Saved Bookmarks
| 1. |
Solve : Most People buy a CPU to upgrade, how about buying a serious downgrade? |
|
Answer» While looking at the CPU support list for the Biostar MCP6PB M2+ motherboard in my older gaming system, a 15 Watt CPU caught my eye. The Athlon 64 2650E 1.6Ghz Single-Core with 128k L1 and 512k L2 cache. most people buy CPUs that are far above and beyond the current software needs I completely agree. And they spend way over the odds. I timed my Core 2 Duo 2.3 GHz, 2GB laptop, bought ex-CORPORATE refurbished, for 179 UK pounds in 2012, against my 3.0 GHz quad core Phenom II 4GB desktop (700 UKP in 2011) at video transcoding using Ffmpeg, and the laptop came in at 80% of the speed, for 24% of the price. I can buy an ex corporate Core 2 Duo 3.0 GHz desktop with 2 GB RAM, a 250 GB hard drive, and Windows 7 Pro for 129 UKP, 18% of what I paid for the AMD desktop, which was, admittedly, a vanity purchase. (It's a Shuttle). If I was prepared to have Vista Home Premium I could have a Core 2 Duo 3 GHz with 4GB RAM and 160 GB for is 99 UKP, 13%. I too have had good luck with refurbs, specifically buying the HP Business Class off lease systems. At my last job we had a mix of workstations and Consumer grade PC's that were created into servers which were Pentium 133 Mhz through Pentium III 800Mhz in processing power and MANY of them were GETTING really really tired by the frequency of help desk calls for systems acting up. They were all running NT4 SP6 and Windows 2000 Professional SP4. The business was a "Not for Profit" Coop Food Store and so we had a very tight budget to work with for IT. I ended up finding that Tiger Direct had put for sale Pentium 4 ( 2.8 Ghz ) HP Business Class Refurb SFF systems for just $129.99 with Windows XP Professional, and this was back when buying Windows XP Professional alone was $139.99. I was able to convince my director to buy 40 of these systems and we ended up getting a volume discount $10 off each PC at just $119.99 each. I quickly implemented these systems and pulled out the very tired systems, and the users were all very happy, and the GM was very happy that I basically got them a workstation upgrade for the slowest/worst off of the systems for less than the cost of the XP Pro OS alone and got the PC's along with it basically for free at that price. I was at this business for 2 years with those refurbs and only had 1 out of 40 systems require a hard drive replacement, but i have a strong feeling that it was user induced since the user wanted the computer on top of a filing cabinet vs on the desk to free up desk area and with the slamming of the filing cabinet, they probably jarred the hard drive as it was SPINNING and crashed it that way. I a few months later also saw other HP Business Class systems for sale as refurbs for $79.99 ( around 2008 ) with NO-OS and bought one for myself:: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4166230 HP Compaq EVO D500 Pentium 4 1.7Ghz 256MB RAM 20GB IDE HDD CD-ROM The cool thing with this model was that while it was sold without an OS, it still had its Windows 2000 Professional Key Sticker on it and so I just needed to use the Windows 2000 Professional installation CD and then enter the key that came originally with this computer. Not sure if someone was suppose to remove the key from the barebones or not, but it was nice that it was there to create a dual-boot Windows 2000 Pro SP4 / Linux system. While many refurb systems have short warranty terms, HP gave these systems a 12 month warranty, but because the Business Class HP's are a solid product line I didnt have to send any back. Lots of money can be saved by buying a good refurb system, although you cant just buy any refurb, you need to know what you are buying so you dont end up with a system that is not a good match to your application. But same goes for new computers as well. You need to know what you need for processing power and features vs buying a computer such as an off the shelf Wal-mart eMachine for example for $289.00 and trying to play heavy graphics and resource hungry games on it. Chances are its going to need a lot more than just a video card and power SUPPLY upgrade to play those games and its more than likely a slow and energy efficient system intended for everything but heavy resource and graphics gaming. |
|