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roryrjb | 3 years ago

I have a 3770 Ivy Bridge (a refurb'd HP Elite 8300 with SSD upgrade and 32GM RAM). Genuinely for the work I've done with it, C/C++, Rust, JS and Python, which I'd consider that heavy dev work, media consumption on a 2K monitor, with a Nvidia GT1030, some 3D gaming (on low-medium setting) it's competitive with my work MacBook Pro M1 (although that only has 8GB RAM).

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JKCalhoun|3 years ago

Is there a site that collects something like "hidden gems" of the used PC market? I know nothing about PCs (Apple guy) but I think I would enjoy getting cheap PCs from eBay. (I'd like to make a cheap entry-level gaming machine for my dad who is even less PC-literate than me and has an even tighter budget.)

I did check eBay for 8300's and saw there is quite a family of machines — some taking at least half0height graphics cards (for which I saw some used Radeon R5s on eBay going for $30 or so).

sokoloff|3 years ago

I don't know if there's a site focused on that (would seem like a lot of work for little payoff), but I can vouch that most office mid-sized towers will take a graphics card and most will have excellent cooling. For the Dell 9020, you need a power supply adapter ($14 on Amazon, $4 on Aliexpress; the motherboard takes a custom connector) and a replacement ATX power supply if you want to use a high power GPU. (For other motherboards that have a standard 20+4 ATX connector, you still might need a replacement PSU, but won't need the additional adapter cable.)

I've found Craigslist and FB Marketplace to be a better source, since shipping is a killer (but I'm in easy driving distance of Boston; if you're far away from a major office city, that might not work as well).

The i7-4790 Dell 9020 can't do TPM 2.0, so a few games will be locked out by anti-cheat mechanisms, but you can drop an 6650 XT or RX480/580 or cheap nVidia card into one and play the Minecraft/Fortnite/Rocket League and other light/medium games just fine, especially at only 1080p.

I probably wouldn't bother with a half-height R5. The Intel HD 630 iGPU will outperform an R5 and the Intel 4600 iGPU is 2/3 the performance of an R5 430. if you're out shopping for something new (to you) to buy, I think you can buy a computer with a better iGPU rather than buy a lesser CPU and add an R5. (If you can swing it, I'd probably target at least 8th gen CPUs at this point. Or target 4th gen if significantly cheaper in your area and plan to upgrade 3-4 years from now.)