Worth spending £100-£150 on?

Dwaindibbly

Dwaindibbly

Dwaindibbly

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Hi

I'm after a bit of advice please.

My partners friend has asked advice on upgrading her boys "gaming" pc to run fortnite.
It's a Dell 745 core 2 duo that she bought 2nd hand last August for £180, I believe she's been ripped off and told her its not worth spending any money on.

I can get hold of an i7 990x, x58 sabertooth mobo with 24gb of 1600 ram and an 780ti plus case for £100-£150.

1st off do you think I was right in saying she's wasting money on the dell?

2nd, is the i7 package worth spending on for a stop gap as she really doesn't have much money?

I would get a decent psu and ssd so that she could upgrade the other parts later on when she can afford.

Thanks in advance
 
Not sure buying a ten year old platform (x58) is a suitable replacement unless you're an enthusiast who knows what they're doing.
(Don't get me wrong x58 was a stonking platform, but are you not swapping one headache for another?)

That Dell 745 will have a low wattage power supply (its an office machine, I'm looking at a room full of them right now), so a low power 1050ti might work. But the processor will also be holding them back, and the memory will be nothing special.

Whoever labelled it a "gaming PC" was mis-selling.
 
Core2 Duo simply hasn't been any gaming PC CPU in long long time... In this galaxy or another.
Even if it had HyperThreading it would be still super hyper low end CPU.

While single core/thread performance is low end by today's standards, with 3x the cores and 6x the threads that i7 990x would be way better.
 
skyripper said:
Not sure buying a ten year old platform (x58) is a suitable replacement unless you're an enthusiast who knows what they're doing.
(Don't get me wrong x58 was a stonking platform, but are you not swapping one headache for another?)

That Dell 745 will have a low wattage power supply (its an office machine, I'm looking at a room full of them right now), so a low power 1050ti might work. But the processor will also be holding them back, and the memory will be nothing special.

Whoever labelled it a "gaming PC" was mis-selling.
Click to expand...

I get what your saying but I would be putting it all together so there shouldn't be too many headaches.

I dont really see putting a 1050ti in the dell as an option, for less she could have a much better cpu package and a gpu with similar performance from what I can tell.

My main issue is buying such old bits, it's the price that makes me think it could be worth it for her circumstances.
 
That Dell definitely sounds like one of those eBay bodge jobs that when it comes down to it is a **** old optiplex marketed as a "GAMING" pc because it has a 730 and some blue fans and I'd definitely say ripped off. I've been fiddling with X58 systems for a good few years now and 150ish for that combo is honestly an insanely good price, but that being said given the price of X58 boards alone especially a top tier one like the Saberooth, and even somewhat decent pricing on a 780 Ti there's also the angle of buying and flipping. Obviously I wouldn't suggest taking her money and using it to flip PC parts but an X58 Sabertooth board would net easily over £100 with some BIN listings for £200, a 780ti maybe in the realm of £100ish and even the 990x according to sold listings on ebay is going for £80-100 (similarly priced to the X5690).

It's safe to say a 990x with a 780ti would beat the living daylights out of a C2D/1050TI in raw performance, but would also use a lot more power and you'd definitely need a decent PSU up in there with the 780Ti sucking power plus the 6 core 130w chip. Also gotta factor in exactly how far that motherboard has been pushed if it's been OC'ed and what it's potential lifespan would be given those boards are coming up on or have even surpassed being a decade old and with X58 being known for it's overclocking prowess the board could've been running at full tilt for it's life and crap out next week (only mentioning that as I had a Gigabyte board die when the VRM's went).

I moved away from X58 for my main rig (christ the cpu-z validation is still my sig) and ended up giving my old setup (x5650 @4ghz, 7950, 12gb ram) to my uncle as he's the one who got me into PC's when I was a kid but due to work/kids he was out of the loop and din't have the time to build one for many years and it's still running fine for games at 1080p - probably won't be maxing out AAA titles or anything but still a playable experience. If I had the opportunity to snag a deal like that I'd most definitely do it - if that kids anything like the kids I know he'll probably be into playing BR stuff ie Fortnite, Apex and that rig would handle it no problem. Chuck in a decent PSU/SSD as mentioned in OP, maybe rip the HDD out of the Optiplex for some extra storage and it'll be a decent little rig.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7ohc05REo8
 
Thank you for a very detailed response.

The parts are from someone I know, they haven't been overclocked at all.
The person in question found them clearing out his loft and just wants rid, they don't want to use ebay as they have been ripped off before.

I think I'll go for it.

Would you say a 650w psu would be enough?
 
if the Dell is the tower and not a slim on then im sure you could upgrade the psu in it, also it might be worth checking if it supports core2quads as well, get them cheap enough to test.

saying that though, you can buy decent low-mid gaming systems 2nd hand for £70-200.
 
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