Opinion On Purchase

[spartacvs]

Greetings Friends,

I have a really old AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4000+ with 6gig's of RAM
Dont Laugh Too Hard Please

I have managed to plug along with it but as you can see ... ITS OLD!!! and I am in deperate need of an upgrade.

With that being said, I found someone who is offering to sell me their old Digital Storm Gaming System for $450 and wanted to run it by you folks for opinions:

Digital Storm Gaming desktop
Cooler Master HAF 932 chassis
Core i7 940 2.93GHz and ASUS P6T Deluxe motherboard and 750W psu
12 GB DDR3 memory
Windows 7, 150GB Western Digital Raptor, 10000 RPM
2 optical drives: 1 DVD reader, 1 DVD writer
GeForce GTX 960 2 GB memory
USB 3.0 card with 2 ports

Thanks,
Spart

 

[dextermat]

Hi,
The only reason to get this is if you can overclock it. The graphic card is good because of the shortage right now and also depends on what games you want to play.

If it is for games you play on the previous system they will work fine but for modern gaming, on stock cpu, it will struggle.

With 450 $ you can get a descent ryzen build but the gpu / ram will cost a lot of money because of the market.

 

[larkspur]

Not too bad. That's about the right price assuming it has a quality PSU. With the prices of GPUs and DDR4 RAM these days, this system is priced about right. Does it have an upgraded CPU cooler? You'd want to OC the CPU if it does. It'll be bclk OCing which is a little bit trickier but shouldn't be too hard if you follow some guides. I assume it comes with Windows installed and activated right? That's also a big plus since any new system will require windows.

For around the same price (or a bit cheaper) you could put something together a little more modern with a Ryzen 2200g or something like that, but that system with the GTX 960 would still beat it easily in games.

 

[Zerk2012]

10 year old processor not worth it.
Almost o hard drive space.
Optical drives are not even needed anymore.

 

[spartacvs]

Hi,
The only reason to get this is if you can overclock it. The graphic card is good because of the shortage right now and also depends on what games you want to play.

If it is for games you play on the previous system they will work fine but for modern gaming, on stock cpu, it will struggle.

With 450 $ you can get a descent ryzen build but the gpu / ram will cost a lot of money because of the market.

Thanks for your response...
Not happy about it being Win7 --- (needs Win10)
It has a 150GB Western Digital Raptor, 10000 RPM that seems small --- (needs upgrade)
I liked that it had plenty of RAM (12gig)
Liked the Graphics card
I assume it can be overclocked

What upgrades would I be looking at?

 

[jwcrellin]

First upgrade should be a 250 gig ssd and a fresh win 10 install. 12gb ram should hold strong. Take your time and clean it up with some compressed air.

 

[larkspur]

Either an SSD or a HDD whichever is in your budget that meets your storage needs. The 10000rpm raptor is faster than a typical HDD but an SSD is still best. Typically the i7-940 will reach or approach 4ghz in an OC with the proper cooler (depends a lot of the stepping - D0 is much better than C1). Win 7 works fine for games although you can't use DX12 (not a big deal YET) and there are a few Win 10 exclusive games at present. I wouldn't even bother purchasing Win 10 - very little benefit and you might actually run into compatibility problems on that 2009 (or is it 2008?) motherboard.

At the $450 price point you can't really do any better with a new modern system. You could certainly save up to build a modern system and that would be better for the long-run. Really up to you, but when OCed those CPUs still do fine. Maybe start pricing something new out now so you can get an idea of how much more you'd need to spend. Be prepared to pay a lot for the RAM and GPU.

 

[IInuyasha74]

I'd strongly recommend against buying this PC. It's 10 years old. It's closer in age to your current system than what a modern PC would be. As you've got by with such an old system for this long, I'd guess you probably aren't one to play the latest game with the best settings, so perhaps you should consider an AMD Ryzen 5 2400G system. That CPU will cost you $180, and it will outperform that older Intel system by a long shot. It also has a decent iGPU built-in that can handle most games with low settings. If you re-use your existing PC case, pick up a $50 motherboard, a $150 RAM kit, a $30 PSU and a budget HDD for around $30, then you can come in at around the same $450 price tag.

That's not including the price of a copy of Windows 10, but you were considering buying that anyway.

PCPartPicker part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/FZx23b
Price breakdown by merchant: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/FZx23b/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 2400G 3.6GHz Quad-Core Processor ($169.00 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI - B350 TOMAHAWK ATX AM4 Motherboard ($71.89 @ OutletPC)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($169.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital - AV-GP 500GB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($21.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - S12II 520W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($29.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $462.86
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-02-24 21:20 EST-0500

 

[spartacvs]

Thanks for all you replies.

My take is that I should just buy new.
I mostly play Dungeons & Dragons OnLine, Civ, WarThunder, World of Tanks.
I run 2 monitors -- Syncmaster FX2490HD and a small 20" Dell.
AMD Radeon HD 6700
Seasonic M12II 80+ Bronze 620w
Basic ATX Tower with 4 bays

I have $500 to spend

 

[spartacvs]

Close this thread....
Will start another one with proper information