Desktop upgrade - opinions?

Fifer

I'm looking to upgrade my desktop base unit as the old one is beginning to creak a little. Until I bought the current one several years ago, I'd always just slung a new mobo, processor, memory and HD into whatever case I had around, but I impulse bought a very cheap EI Systems P4 2.2Ghz with 512MB and XP Pro very cheap about 4 or 5 years ago as it was cheaper than the cost of the upgrade components.

I've been looking around at processor/motherboard bundles, but again I'm finding complete units with OS to be pretty cheap and I wondered what people thought of these two?:

eBay Core 2 Duo with XP.
Core 2 Quad Advent (yes, I know but my current machines and EI) with Vista refurb)

How are people finding Vista?

BillScarab

I find Vista fine.
Personally I wouldn't buy the ebay oen just because statements like this

"The NEW Core 2 Duo Processors run 40% faster and efficient than the older dual core Pentium D's which at the fastest were 3.4GHZ X2 (6.8GHZ !!)

So basically this system is equivalent to at least 8GHZ of CPU power!!"

are utter rubbish and make the seller sound like a con man even if they aren't.

He claims it has a Core 2 Duo processor but if you look on other sies the E1200 processor it has is actually listed as a Celeron Dual Core. It runs at 1.6 GHZ but he claims it's equivalent to 8 GHZ.

I'm also struggling to see what graphics card it has, it says it's an Nvidia 7 series but that's a pretty old card and the lowest end models will be pretty slow by modern standards. That may not be important if you're not gaming though.

The second one has a much better CPU but integrated graphics and is a fair bit more.

I'd have a look at speccing up what you want at somewhere like https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk and see what the price comes in at. Or look a what they have at somewhere like ebuyer.

bab5

The first one should be avoided, if for no other reason than the liberties that have been taken with the product description,

“The NEW Core 2 Duo Processors run 40% faster and efficient than the older dual core Pentium D's which at the fastest were 3.4GHZ X2 (6.8GHZ !!)

So basically this system is equivalent to at least 8GHZ of CPU power!!
INTEL CELERON DUAL CORE E1200 800FSB SKT775”

Uhmmmmmmmmm, yer right, The E1200 is the bottom of the Intel range as far as CPU’s go, It’s currently retailing on the likes of Ebuyer for £27.64inc vat, The Graphics are on board, NVIDIA GeForce 7050 chipset, this means the 256meg of RAM quoted would in fact be “stolen” from the main RAM, thus taking you down to 1.75 Gig instead of the headline figure.

The second one is a better bet despite being based once again on slightly elderly technology, the only drawback on offer is once again its on-board graphic system, you can forget playing games on it without an upgrade and that’s where you might hit a snag, the description lists top free PCI slots, but alas there seems to be no free PCI-Express slot, therefore you can forget adding any modern graphics card to the base unit.

However if you’re not into gaming, it should be ok for most of your needs.

Hope that helps,

Daz

Fifer

I probably should have mentioned that I'm not a gamer and don't use any graphics intensive applications.

tradetime

Fifer wrote: »

I probably should have mentioned that I'm not a gamer and don't use any graphics intensive applications.

What do you plan on using it for?

If it's a choice between those two I'd give the ebay one a serious wide birth, he could be had up under the trades descriptions act. So it would have to be the second one.

Depending on what you plan to use it for, you might find a Dual Core will meet your needs just as well, seems a bit of a waste putting a quad core in a low spec box. This one is Core2, although it has a gig less RAM so it does rather depend what your use is, but it's £60 cheaper.
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1378768418.1213491026@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccffadeegdjgfhgcflgceggdhhmdgmj.0&category_oid=-28485&page=Product&sku=921571&fm=null&sm=null&tm=null#productInformationSection

Conor_3

Fifer wrote: »

I probably should have mentioned that I'm not a gamer and don't use any graphics intensive applications.

No problem then. Straight over to Dells website and buy the cheapest desktop you can find. Then over to https://www.crucial.com and buy an extra 1GB of RAM for it.

Fifer

tradetime wrote: »

What do you plan on using it for?

If it's a choice between those two I'd give the ebay one a serious wide birth, he could be had up under the trades descriptions act. So it would have to be the second one.

Depending on what you plan to use it for, you might find a Dual Core will meet your needs just as well, seems a bit of a waste putting a quad core in a low spec box. This one is Core2, although it has a gig less RAM so it does rather depend what your use is, but it's £60 cheaper.
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1378768418.1213491026@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccffadeegdjgfhgcflgceggdhhmdgmj.0&category_oid=-28485&page=Product&sku=921571&fm=null&sm=null&tm=null#productInformationSection

The most processor intensive task would be ripping music (which is then transferred to a Linux server so the desktop doesn't have to act as a media server). The only reason I looked at the Quad core was to maximise the future proofing element of the purchase because (as noted in the OP), I tend not to upgrade my desktop terribly often (which is also the reason I tend not to keep up to speed with the latest in processor technology ).

I definitely don't need a Core 2 Quad (or probably even a Core 2 Duo) today, but five years ago, I didn't really need a 2.2GHz P4, but it's showing its age a wee bit now. (In all honesty, its probably just the 512MB memory that's the problem, but I'm loathe to by more old tech (and now relatively expensive) memory which might just push out the inevitable replacement by six months or so).

Edinburghlass_2

Non techie answer... I quite like Vista

I've recently ordered a portable hard drive to transfer all the photos etc from my old pc as I think it will probably die of old age soon and I probably won't replace unless a great bargain comes along.

Robin_T_Cox

You probably don't need new hardware at all.

Just get some more modern software that can make your existing system work as well as it used to do, or even better.