ideas and hopefully get some parts picked out to get my cousin a better deal.

He only wants to play SC2 and LoL on his rig so he doesn't need anything crazy, his budget is around 400 bucks.

http://deals.dell.com/productdetail/ec4

This Dell seems like a sweet deal but I wanted to see if it would be worth it to build our own.

I have a 450W Power Supply he can have so hopefully we can work something out. He would need the OS and no peripherals.

[Fascinate]

That is, not a good deal.

What you want to do is find a refurb with an older i5 and then add a graphics card to it.

Like this:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16883286403

And add this GPU:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...-079-_-Product

This will be infinitely faster than the dell linked above.

[fabific]

That is, not a good deal.

What you want to do is find a refurb with an older i5 and then add a graphics card to it.

Like this:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16883286403

And add this GPU:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...-079-_-Product

This will be infinitely faster than the dell linked above.

thats really good! That will run the games much much better thanks. Would you say this is as good as it gets?

[Fascinate]

thats really good! That will run the games much much better thanks. Would you say this is as good as it gets?

Ya thats about as good as it will get. Its actually a pretty high end i5 from that gen (higher clocked) plus it has 8gb of ram and a 500gb HDD, many refurbs like this only have 4gb ram and 250gb hard drives.

[Rotted]

Budget any day of the week,

I don't even need to open the links to tell you that.

Dell are over priced pieces of trash and their customer service sucks donkey dick.

When I was younger and saved up from my first real job for a dell, I sunk 1k GBP into it, the only mistake I made at this point was going for a laptop over a desktop. Regardless, I chose one of their gaming ones and upped the specs.

The warranty I had with it was for 2 years full cover. Within the first 18 months I had 6.... 6 Friken motherboards replaced. The first two I sent away to get repaired, the next ones the engineer came around to the house as a courtesy, the 2nd time he came with mobo 4 it wouldn't work at all for him once installed. Long story short, he phoned up his helpline, gave the mobo serial code and he got told that was a refurbished mobo that was for the bin and shouldn't of been sent out. I wasn't impressed.

The day after the warranty, and that isn't an exaggeration, literally, the next fucking day. I closed the lid and heard a click. The LCD screen just smashed, no idea why there wasn't anything on keyboard, nothing trapped, no fingers on closing lid no nothing. Granted it was out of warranty, but phoned them up said I had none stop issues with it now this just happened. What did I get? "Well since you've had trouble before here's what we can do, 136 GBP for the screen replacement, and we'll send a engineer out to fit it, instead of you sending it away for a few weeks. Oh, but the charge for that service is 130 GBP"

Needless to say, that piece of shit laptop is still under my bed in that condition.

Also, I;m not sure if they still do it, (I doubt it tbh) but when I had this laptop all the accessories like printers had to be dell ones, otherwise they weren't compatible

[fabific]

Lmao thanks for that, sounds like a shit show!

[fabific]

http://imgur.com/a/N6vjD
This PS works with this set up right?
I'm not home but I think it just requires a 16pin adaptor since it may only have 8pins.

[Fascinate]

iI you are talkin about one of the prebuilts i linked above they dont need a PSU, gtx 1050 runs off PCI-E power slot only. On top of that, the ones that come with these are of higher quality than the one you have there. I would throw that PSU in the garbage actually, dont let it near anything that costs money lol.

[fabific]

Yeah I was referring to the ones you linked. I was just concerned that the PS on the Refurb would be good enough for the GPU you linked is all.

- - - Updated - - -

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...2A&ignorebbr=1

I found this bad boy for a few bucks less, still good?

[Fascinate]

Yeah I was referring to the ones you linked. I was just concerned that the PS on the Refurb would be good enough for the GPU you linked is all.

- - - Updated - - -

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...2A&ignorebbr=1

I found this bad boy for a few bucks less, still good?

You need low profile video card if you are interested in the one i linked above, thing is PC component prices change daily.

A quick look on newegg has this one on sale:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...9SIAAJ25X24666

A bit slower CPU, windows 7 instead of 10 but it has 8gb's of ram and a 1tb hdd as well for 30 bucks less. It also advertises a 1 year warranty.

You could also use a standard size GPU like you linked, but this is actually cheaper:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...D=3938566&SID=

- - - Updated - - -

BTW you can upgrade to 10 for free still if desired, microsoft left a loophole:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/acce...ndows10upgrade

[Triggered Fridgekin]

Personally speaking but a warranty is worth it's weight in gold when buying refurb/used hardware. A full year vs three months gives a little more peace of mind especially when the trade off is only 100mhz.

[Deleted]

Personally speaking but a warranty is worth it's weight in gold when buying refurb/used hardware. A full year vs three months gives a little more peace of mind especially when the trade off is only 100mhz.

In fairness, on secondhand computer hw, if you've seen it working or can return if dud, and you care for it yourself, neither are likely to fail within any warranty period. In 20 years of pc's I think I've lost 1 dimm to a fault, and this was probably due to voltage/time. None were prebuilds though, even the secondhand buy's.

[Triggered Fridgekin]

In fairness, on secondhand computer hw, if you've seen it working or can return if dud, and you care for it yourself, neither are likely to fail within any warranty period. In 20 years of pc's I think I've lost 1 dimm to a fault, and this was probably due to voltage/time. None were prebuilds though, even the secondhand buy's.

This is true. In all the years I've dealt with the used market I can only think of one time where I was burned by a shady seller on ebay like 15 years ago. I simply prefer to have it than not especially if we're talking hundred of dollars for older hardware. I'm not so much worried about buying second hand hardware that'll fail asap especially if I am able to claim the remaining warranty. What I am worried about is whether or not one of those horror stories of hardware dying right outside of warranty will finally happen to me and I end up spending more when I otherwise wouldn't have to.

A system failing (in this case) three months and a day is far more aggravating than a system which fails one year and a day because then I'm better prepared to justify the cost of a replacement. Of course this is somewhat exaggerated but you know what I mean.

I'm pretty confident when it comes to vetting used hardware and the seller but, like I said, it's mostly for peace of mind which those on a budget may find appealing especially if the trade off is negligible.