Question Refurbed desktops on eBay?

smurph306pug

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I'm after a new desktop. eBay is full of i7, 16g ram, 240ssd for £350.

Are these worth it or are they rubbish? I don't play games but I do need to run two monitors.

Any help appreciated!
 
'Refurbished' doesn't mean much, it's generally just a factory reset to wipe existing data. Don't expect any scratched panels on the case or similar damage to have been touched at all. I wouldn't distinguish between refurbished, second hand, used and so on when it comes to desktops.

Intel has been using the i7 branding since 2009 and you can stuff an SSD and 16GB of memory into any computer.

So it's highly dependent on the model. A 2009 model would be terrible value at £350. A customer return, factory repair or other nearly new model would be a great price at £350.

There are a fair number sellers on ebay asking lots of money for old machines in fancy new cases and similar so you can't assume it's worth the money.

Almost any machine will output to two monitors, it's very undemanding and two simultaneous outputs have been supported across the board for fifteen years. Everything you'd want to pay £350 for will support three. The main limiting factor is going to be the number of physical video output ports and whether they're compatible with your screens without expensive adapters.


Looking around a new £400 machine with the same amount of memory and storage and an i3-8100 or similar offers similar performance to an i7-6700 from 2016 so you'd be looking at something newer than that. There don't tend to be too many 2-3 year old computers on the second hand market so your choices are likely to be limited.

The lower end models are generally more attractive second hand as a perfectly usable machine for sub-£100.
 
For Apple Refurbished Products best to checkout:




Have a nice weekend :)
 
EndlessWaves - thanks for that, i dont know what im looking at so thats quite helpful!

RoadsterUK - Ive never got on with apple stuff so ill avoid that. Thanks all the same!

I find most chat seems to be about gaming pcs. All the classifieds is gaming pcs. But i just want something fast and basic for £400 :)
 
EndlessWaves - thanks for that, i dont know what im looking at so thats quite helpful!

RoadsterUK - Ive never got on with apple stuff so ill avoid that. Thanks all the same!

I find most chat seems to be about gaming pcs. All the classifieds is gaming pcs. But i just want something fast and basic for £400 :)

No problem. For some reason I actually read it as though you were looking for Apple Products, its probably because I was in the Apple Forum prior to seeing your question and obviously had Apple on the brain...lol.

Hope you find what you are looking for.
 

Is this any good?

The images on that site show no USB ports on the rear, which would be a major problem for me. Looking up the part number on other sites (e.g. Box) does show it has them though, so I'm not sure what's going on there.

It's also a little over budget if you want to add an extra 8GB of memory (~£30-35). It is available with the next processor down, Intel's mid-range brand, if you'd like to add that and keep it under budget:

I'd lean towards something smaller personally but a medium sized model like this is still pretty small and does give you room to add extra drives and expansion cards in future.
 
We use the Dell Optiplex range at work and they are pretty solid - you can buy them from the Dell Outlet here (Link) and they often have a promotion (currently it's 15% off).

With your budget and what they have available, the OptiPlex 3070 Micro Form Factor they have for £275 before VAT (and before promotion discount) is worth a look. It can be mounted to the back of a monitor via a stand and has both a HDMI and Displayport so you can connect to two monitors out of the box. All you'd need to do is bump up the RAM which can be had for £37 (8GB) or £64 (16GB) from Crucial.

If you're considering something else from the link above be careful of the OptiPlex 3070 Small Form Factor options they currently have, they don't have a wireless card installed - fine if you never intend on using Wifi.

Without knowing exactly what you'll be using the machine for it'll be difficult to recommend something specific, but the OptiPlex range is a decent enough option for your budget 🙂
 
I personally would not buy any kind of technology on ebay. A better option for buying that kinda of thing would be Amazon or in person in a store itself or online on a well know stores website. I got my laptop from Costco.
 
I personally would not buy any kind of technology on ebay. A better option for buying that kinda of thing would be Amazon or in person in a store itself or online on a well know stores website. I got my laptop from Costco.

It depends who you shop from on eBay. You can find good products if you know what you're looking for. On Amazon you don't get to see the actual product. It's genericaly advertised and you also pay a premium for shopping at stores. For £350 given that spec a buyer can get a fairly decent machine on eBay.
 
CPU performance has converged greatly in the past 5-10 years. A 2016 i7-6700 is still a faster CPU than an i3-8100. The CPUs along with their associated chipsets have just tended to go through refinement processes. In fact I would consider anything from the 2014 Haswell line onwards to be fairly nice machine that's plenty capable.
 
I've just built a new, new non-gaming pc

Gemini M cougar case
400w psu
2x8 gb ram
250gb ssd
Ryzen 3200g
B450 pro max 2 motherboard
And win 10, all for £299 brand new, loved building it as well,

I use it for dev work, design and app creation and does everything I need it to do.

Could you go down that route?

Screenshot_20200725-211809_Samsung Internet.jpg
 
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yes while as mentioned there are good people on Ebay I still think you can find better options elsewhere and better support if something goes wrong. Not everything on the internet is as good as it may seem. Thank you and have a great day.
 

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