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Finnie

Finnie

Finnie

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3 May 2019
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4
Hi everyone 40 year old sim racer here

Over the past few months I've loaded asset to Corsa on to my surface pro 4. I bought a wheel and have been loving racing on my 32.inch TV.

The laptop seriously struggles with it if any other cars on the road though so I think it's time to upgrade.

Not wanting to spend much on my midlife crisis so wonder what's the best way to go.

Buy brand new

Build myself

Buy second hand gaming pc and potentially upgrade.

Bro in law and his kids have a VR so have an eye on that eventually but for now it's case of wanting to up the settings from low on everything and having some opponents.

Right now my thoughts are to buy a parts pc off gumtree for less than 100 and the watch gumtree and eBay for a better motherboard and graphics card

Thanks
 
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Finnie said:
Right now my thoughts are to buy a parts pc off gumtree for less than 100 and the watch gumtree and eBay for a better motherboard and graphics card
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Self builds are great - but buying parts piecemeal second hand is asking for trouble - as you will find it hard to troubleshoot a faulty part and time may have moved on too much to reasonably advise the seller of the fault once the part is identified (if that makes sense).

Better to buy all components at the same time - second hand and new - as no delay in identifying problem. Best things to buy second hand for value and reliability are: memory, CPU and GPUs (GPUs within warranty) - or motherboard/CPU/memory bundles.

Second hand complete systems can be fantastic value - especially if bought locally. These should start appearing after July, when zen 2 is released - as will motherboard/CPU combos...
 
Plec said:
Second hand complete systems can be fantastic value - especially if bought locally. These should start appearing after July, when zen 2 is released - as will motherboard/CPU combos...
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Very much this. You might get some fantastic deals. Depends on your budget though. The types to sell and upgrade are usually early adopters so it'll more towards the higher end gear. You might get lower end stuff from a cycle or two back though from people doing a more long term upgrade (I can myself in this category. I've sold a few 2-3 year old GPUs that were working perfectly fine).
 
Thanks for the advice.

8ve seen two offers I'm interested in.

One has a couple of cases, power supplies, hard drives but no graphics cards all just for £50. Seems a bargain for what you get. I have asked for specs but no reply yet.

The other advert I'm interested is this. Whole working system for a pretty bargain price. Intention would be to use a while and then upgrade. Is this a good enough spec for asset to?

Link deleted
 
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Finnie said:
The other advert I'm interested is this. Whole working system for a pretty bargain price. Intention would be to use a while and then upgrade. Is this a good enough spec for asset to?
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Mustn't link to other sites selling stuff. You can copy/paste the spec to ask for advice.

Having seen it, it's not good for upgrading. Motherboard is old socket 775 and that model is only validated for ancient Pentium Dual Core E6700 chips. Owner appears to have managed to run an Intel Core 2 Quad chip on it regardless, and that's the fastest chip available (slow as a snail these days) so no CPU upgrade possible with that board.

DDR3 memory. We're on DDR4 now, so upgrading that would be investing in old tech.

The two 640GB hard drives will likely be very old by now. A new 1TB hard drive only costs £35-ish so those can be disregarded as worth anything.

Anyway, by the time you spend money on upgrading it, that £230 you spent on it would have been better spent on new components. You can get a basic 24" 1080p monitor and a new graphics card as fast or faster than the 7950 for £230. You'll need a better CPU these days and an SSD*.

* SSDs are faster than HDDs so don't consider HDDs as having any value when looking at second-hand systems.

What's going for it, is that it's a complete system with keyboard, mouse and screen if all you can spend is £230. But as far as cost-effectiveness for upgrading, it's bad. Like getting a loan at 100% interest, basically. Don't think it's for you, with your sim racing hobby and upgrade plans. It's more something cheap to browse on and play old games on now and then with no upgrade plans.


EDIT - sorry, in the following sentence, I meant to add the bolded and didn't:

Anyway, by the time you spend money on upgrading it, that £230 you spent on it would have been better spent on new components or more modern second-hand components.
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That's a fantastic reply. Brilliant

ok so I wonder what is a better approach?

Perhaps a list of suggested parts for me to look for new or used?

Gtx 1060 or equivalent?
Ddr4 mother board
I5 5700 or equivalent
250gb SSD and 1tb hard drive
Power supply
Case
Cooler?


Where is the best online used parts shopping place.

My budget is around 400 if that's possible
 
Yes, as Dann75 says that system on GT would be a waste of money. It's overpriced for what he's actually selling as the sum of the parts individually sell for less than he's asking.

Also the recommended specs for Assetto Corsa state an Nvidia GTX 970. These go for around £70 to £100 on the Bay. The specs also state a '4 core Intel or 6 core AMD' but this is far too vague and ambiguous as the system you link is a 4 core intel but is old and old dog slow.
 
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OcUK have a Clearance/B-Grade section that's worth keeping an eye on. https://www.overclockers.co.uk/clearance

They don't devote much time to it and the pricing there so sometimes the price is the same as new. What they prefer is if you see something you might be interested in - contact them and make a lower bid for it. Phone, webnote or Customer Service forum here on the website.

For parts that OcUK no longer stock, check Gum, Bay, CEX and local ads as Plec suggested.


Finnie said:
That's a fantastic reply. Brilliant

ok so I wonder what is a better approach?

Perhaps a list of suggested parts for me to look for new or used?

Gtx 1060 or equivalent?
Ddr4 mother board
I5 5700 or equivalent
250gb SSD and 1tb hard drive
Power supply
Case
Cooler?


Where is the best online used parts shopping place.

My budget is around 400 if that's possible
Click to expand...

Let's take a look at what you can get new, so you can have a guide as to what might be worth it second-hand:

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You're on £325 there. Could find something like a GTX 970 as MartinPrince mentioned for £75, if you spend a fair bit of time making bids and hopefully one drops right for you. For monitor you'd use a TV or something for now. Take the hard drive from the laptop for extra storage if you need it. (Later - upgrade the laptop with a cheap SSD so it's at least snappier when you use it, or try and sell it).

Or look for similar second-hand, to allow for buying a monitor if necessary. Something like the above for around £200 might be worth it, considering the loss of warranty cover versus new.

A decent B450 mobo such as that one will allow you to pop in an upcoming 8-core Ryzen Zen 2 whenever you find some extra funds. Unless you can find a decent motherboard like that second-hand, it'd be worth it in terms of upgrading to buy the motherboard new at least. Other than the Ryzen 1200 which is borderline and just to get you off and going, the rest of it is fine for 1080p gaming and can be upgraded. Depending on how ambitious your GPU plans are, you may want a quality 650W PSU instead. That 550W in the spec would handle up to a RTX 2080 fine and really, at that point, if you can afford something even more powerful, you'll probably be able to afford a new PSU as well if needed. So yeah, futureproof, but up to a point or it cuts into what you can get for the present.
 
Danny75 has given you some sage advice. lf you're trying to get as much bang for your buck definitely go Ryzen for your processor. I'd also try and get at least a 256GB SSD for your OS and a few games. It will make a massive difference to the feel and speed of using the computer. You can get Samsung OEM SSD's on the bay for £25-£30 and they come up all the time, they're usually the PM851 variant.
 
Thanks Guys

the advice much appreciated. Ive done a bit more homework and have a build in mind.

Tempted to wait for the post zen 2 release deals but it's hard to wait once you have started.

Decided on ryzen 5 2600 which looks to be available for around 130 and go from there depending what deals come up in the next two weeks.

Looked at these two today as a get up and go start...edit - just noticed the delivery and VAT charge, sneaky!:

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £100.68 (includes shipping: £11.70)
​
 
hows that for luck,just finished a gaming pc build for g/grandson and my nephew saw it and asked me to build him a pc for web browing etc no games and i said i would look around for a build for him so was pleased that i came across your thread on parts
 
hibsboy said:
asked me to build him a pc for web browing etc no games
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This spec/build isn't quite what you're after.

If it's for web browsing only you will only need an APU, motherboard, memory and low wattage PSU (400W would suffice), small SSD and case.
 
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