[SOLVED] Opinion on this desktop?

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The intention is not to upgrade at all.

Buying a used system means the parts are that much closer to failure. Which will mean maintenance and upgrades, fans, power supplies, hard drives. Like a 7 or 8 year gap between that new Acer machine and the two you recommended. I wouldn't trust an OEM powersupply passed 5 years. And a 6 month warranty from the seller isn't going to amount to much if it melts down at month 7.

And that i3-9100 is only about ten percent slower in raw performance than the i7-4770. What five generations will do. Not to mention the memory speed. And if any upgrades were to take place, options for a lot of newer technologies.

Again, refurbished and used, fine for enthusiasts. I have even done a Dell 9020 i7-4790...
https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Optiple...rds=desktop+pc+Dell+i7&qid=1579201572&sr=8-41

Refurbished but much much better performance. All kinds of them at different prices. Could grab this.

https://www.amazon.com/HP-Desktop-Z...&qid=1579201767&sprefix=desktop+pc+hp&sr=8-36

I can about guarantee an i7 like that with an SSD will be great. I've got a Dell optiplex with an i7 3770 in my wife's home office with a 480gb SSD, and 8gb of ram. Have more to up it to 16gb, just need to install the extra ram. But as it is, very fast. Boots in about 30 seconds.
 
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There are limits, and buying back into the DDR3 era isn't exactly wise. I would recommend those units to enthusiasts building a gaming machine on the cheap. A normal end user should get a normal end user computer that has a phone number they can call if they have to. Can't discount the warranty either.

OEM computers like those also come with a lot of proprietary hardware that is to be avoided.

Acer, ASUS tend to use off the shelf parts, which is nice. Dell has their business and workstation models that inevitably do silly things like 5-pin fans, custom I/O headers, proprietary power supplies (both shape and electrical design), custom shaped motherboards. Buying used, that much closer to needing to replace things. HP and Lenovo tend towards similar practices.
 
However, you are talking machines that will seldom be upgraded. The one in the first link is only an i3. So I understand what you're saying, but from an end user perspective of people who will probably never upgrade and will just check email, do word processing, the older system might actually be faster depending on what they are doing. If you get a system through like a microcenter as well, you can many times purchase an extra warranty.
 
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The intention is not to upgrade at all.

Buying a used system means the parts are that much closer to failure. Which will mean maintenance and upgrades, fans, power supplies, hard drives. Like a 7 or 8 year gap between that new Acer machine and the two you recommended. I wouldn't trust an OEM powersupply passed 5 years. And a 6 month warranty from the seller isn't going to amount to much if it melts down at month 7.

And that i3-9100 is only about ten percent slower in raw performance than the i7-4770. What five generations will do. Not to mention the memory speed. And if any upgrades were to take place, options for a lot of newer technologies.

Again, refurbished and used, fine for enthusiasts. I have even done a Dell 9020 i7-4790 build for a friend, but I built the PSU adapter, installed it in a standard ATX case with a hefty power supply, re-wired the fans, hard wired the front panel, and slapped his GTX970 in it. Not saying it is a bad idea, just not the best for a non-enthusiast to deal with anything like that.

I shudder trying to buy a Dell PSU for an old Dell, the 5V and 3.3V supply are ON the motherboard, no fixing that if it goes.
 
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We can agree on that. Like the one in my wife's office, I did install a 600 watt EVGA psu which is massive overkill(it was a spare previously used in my gaming box), as well as a 480gb ssd. So that was pretty much new. Thankfully the board in hers did not require the adapter however. Standard 24 pin. So your point stands. New parts at oem level, yeah, you definitely have a point. If he would buy the system and upgrade before his mom knew different, that may make the situation different.
 
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I shudder trying to buy a Dell PSU for an old Dell, the 5V and 3.3V supply are ON the motherboard, no fixing that if it goes.
I don't as I've seen more available parts for Dells than even components. You can find almost 10 sellers for any Dell part you need even if the system is an old Precision 670 like I have. HP is almost as good in this department.

And this is one of the reasons part failures and upgrades are dirt cheap to fix. Bad motherboard? $12 shipped. Bad HSF? $9 shipped. Power supply? Take your pick of sellers if a standard unit doesn't work. And CPU and RAM upgrades are cheap too since you're 1 gen behind. In real world performance, will the average user know it's ddr3 or ddr4? Hell no...

A fully functional i5-3470 system can be put together for dirt cheap ($100 shipped) with 8GB and an SSD if you know where to look for the parts. And the average joe won't know the difference between that and a new pre-built except the warranty and a support number, which some refurbs come with as well.
 

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You are missing the point I am trying to make. Again, I fully understand that these are an inexpensive option. Which is fine when you are buying for yourself.

When buying for someone else, you have to take that into account.

If it were me, I wouldn't want to come to the rescue every time a part fails. And the older it gets, the older the stock of parts on the market becomes. So more repairs, more work, and more chance of not being able to easily fix the system.

A new system should have as many years in it as those you are proposing. Starting off with something older, simply means it is older.

Again, this is not about performance per say, but as it was brought up, I simply pointed out how much an improvement a few generations makes.

I think we have both laid out our points and the OP hasn't commented.
 
Even when buying for someone else--they have enough money to pay someone else to fix it, which is what they will do when a newer and more expensive machine will break down as well.

I don't think you realize that older systems aren't like old cars that parts seem to go bad as they sit in a warehouse. I've gotten brand new old stock parts that literally work as well as the year they were made once you clear off the dust. That is why there are literally hundreds of companies that specialize in reselling older equipment.

I've found a lot of the newer systems are even more designed for 'planned obsolescence' than the previous generations (which are utter garbage compared to the systems of 20 years ago). The glitz of gamerz and rgb has taken the focus off of quality in a lot of areas, and this shows when components are failing right outside of the 1yr warranty. This is what you find a lot of in consumer computers, new or old.

Performance will always be better with top-tier and newer components, but there is also a very sweet spot in the price/performance ratio for top tier components from years ago. And if the user can't tell the difference in performance, they definitely will notice the difference in cost.

This case in point posted from an hp 8760w that I got for the cost of a chromebook.
 

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I think we will have to agree to disagree.

Again, you are making the same recommendations I make for the right audience. To me, the average user prefers convenience and simplicity. People who like to tinker, understand parts selections, and certainly not getting ripped off for repair service costs on older equipment.

Yes, you know that you can find un-used off the shelf parts. But service places will get the cheapest parts possible and upsell the repair cost. That cheap part might be a new old stock component, or it could ripped straight out of a used business PC that ran 24/7 for 7 years. I work with these things all the time, I understand the failure rates. And a good percentage of business PCs pop within the first 12 months, so quality isn't exactly abundant there either (Always the 12V rail...)

And I am not talking about CPUs or memory. But power supplies, hard drives, and fans. Parts with a limited operational lifespan. A new computer will have new ones, that 'should' last. If they don't, hopefully the warranty covers it. If not, you would have the exact same cost if the machine is old or new on most commonly replaced components. Excepting that with an old business model with proprietary equipment you don't have much choice but to get those parts, regardless of availability, age, or cost. But something like that Acer can buy practically whatever you want and shove it in there.
 
Nope. The 'newer is always better' mantra always being shoved down people's throat is flat-out wrong. Or there wouldn't be so many resellers of off-lease systems, many of which sell to consumers who will never open the box.

Yep, parts sourcing and markup will always be there. But with newer stuff, it's always more expensive too. It's why a failed modern components or systems still typically cost more than working stuff that are generations older.

Commodity components will cost the same regardless, that's correct. But what I have seen is that as systems age, mass produced systems component part costs drop to the floor because of necessary overproduction, and you don't find that with anything that is industry standard. I'm not talking about the commodity components that can be easily replaced, but proprietary motherboards, power supplies, hsf, etc. These will sell for much less, providing high value, especially in off-lease/refurbed machines being resold. Companies like PCliquidations wouldn't exist otherwise reselling the SFF Optiplexes and other systems out there that bring a bang for buck like nothing else. When you can buy a working system for the price of 2 sticks of ddr4 that brings 80% of the performance of a system based on that ddr4, that's value, plain and simple. And if it has the same reliability and no-touch consumer experience, it is a much better way to go.