Given the amount of trouble ppl on here alone go through, wouldn't you recommend ppl only buy a new PC ready and tested?

[Rafael Mestdag]

When I say ready, I don't mean a PC by IBM or DELL or something. I mean something YOU chose to put together, BUT left it to a technician do the job and only buy the PC AFTER it's been tested in front of you and with at least a one year warranty on all components.

Be honest and tell me you wouldn't recommend this to a good friend instead of buying parts separate and then putting them together by himself.

 

[ohiou_grad_2006]

Everyone likes to bash them, but I had an old ultra 650 watt lsp series. 38 amps on a single 12 volt rail. Had it probably 7 years or so. Have it to a friend recently who is wanting to get into PC gaming but has almost 0 budget. A friend and I are whipping him together an old cooler master scout case, my old gigabyte 970 board, and a 960t zosma from way back when. Might be setting him up with a 7950 to. Old stuff but not bad for a starting rig. We may upgrade PSU, but my other friend has an old noctua cooler for that 960t, think we are going to attempt core unlock and overclocking.

 

[Karadjgne]

The 7950 is a decent card, generally needs @500w psu. That Ultra 650 might be pushing it though, so it'll not need an upgrade as much as a replacement. It's an Ultra, so wasn't made with the highest quality parts internally. It's been used, probably seen some hard days, for at least 7 years. It's going to be suffering from capacitor degradation, after 7 years of usage, I'd guess you'd be looking at closer to 550-575w topped. So just be careful with it and any heavy OC or it'll fail, and hard. (the Ultras didn't have the greatest protection circuitry)

 

[ohiou_grad_2006]

The hardest use it saw was with I think an overclocked FX 8120 and a 7850 I had for a while. It's just enough to get the guy started on PC gaming. He right now has some how system someone gave him with an old dual core Pentium and a GeForce gt 610.

The 7950 is my current card, but buying a slightly used RX 480 8gb card from another friend for 250. I think it's the Sapphire nitro edition, and had more than a year of warranty from microcenter left.