Should I buy this used PC?

[rmbelson]

A local seller is offering a custom made PC with some parts 5-years-old (mobo and pcu) and most everything else 2-years old. I put together a parts list here:

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/rmbelson/saved/txQtJx

Price is right for me, a big discount off list price as shown in the link above. But I'm wondering about aging issues. I tend to keep my PCs for a long time. I'll be adding a 2TB HDD to the system if I buy it. The system is major overkill for my use, as I'm not a gamer. But with my added HDD is comparable in price to new custom systems I can find using an intel i5-8400 PCU w/16G of ram and using onboard sound and video.

What's your advice -- new or used? Thanks. rmb

 

[USAFRet]

A local seller is offering a custom made PC with some parts 5-years-old (mobo and pcu) and most everything else 2-years old. I put together a parts list here:

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/rmbelson/saved/txQtJx

Price is right for me, a big discount off list price as shown in the link above. But I'm wondering about aging issues. I tend to keep my PCs for a long time. I'll be adding a 2TB HDD to the system if I buy it. The system is major overkill for my use, as I'm not a gamer. But with my added HDD is comparable in price to new custom systems I can find using an intel i5-8400 PCU w/16G of ram and using onboard sound and video.

What's your advice -- new or used? Thanks. rmb

Without knowing his asking price, we can only guess.

 

[rmbelson]

Once I add my own HDD, cost will be ~$800-850

 

[ehmkec]

What are they asking for the used PC?

 

[USAFRet]

Once I add my own HDD, cost will be ~$800-850

Not a chance.
No way, no how.

For $800 (including $90 for the Windows OS), you could build a new system, with all new parts, that will crush that.

If you had said $350....maybe.

 

[rmbelson]

Appreciate the advice. If you can point me to a decent non-gamer's build I'd consider it. It would be my first build in about a decade or more, and being out of habit, thought I might outsource to a local shop, but maybe I'd like to build my own again. I currently have a win7 box that's about 7 years old. I do pretty basic stuff, internet, word processing, etc. But I use my secondary drive as a repository of a large music collection that I serve to other devices in my network. I do some mp3 editing from time to time, some vid file conversion, as I said pretty basic. Thanks for your advice. rmb

 

[cryoburner]

Also, what do you need it for? The vast majority of people aren't going to have an actual need for 32GB of RAM anytime soon. Unless you're doing certain kinds of professional-level video editing or other specialized tasks that can utilize a lot of RAM, 16GB would likely be plenty for years to come, and even 8GB might potentially be fine depending on your needs. Any more is likely to just be sitting there, not doing anything.

The older components will also be less energy-efficient (and in turn potentially a bit noisier) than current-generation hardware of a similar performance level. And as you said, some of that is older hardware, that probably isn't covered by any sort of warranty at this point. The components don't seem bad, but you could probably build a system with better performance at most tasks for less.

 

[rmbelson]

Forgot to say I keep my system on 24/7. I thought about building a simple NAS as well as a main system, but it'll be cheaper to do what I do off my main box, which is what I'm used to.

 

[USAFRet]

Forgot to say I keep my system on 24/7. I thought about building a simple NAS as well as a main system, but it'll be cheaper to do what I do off my main box, which is what I'm used to.

Start here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/353572-31-build-upgrade-advice
(don't forget to say that this will include the OS price and any other things you need)

Post a new thread in the Systems forum.
Some people will be along to build up a parts list.