Is this a good computer/price?

nalibz

Hey everyone,

Im looking for a desktop, not necessarily with a monitor, for around £350.00.

I found the following spec for £330 all in (although its refurbished) and was wondering if it was a good deal? I'm looking for a minimum 4gb memory and decent intel processor too

Operating System
Windows Vista® Home Premium
Windows Vista® Home Premium
Memory
Memory 4096MB (4x1024) 800MHz DDR2 Dual Channel
Hard Disk Drive
640 GB HD Serial ATA (7200 Rpm)
Video
Graphics 512 MB ATI Radeon HD 4350
Certified Refurbished
Certified Refurbished
Base
Inspiron 545 Minitower
System Color
Bezel Colour Black
MISC
Mouse Dell Wheel USB 2 Button Scroll Black
Media Card Reader 19-in-1
Dell Quietkey Black Keyboard
Media Bay
8X DVD+/-RW Drive
Processor
Processor Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 (2.8GHz, 1066MHz, 3MB)


thanks for any help you can offer!

4743hudsonj

looks good to me

one thing, asking for a minimum of 4gb memory is useless unless the operating system is 32 bit.

3gb is the maximum that you will be able to use so anything over is redundant without 64 bit
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000811.html

read that and all shall become clear, if the operating system is 64 bit they usually advertise it as so because its more expensive and people activly look for it rather than 32 bit.

nalibz

ahh ok, so really i dont need to bother with 4gb because i wont be using it..

in that case maybe i should look for a cheaper version with less memory?

4743hudsonj

nalibz wrote: »

ahh ok, so really i dont need to bother with 4gb because i wont be using it..

in that case maybe i should look for a cheaper version with less memory?

yes

like it said, 32 bit windows can only recognise 4gb of system memory which includes bios roms, video memory and lots of other things, and then and only the n is ram given the remainder which quite clearly can never be 4gb in 32bit

3gb sounds about right, company's just supply 4gb memory as a gimmick to draw in un aware consumers with the "fancy" specs.

penrhyn

On the other hand memory is only around £15 /Gb so it might be as cheap to have 4 slots with a gig in each than two with a gig and two with 512K.
Caveat Emptor and all that.

nalibz

Thanks for your replies

So taking everything into account, it may just be worth me buying this system rather than only getting a few quid off by buying a 3gb one?

also, is £330 a good price or do you think i could get something significantly better for this amount of money?

thanks!

[Deleted User]

If you're running an x86 based operating system then you're likely to have available 3.25GB RAM out of the 4GB, depending on what tasks you perform on your machine depends on whether you'll be hampered by the missing amount.

There's very little reasons now days to not be using a 64 bit operating system anyway, one of the benefits is the ability to address > 4GB RAM but there are a whole raft of others that make it a wiser choice..

nalibz

how do i know if a system is 64bit specifically? will it be advertised?

i do know a bit about this kind of stuff but am not too clued up on 32/64 bit systems!

thank you!

totalsolutions

Get 4Gb as a matched PAIR. most systems need two ram chips to work (2x16 bit address=32 bit wide bus) So 3x 1Gb chips may not work. Get 4Gb and see about 3.25Gb, cheap as chips.