Cheap refurb pc

[JimM169]

My ageing PC has finally died again and this time nothing I try will coax it back to life so need a replacement. All we really use it for is web browsing and a bit of Photoshop so don't need anything too highly speced and thinking that refurb will give the best bang for buck. Seen this one on Amazon but before I press the button is there anything else around the £200 mark which would be a better buy?

https://tinyurl.com/d2w6tfk

I've got an external HDD so not worried about the storage but would probably chuck an internal 1tb in the above anyway

Thanks

[sutoka]

Since you mentioned photoshop I'll throw a curveball and recommend an iMac or even a Mac Mini can get a decent refurb one for under £200.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/114768018780?epid=21943...

[xeny]

It's probably worth poking around on eBay as well.

These https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/114828569586 are OOS, but would have got you a generation more modern CPU (specifically adding AVX 2 instructions which photoshop benefits from) and otherwise similar spec for similar cost (I'm figuring the extra 8GB is going to be about £35 as an upgrade).

[imck]

Lots of ex corporate Machines on Ebay.
I have bought quite a few Laptops for Famiy, Friends and myself
Quite a few Sellers who specialise in resale of them.

HP Prodesk
Lenovo Think Centre
Dell Optiplex

Something i5/i7 with 8 or 16GB RAM and SSD Drive
Various physical sizes to suit your needs.
Should get something decent for £200

[S6PNJ]

One thing to be aware of (if you've not had Dell desktops before) is that their 'form factor' doesn't (or didn't when I had mine) play well with aftermarket components such as replacement mother boards and potentially power supplies (depending on lengths of leads).
I have an old Dell Dimension E510 or something and wanted to use the case as the start of an upgraded system many moons ago, but the back panel openings are in the wrong place for 'all' 'standard' motherboards (note all and standard in inverted commas to signify that I know that not ALL replacement MBs confirm to a standard). I also couldn't use the PSU in my (then) new system due to the cables to the MB being too short due to the revised placement of the board relative to the PSU location.

What's the spec of your old system for comparison against any new system? Is it just failing to boot or what's the actual issue?

[JimM169]

Thanks for the feedback so far (keep it coming)

Understand that Dell's can be restrictive in their internal setup but shouldn't be an issue

Might as well get 16gb from the outset so seen a couple on ebay that look promising

this 9020
https://tinyurl.com/a43vvxya

or is it worth spending a bit extra for a T1700
https://tinyurl.com/5275kzb3

[RizzoTheRat]

Only difference I can see between those two is the extra £25 gets you a smaller SSD (but still big enough to run windows on) but adds a 1TB hard drive. Since you mentioned potentially putting an additional hard drive in, if you already have a spare drive get the cheaper one, but if you'd need to buy a new drive you're unlikely to find one for £25.

[JimM169]

Thanks forgot to add in previous post that current system was an i5 4670, with 8gb of memory. Would the links above be much of an upgrade to this or would I be better looking at something like an i5 7th gen?

Probably overthinking this a bit for a £200 PC !!

[S6PNJ]

Comparison of the 2 processors:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i7-4790...

[paulrockliffe]

JimM169 said:

Probably overthinking this a bit for a £200 PC !!

Yes, so long as you have enough RAM and an SSD you're not going to notice the difference regardless of whether one is marginally better or not.

[xeny]

S6PNJ said:

Comparison of the 2 processors:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i7-4790...

Unless you've got a workload that actually uses more than 4 threads, the salient one is really "CPU Single Thread Rating" which is 2230 vs 2138.

[Jinx]

I'd be tempted to pay a bit extra for a more modern CPU e.g. i5 6500 as it will also offer better integrated graphics as well as single thread performance. Still won't run Windows 11 though.

[Mr Pointy]

At the risk of scope creep consider if you want to 'upgrade' to Windows 11 as if you do you need to make sure the processor is 8th Generation or later - dating from 2018. I only buy ebay ex-business Dell Optiplexes so you'd need to to be looking at the 7060 range or later: there's a list here which details prcessor versions & dates:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_OptiPlex

It's almost always better to pay a bit more for the SSD size & RAM you want at the start rather than add it on later. Don't go smaller than a Small Form Factor chassis.

[JimM169]

Mr Pointy said:

At the risk of scope creep consider if you want to 'upgrade' to Windows 11 as if you do you need to make sure the processor is 8th Generation or later - dating from 2018. I only buy ebay ex-business Dell Optiplexes so you'd need to to be looking at the 7060 range or later: there's a list here which details prcessor versions & dates:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_OptiPlex

It's almost always better to pay a bit more for the SSD size & RAM you want at the start rather than add it on later. Don't go smaller than a Small Form Factor chassis.

Beginning to wish I hadn't ask now as the creep is definitely kicking in

Guessing Windows 11 is going to be the way to o sooner rather than later so if I up the budget to £300 is this looking like a good bet

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/353664500306?hash=item5...

[xeny]

Jinx said:

I'd be tempted to pay a bit extra for a more modern CPU e.g. i5 6500 as it will also offer better integrated graphics as well as single thread performance. Still won't run Windows 11 though.

I've got a machine with an i5-6500 and another with an i5 4670 - there's very little to choose between them - https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i5-4670... is pretty representative. I'd perhaps pay a £10 premium for the better integrated graphics, but there's no discernible CPU performance difference.

[Mr Pointy]

JimM169 said:

Mr Pointy said:

At the risk of scope creep consider if you want to 'upgrade' to Windows 11 as if you do you need to make sure the processor is 8th Generation or later - dating from 2018. I only buy ebay ex-business Dell Optiplexes so you'd need to to be looking at the 7060 range or later: there's a list here which details prcessor versions & dates:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_OptiPlex

It's almost always better to pay a bit more for the SSD size & RAM you want at the start rather than add it on later. Don't go smaller than a Small Form Factor chassis.

Beginning to wish I hadn't ask now as the creep is definitely kicking in

Guessing Windows 11 is going to be the way to o sooner rather than later so if I up the budget to £300 is this looking like a good bet

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/353664500306?hash=item5...

I don't know that particular Dell range but it looks like a fair price for 16Gb plus an M2 SATA drive & it seems to have a couple of years of Dell warrranty, although I don't know if it's transferrable. You'll have plenty of space for an additional HDD & graphics card if you want to add them.

The seller has 26k positive feedbacks so is probably ok to deal with. Just don't expect it to come in a fancy box or to be cosmetically perfect, but if you don't like it there's 30 days to ship it back, although it may not be cheap to do that.

Have a look on Amazon as well.

[loafer123]

I have used these guys a few times for business PCs…very happy with them;

https://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/st/refurbished-des...