New or pre-owned gaming PC?

Foxhound5366

Foxhound5366

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So I'm getting closer to pulling the trigger on rejoining the PC Master Race, and my question is a simple one: would you buy a pre-owned gaming PC or would you purchase new components from a place like Wootware and build it yourself?

Having a look at pre-owned PCs, it's very clear that a lot of them are zombie machines with parts of all sorts of different ages (and little to any warranty on anything).

At the rate that PC components continually improve, that's what makes me lean towards getting a new system instead. More peace of mind, and you can future-proof for a couple years at least (rather than getting a four year-old PC that's on its way out by modern standards).
 
I like having a three year warranty on my 1070. Buying a used GPU with the mining activities makes a used GPU risky.
 
It's going to depend on your budget really. Obviously you'll get more PC for your money if you go second-hand, but then warranty becomes a thing.

Do you need every component? Screen, kb, mouse etc?
 
UrBaN963 said:
It's going to depend on your budget really. Obviously you'll get more PC for your money if you go second-hand, but then warranty becomes a thing.

Do you need every component? Screen, kb, mouse etc?
Click to expand...

Nope, got my screen, SSD and peripherals sorted, so that helps.

I also don't want to overclock so won't need a fancy cooling system, and don't need a case with glowing lights.

Just the best future-proof system :) I read that the GTX1060 is the lowest you can go if you want VR, right? I guess that'd be a benchmark for me.
 
Mix and match is okay...get the CPU, motherboard and memory secondhand. PSU and graphics card would be better new with warranty. Those are the bits that are most likely to be problematic if you get them used.
 
Foxhound5366 said:
Nope, got my screen, SSD and peripherals sorted, so that helps.

I also don't want to overclock so won't need a fancy cooling system, and don't need a case with glowing lights.

Just the best future-proof system :) I read that the GTX1060 is the lowest you can go if you want VR, right? I guess that'd be a benchmark for me.
Click to expand...

Budget? MSI H97M-43 + 16gb(8gb x 2) value ram + intel core i7 4790k Bundles for R4200 (Carbonite) is a very good deal from PotterH.
This is his site version: http://www.mineaway.co.za/index.php?route=product/product&path=94_96_122&product_id=123

PotterH is trustworthy, a lot of people on the forum buy from him.
 
Johnatan56 said:
Budget? MSI H97M-43 + 16gb(8gb x 2) value ram + intel core i7 4790k Bundles for R4200 (Carbonite) is a very good deal from PotterH.
This is his site version: http://www.mineaway.co.za/index.php?route=product/product&path=94_96_122&product_id=123

PotterH is trustworthy, a lot of people on the forum buy from him.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the lead. When I see "Age: not sure" that immediately puts me off. It's like buying a car with its odometer removed.

My budget will probably be around R10K, so I'd rather get the latest-gen platform now that I can upgrade a bit more going forward than dump most of it into an expensive GPU and call it a day.
 
Neoprod said:
Mix and match is okay...get the CPU, motherboard and memory secondhand. PSU and graphics card would be better new with warranty. Those are the bits that are most likely to be problematic if you get them used.
Click to expand...

Yeah, Bunny said he'd be my eyes and ears on this stuff, so for now I'm just testing the waters on the general consensus over older stuff vs newer stuff.

I just bought a secondhand car so I've got no problem with secondhand, but then I'd like to be able to trust the seller 100%.
 
The prices of GPUs should start normalising soon with the crash in Ethereum pricing. The difficulty went up hugely recently which should make people think twice about mining.

And just when companies are bringing out those over-priced mining cards :crylaugh:
 
Sounds good Neoprod. It looks like "decent" GPUs cost around R3000, is that right?

For now I don't want to set the world on fire, just enjoy CS:GO. My monitor is 4K, so not sure which card I'd need to get a high framerate at 4K on a simple game like that?
 
Foxhound5366 said:
Nope, got my screen, SSD and peripherals sorted, so that helps.

I also don't want to overclock so won't need a fancy cooling system, and don't need a case with glowing lights.

Just the best future-proof system :) I read that the GTX1060 is the lowest you can go if you want VR, right? I guess that'd be a benchmark for me.
Click to expand...

So you basically need a MB, RAM, CPU, PSU & Case? HDD for staorage?
 
ponder said:
So you basically need a MB, RAM, CPU, PSU & Case? HDD for staorage?
Click to expand...

Yup, also at least a DVD drive, not sure price difference to a BluRay drive? And will need a 1TB drive for media storage, I can't survive only on my SSD anymore.

Is there a cheap way to transfer my Win 10 licence from my laptop to my new PC? R2000 for Win 10 will really suck, unless I get one of those cheap keys from a reseller in the UK.
 
Is there any noticeable difference between an i7 and a i5 with gaming? My layman's understanding is that the GPU does most of the heavy lifting, and an i7 is only a lot better for multiple threads and videoencoding?
 
Pretty much, yes. If it's just for gaming, go i5 or Ryzen I guess.
 
Foxhound5366 said:
Is there any noticeable difference between an i7 and a i5 with gaming? My layman's understanding is that the GPU does most of the heavy lifting, and an i7 is only a lot better for multiple threads and videoencoding?
Click to expand...

It depends on the specific game. That i7 is so cheap though and it's clocked higher than the i5.
 
Foxhound5366 said:
Is there any noticeable difference between an i7 and a i5 with gaming? My layman's understanding is that the GPU does most of the heavy lifting, and an i7 is only a lot better for multiple threads and videoencoding?
Click to expand...

Games will become more and more multi-threaded.
This is a side-by-side comparison of the i5 and i7.
[video=youtube;x02w_3GeuKY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x02w_3GeuKY[/video]

(Note the % load as well)
 
Get PotterH's i7...best bang for buck around. That kind of pricing takes platforms and what's best for what use discussions off the table.
 
UrBaN963 said:
Pretty much, yes. If it's just for gaming, go i5 or Ryzen I guess.
Click to expand...

If you go Ryzen then you'd also need an AMD card for max benefit, right? I'm just not sure about AMD. It's meant to offer you the equivalent performance of a card/cpu in a higher performance category, but is it really like that?
 
Foxhound5366 said:
My budget will probably be around R10K, so I'd rather get the latest-gen platform now that I can upgrade a bit more going forward than dump most of it into an expensive GPU and call it a day.
Click to expand...

Get as much GPU as your budget allows imo. I'd rather get less CPU and RAM etc than skimp on the GPU.
 
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