I realize that older hardware is the nono/bad touch zone of computers but lets be real here, how is it not a good deal to pick up a dell precision workstation with dual quad or hexacore xeons? At that, pick one up for 400 dollars. Add a monitor on that and grab a GPU to your liking and you have a rather impressive machine as long as it's not from 2009 and back.
I ask this because I see a lot of users on here shun the older hardware away when some people may not be able to afford god level hardware. In one thread someone asked about the best mobo they could get for 80 bucks or less for some intel chip, I have asked the same about an AM3+ board, and almost everyone who commented said to buy brand new or came around with a 200 dollar board. I find this kind of silly and not very helpful.
I think that if someone had a need for a desktop, a precision t series would be pretty good and they could get whatever GPU they wanted / needed. Hell they could make it a hackintosh as most precision boxes have had that done to them. I think that's pretty neat.
On top of that a box as old as a precision 670, a machine that I am working on now, would be good for a lot of stuff. It has sata as well as IDE (perfect for me since I have little sata but lots of IDE), it can support 16 GB of ram, and it has PCIe. While it may not be some magical gaming god that a lot of people want, it would be fine to play some minecraft, work on learning video editing or doing editing with on a budget, and would be a suitable box for anyone who needed some heft.
All in all, I think some users on the forum who are in need of a desktop for 400 dollars could be recommended some older hardware, prebuilds like the precisions or just older hardware in general, and probably get along fine.
Someone says: 230 bucks maximum budget for CPU+Mobo Answer: 260 buck Intel CPU overkilling³³³
-> Hand me the office software making use of 6 hyperthreaded cores and I will tell you 230<260 Maybe someone is happy FX4300 owner and needs a mobo recommendation.
->Do never tell anyone to get an i3 over an fx-6xxx for streaming. Have seen that on here...
Being more specific on usage and philosophy of use is helpful, in the end a rig is someone's own personal opinion, when you ask others for a build, it is going from their subjective view of hardware. I personally don't recommend the newest of the newest, but rather look for things that can be easily purchased from a reputable source and is in good supply. I do mainly Haswell builds and on rare occasion AMD FX builds (APU is not my thing). But it depends on the usage.
Older hardware is hard to get and sometimes you can get it locally or from ebay... but they are not "all over the place". It's hard to tell someone to purchase a Q6600 build from California when they are in Australia. But anyone can get a G3258 or i3-4130 or w/e.
Agreed. I think it also makes it difficult to recommend hardware that is a bit dated but will get the job done.
But I do want to say that this forum just assisted me this past Friday when I bought a new 4790k and mobo to go with it. I was also gonna change my x2 280x to a GTX Titan(275$). Now, I still think it was a pretty good deal (~$400) for the money, but I really though afterwords that maybe I didn't need it. I was kinda right, and decided to spend my money elsewhere. My 2600k is still kicking, and will be fine with a new mobo. I could definitely get better streaming out of the 4790, but I also remembered 4670k that I was going to part with, but I will use instead. I only made the final decision because of the forum.
I appreciate honesty, but I think sometimes people aren't thinking about it. For example, someone told me to checkout the 5820k because it was only about $80 more. When I took my stuff back, I checked it out but realized I wasn't ready to make an investment into DDR4, bringing my total closer to $5-600 dollars. I like seeing monster builds for the #PCmasterrace, but I think some fail to remember hardware is typically worlds ahead of the average user's workload. I'm more appreciative of builds that stay within a budget while still giving the end user reasonable performance. I like when the build answers the user's workload and budget, which is what we should all be focused on. My two 280x are still great performers with my 2600k for 1080p. I gave my mother an old 3.0 core 2, with an SSD and cheap GPU she loves it. Honourable mention to @MisteryAngel and @Streetguru. You guys list a lot of reasonably priced stuff that is focused on getting the job done.
No I've been sitting here with a dell Precision 670 for th last 2 days troubleshooting the issues it has and I decided to look up how much they were and I could buy one new for about 150 or so. I looked up some newer ones that were dual quads or hex cores and they were 4-500 USD. Made me wonder why people don't look at OEM systems like that, aside from difficulty of maintenance.
I dunno. The only stuff that really makes use of that is USB sticks and external hard drives and if you flip out over 2 minutes of time spent on one file transfer then you have your own problems :P
I really have an aversion to buying used crap from random people.
From a friend sure, but from craigslist or whatever? Nah I'll pay a bit more for a warranty/return policy or do without.
edit: I'd recommend used systems from an actual retailer though for basic needs. Even doing this it's hard for me to get over the garbage PSUs and motherboards prebuilts use.
Lol in my experience if I wanted to buy a full comp from somewhere I would get a refurbished workstation from a tool shop. You have a good point though.
Different philosophy of use and expectations. Aside from laptops, I would never really purchase a pre-built computer, old or new hardware. Part of working on computers for me is the act of building it, and tinkering with it as I work on it. Others may or may not agree with that, but that's who I am.
Out of my own experience working on workstations (old ass ones), they are not worth the time or money you will spend fixing them up. Old ones that have been worked hard tend to have more issues than is worth spending money on (I worked on rigs that had traces dying in the CPUs from the wear of being pushed for years in a professional environment). Not only that, they had multiple proprietary parts on them and were nearly impossible to rework into a usable machine without heavy modification. Not worth it.
Not saying that old workstations and old computers are not worth the time and money, some are, but just have to look at the other problems that can come from it.
wouldn't the older hardware be less power efficient and instead of saving the environment with using older hardware, you are actually hurting the environment using 300w for a simple router or whatever?(the wattage number is purely fictional just giving an example)
because that is what i was thinking when i wanted to use my old computer as a nas(e6750 2 gb of ram and 8500 gt) why not buy a raspberry pi and make that as a nas that is WAAAY more power efficient.
not saying that your theory is bad but that is just my train of thought
Used hardware can be pretty usefull if you want to get stuff cheap, like backup pc or something. I once again falled back to my single core AMD Sempron 140 (single core) OC'd to 3.2Ghz. And it uses DDR2 and mobo from 2009. It has never failed on me and it has always been there for me when I need to check something up incase of my main PC failing which it just did, mobo shorted itself luckily I had still warranty left so I will RMA it very soon. Oh and this bakcup pc of mine was found from dumpster, it didn't work until I tried and tried and tried again, then it just magically started working and it's been serving as my trusty backup for a year now. Hell I can even play some light games on it. Only hardware stuff I would NEVER buy used is PSUs and getting used HDD seems pretty dodgy aswell.
I mentioned in the reply that the wattage number is purely fictional...wasn't implying that is what you actually use for a router just giving some exaggeration as an example for other people that i sometimes see on the internet doing similar stuff.
I am in no position of criticizing you because I can see you actually know your stuff and I am just a normal PC builder/programmer and really have barely any idea of servers or making your own router for that matter(only saw a couple of videos on youtube)
Salvaging old parts is VERY good thing...even for obsolete and inefficient stuff(your coffee table for example) but I was just saying this because I didn't see many people talk about using it efficient as well.
If have a need, I then think about what is the shortest distance between me and the fulfillment of that need. If a packard bell 986DX can do what I need it to do for $5 from a garage sale, so be it. But some people do not know EXACTLY what they need their machine to do.
Yes I know....I already have everything this being my last pc...pretty beefy cooler and a very slow and heavy 8500gt...just wanted to see if there is something i can do with it or just let it gather dust or maybe sell/donate it:D