Refurb Desktop....Which one, and where to buy??

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This is like the question posted earlier for a refurb laptop, but instead I'm looking for a refurb desktop.

Mine is getting pretty old and very laggy. It is a Pentium G6951. Which I'm sure is several years old now.

Looking for a refurb on eBay, or any other site that folks have had good luck with.

I've heard to look for a “business” class computer but I'm not sure what those models would be.

Basically looking for the best bang for the buck under $250. Want a clean install of Windows 10 also. Would also be nice to find one that uses DDR3 memory so I could take it out of my old computer to boost my new one. Something fairly future proof. Don't really care if it has dents or scratches...as long as it WORKS well.

Thank you for any and all advice!
 
Search Ebay for Dell Precision T3500.

It is usually powered by Xeon CPU which is 7 years old but this is one of the most powerful computer at a workstation level you will ever have and probably ahead of its time.

You can put any OS you want including Win 10.

I have one of them for 3 years now and I bought it for around $150 without a hard drive.
HD is very cheap now.
 
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Most large cities in the US have a couple of Good-Will stores, and usually only one of those stores per city carries used computers. The sales they have on black-Friday cant be beat in price. On black-Friday my current computer with Windows 7 (now upgraded for free to Windows 10) cost $100. And my laser printer cost $35.

Go to a Good-Will store in a large city and ask them which Good-Will store in that city carries used computers.
 
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Here's where I buy. These are Dell refurb units, from Dell. I've bought several "business class" units here, especially laptops. Unless noted, they come with the OS pre-installed, with the COA attached. Just like a new one.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/m.html?_ssn=dell-official-store-usa-refurbished

You'll get an 800 phone number for support issues.

The only issue that I've had where I've had to call them, I bought a laptop and I thought the battery life was marginal (less than 2 hours on a full charge). Let's see what they'll do. I called, and was speaking to a real human (without a foreign accent) within a few minutes.

They couldn't send me a new battery, as they didn't have access to any. But what they offered instead was a $50 refund back to my credit card (and it was plus tax, so it was $53 and change). This was on a three year old laptop, that I'd paid only $225 to buy.

I accepted the offer for the refund and bought a new OEM Dell battery on eBay for $30.

I will continue to buy from them in the future.... I'm going to look and see what they're offering up, next.
 
Not knowing where your lag issues are occurring or whether you've done a recent fresh install (good idea every 3+ years) it's hard to say. Do you have enough ram, is your drive up to task? On weak point maybe your IGP. With today's HD web video content possibly a discrete graphics card maybe the answer. Here's a low power one I would recommend with your existing PSU: EVGA GeForce GT 730 2GB GDDR5 (02G-P3-3733-KR). However, this is all moot if your motherboard doesn't support a separate card. If so, other suggestions on this thread might be more appropriate.
 
I need to get one, don't have to time to reinstall windows on a machine which bad drive.

Amazon has refurb pcs for under 200$,
buy one with most RAM, cpu is not the bottle mostly unless you are running brute force password cracking software

Buy a cheapo ssd for main drive to install OS and cache/temp/paging files. Then you will have a super fast pc for around $200
 
I need the following spec for a desktop or laptop, what are my options?

2 Physical cores @ 2.7 GHz Processor (or better
4 Physical cores @ 2.2 GHz processor (or better
 
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I know this doesn't meet your $250 limit, but I just took a peek at the Lenovo website and you can get a basic tower with an AMD A10 processor, 12 GB of DDR3 RAM, Windows 10 installed, and a 2 TB drive for $400 (not sure if they charge for shipping).

I would go new all day at that price rather than worry about a used/refurbished machine, but that's me. Just thought you might be able to find some bargains on capable new basic desktops if you poked around.
 
Originally Posted By: Virtus_Probi
I know this doesn't meet your $250 limit, but I just took a peek at the Lenovo website and you can get a basic tower with an AMD A10 processor, 12 GB of DDR3 RAM, Windows 10 installed, and a 2 TB drive for $400 (not sure if they charge for shipping).

I would go new all day at that price rather than worry about a used/refurbished machine, but that's me. Just thought you might be able to find some bargains on capable new basic desktops if you poked around.


Those look nice, but I'm such a cheap [censored] that the refurbs are probably the best for me.

I'm not real demanding of my computer as I do probably 90% web surfing.

Just need something a little newer and faster that my current model.
 
I like your ebay choices. I got my HPCompaq desktop for $150 last year with an i5 and love the bland little thing.
 
I bought a half-dozen of those Dell Precisions, for my wife's small business.
Only weakness was the NVidia Quadro graphics cards.
I think they came with a NVS290 or NVS295. All of them broke.

It's not that big of a deal, you just hit up EBay for some other NVidia Quadro card.
Just be forewarned.
 
Originally Posted By: daddi
This is like the question posted earlier for a refurb laptop, but instead I'm looking for a refurb desktop.

Mine is getting pretty old and very laggy. It is a Pentium G6951. Which I'm sure is several years old now.


Looks like a celeron socket 1156 processor

No good upgrades so definitely a candidate for replacement

Generally speaking never buy computers on ebay with some exceptions.

This looks like a good one on a budget
https://us.refurb.io/collections/desktop...gb-500gb-dvd-rw

2.5-3x faster than your current one.

$215

I'd probably snag a SSD drive and image their drive over to it..

If you can stretch the budget this one is good
already comes with SSD. and a few years newer (haswell processor)
$337
https://us.refurb.io/collections/desktop...-windows-10-pro

IMO: its pretty much mandatory to use an SSD for a boot drive.. the speed difference in everything is very noticeable.
 
I like the older Dell business laptops, easy to take apart and mod, turns out some
will take and run more RAM then the spec sheet says! Upgraded to a IDE SSD and I can still run another HD
and still have a DVD drive!

All of mine have been in use for 10 years or so!
 
That's what I did - it had iC7 processor - and 8 on the ram - so just put a new HD in and runs great.
Nicest part is my personal and company Dell use the same docking station with big monitors etc ...
 
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Pentium+G6951+%40+2.80GHz

When you can find a deal on your new computer, you can check the relative cpu performance to your cpu here.
 
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