PC Valuation....

Eye

Mods, i do not know if this is the right place for this thread but having read the for sale sticky i know this sorta thread aint really allowed there so did'nt know where else to go, feel free to move it if you know somewhere more appropriate. Cheers.

Right then, planning a major pc upgrade in the comings weeks and so when i'm all done and dusted i will have my current machine, which i type from now, sitting idle and so i will more than likely sell it and see it off to a good home.
Now what i was hoping to do is to check and see if anyone here might be able to help me put a rough value on my pc, it's not the best in the world but still does pretty well and plays HL2 and Doom3 pretty well

right then, here goes

Case: Modified Large Tower Case (10” window, UV Lights, Extra Cooling Fans)
Power Supply: 550w
Processor: AMD Athlon XP 2400+
Processor Cooling: CoolerMaster Jet 7+
Memory: 1Gb (2x512mb) Crucial DDR SO-DIMM PC2700
Motherboard: DFI Lanparty NF II Ultra B (Plus all extras)
Sound: Onboard 5.1 Surround Sound
Graphics: 64Mb GeForce 3 Ti 500
Monitor: 19” Philips 109S CRT (Max Res. 1920x1440)
Hard Drives: 2x Maxtor 120Gb 7200rpm IDE
CD/DVD: Samsung Dual Layer 16x DVD+-RW
Lite On 48x CD Burner
Networking: 2x Onboard Lan (1x 100Mbps + 1x 1000Mbps)

Still a decent enough spec machine for your average gamer, but obviously lacking in some areas, the graphics card is pretty old but it has served me very well over the years and still works a treat.

Ideally i'd like to get 2 prices from peeps here, first of a boards.ie price (what i might be likely to get selling on here....not alot i can imagine ) and secondly a sort of real world price, i.e selling to your average joe soap/work mate/etc...

Any and all help would be much appreciated as i will need as much money as possibly to fund new pc :-\

commited

Probably €400 - €500. Depends on quality of the case & power supply & whether or not it has a genuine operating system.

gline

yeh what case and psu is it??? I'd say 500 at most as the gfx is vastly underpowered. You ever had the cou overclocked - come on now be honest

Eye

Case is a pretty bog standard large tower case, cpu was never overclocked and as for the psu manufacturer had to check that, it's a Q-Tec 550w dual fan gold psu.

spec wise i know the gfx is low but it ain't that bad, it performs better than some 128mb cards, that's the only reason i never upgraded it, could'nt justify the money when i would see little to no difference.

board is vgood, can easily take a much higher rated cpu and faster ram, again never got around to doing it myself until now and well it's just as easy to start from scratch which is what i will be doing.

i can and probably will let Win XP Pro go with the machine and buy another copy for the new machine so i guess that can be added to it also.

tbh i know i wont get a whole lot for it on boards, but i do think it's worth more than the €500 suggested if i was to sell off boards.

i mean if you compare it to the likes of this....
http://www.pcworld.ie/productDetails.aspx?productRID=202&image=Packard_Bell
it not so bad, fair enough that machine has got the athlon 64 @2.2Ghz not the xp2400 @2.0Ghx thats in mine, Same amount of ram but can't compare speds, you can be sure you'll get a crap MB with the pc world machine, got slightly more storage @240Gb as opposed to 200Gb there, don't think much of that x200 tbh they are a budget card so i would expect it to perform about the same or a fraction better than the Ti500. Its got a 19" LCD which will have crap resolutions compared to a 19" CRT as long as you have the room for it it's a much better monitor. Dual layer dvd is the smae but you get the extra cdrw in mine....

All in all i think people look at the specs and think it's a crap machine but really it performs extremely well and is still pretty comparable to todays average joe soap machine.

gline

Eye wrote:

Case is a pretty bog standard large tower case, cpu was never overclocked and as for the psu manufacturer had to check that, it's a Q-Tec 550w dual fan gold psu.

spec wise i know the gfx is low but it ain't that bad, it performs better than some 128mb cards, that's the only reason i never upgraded it, could'nt justify the money when i would see little to no difference.

board is vgood, can easily take a much higher rated cpu and faster ram, again never got around to doing it myself until now and well it's just as easy to start from scratch which is what i will be doing. oh and qtec is binable, terrible psus they are

i can and probably will let Win XP Pro go with the machine and buy another copy for the new machine so i guess that can be added to it also.

tbh i know i wont get a whole lot for it on boards, but i do think it's worth more than the €500 suggested if i was to sell off boards.

i mean if you compare it to the likes of this....
http://www.pcworld.ie/productDetails.aspx?productRID=202&image=Packard_Bell
it not so bad, fair enough that machine has got the athlon 64 @2.2Ghz not the xp2400 @2.0Ghx thats in mine, Same amount of ram but can't compare speds, you can be sure you'll get a crap MB with the pc world machine, got slightly more storage @240Gb as opposed to 200Gb there, don't think much of that x200 tbh they are a budget card so i would expect it to perform about the same or a fraction better than the Ti500. Its got a 19" LCD which will have crap resolutions compared to a 19" CRT as long as you have the room for it it's a much better monitor. Dual layer dvd is the smae but you get the extra cdrw in mine....

All in all i think people look at the specs and think it's a crap machine but really it performs extremely well and is still pretty comparable to todays average joe soap machine.

you cant compare to a brand new system, 1st of all an lcd is better and the gfx would be better for newer games, and an extra cdrw drive doesnt really add anything to your system, also the 64 bit chip is much better. 500 is a reasonable price for your system these days

commited

You got a DFI and never overclocked? Weird :S You can often sell the machine easier if the chip clocks well btw.

PC world over price PC's as it is, and remember, yours wont come with a warranty. The a64 in that pc will be about 50% faster than yours, and after seeing how far lcd's have come recently, I'd much rather have an LCD (looking at a 15.4" lcd, with an unused 19" CRT beside me - there is no contest!). Dont get me wrong - what you have is a nice system, but I personally think that €500 is a fair price (the crt might command another €50)

Eye

Note to self.... do not try to sell on boards

yeah i know those are all valid points about comparing new to old i do understand that. with regards to overclocking i bought the gear at the time with the intentions of overclocking the machine but just never bothered, i'm pretty sure the xp2400 is a good overclocker and with the coolermaster jet7+ it would'nt really be that difficult to keep it cool.

Still though, i do have to say thanks to you for posting up and at least being honest with me about the whole thing, gives me a kinda idea what i could possibly ask for if selling to someone off boards.

The one thing i still don't get is how people are defending LCD's so much though, i've yet to see a really good one. sure they are getting down the response times now very low so they are good for games but the resolution it just pants on them, i have yet to come across a 19" LCD with a res Better than 1280x1024, i plan on building a rig that's going to be running at 1600x1200 min if not higher, yet the LCD's are just miles behind when it comes to this....anyways that's a whole other arguement for a whole other thread

Listen thanks for posting up, it's giving me a good idea what i'm looking for now. Cheers

masteroftherealm

If you ever consider selling I want that DFI I bags first dibs on it.

Eye

When i sell it, it will be sold as a machine not in parts, no good to me getting a buyer for 2 or 3 parts and then getting stuck with the rest and not being able to use or sell it.

masteroftherealm

TBH youd probably get more selling the parts then as a system

Eye

your probably right i may very well do so, but that's only if i find buyers for each and every single part, if i had a buyer lined up for every part then yeah i would'nt mind breaking it up and selling the parts, but i ain't breaking it up only to find i've sold the board, the monitor and the hdd's, what good would the rest of it be to me?

commited

Eye wrote:

The one thing i still don't get is how people are defending LCD's so much though, i've yet to see a really good one. sure they are getting down the response times now very low so they are good for games but the resolution it just pants on them, i have yet to come across a 19" LCD with a res Better than 1280x1024, i plan on building a rig that's going to be running at 1600x1200 min if not higher, yet the LCD's are just miles behind when it comes to this....anyways that's a whole other arguement for a whole other thread

I was the same for a long time, but LCD's have come a long way. I'm only using 1280x800, but it's miles better quality than any CRT I've seen at higher resolutions.
This 20" Dell is 1600x1200.
http://accessories.euro.dell.com/sna/ProductDetail.aspx?TabPage=producthighlights&sku=35550&spagenum=&category_id=5194&brandid=&k=&c=ie&l=en&cs=iedhs1&mnf=&prst=&prEnd=&mnfsku=&orderby=&searchtype=&pageb4search=&page=productlisting.aspx&instock=&refurbished=

Eye

all well and good there commited but that monitor is almost €600 and the contrast ratio is only 400:1, now i may not know a whole lot about LCD's but i'm pretty sure that's crap as most 19" LCDs i've looked at are in the 700:1 or 800:1 region, not to mention the 16ms response times on that dell whereas the 4ms you can get with a 19" samsung for 60% the price.

gline

id take the dvdrw drive if its black?

Eye

apart from the fact i've already said this machine wont be sold in parts, the dvdrw is not black, it's a beige coloured front.

commited

Eye wrote:

all well and good there commited but that monitor is almost €600 and the contrast ratio is only 400:1, now i may not know a whole lot about LCD's but i'm pretty sure that's crap as most 19" LCDs i've looked at are in the 700:1 or 800:1 region, not to mention the 16ms response times on that dell whereas the 4ms you can get with a 19" samsung for 60% the price.

It's not all about contrast ratio. That monitor is meant to be excellent. No one can tell a difference between 4ms and 8ms so it's pointless and 16ms is grand for pretty much everything and everyone

I was the exactly the same as you - got a 19" crt instead of an LCD. I've now seen loads of LCD's recently, and some are pants but some are amazing. My laptops screen far surpasses any CRT I've ever used (although it's a mine field, some are terrible).

All in all - both CRT and LCD suck OLED all the way (well on the way )

ConnD3mned

commited wrote:

I was the same for a long time, but LCD's have come a long way. I'm only using 1280x800, but it's miles better quality than any CRT I've seen at higher resolutions.
This 20" Dell is 1600x1200.
http://accessories.euro.dell.com/sna/ProductDetail.aspx?TabPage=producthighlights&sku=35550&spagenum=&category_id=5194&brandid=&k=&c=ie&l=en&cs=iedhs1&mnf=&prst=&prEnd=&mnfsku=&orderby=&searchtype=&pageb4search=&page=productlisting.aspx&instock=&refurbished=

The response time isn't that great on it. I'd like 8ms at the most.

masteroftherealm

You do know the human eye is only so senstive.... 12ms is fine any kess and its just "my number is bigger/smaller than your number"

Eye

lol i like to have bigger/smaller numbers

having pretty much finalized the spec on my new pc and just needing the money to order all the parts i'm now considering leaving all the HDD's in this machine when i sell it, so instead of just 2x 120Gb Maxtor ide drives, there would also be another western digital 160Gb SATA and a 200Gb Maxtor SATA to go too, so that rounds it all up to a nice handy 600Gb's. Probably wont do much for the price, maybe add an extra €100 will have to wait and see what happens :-\

commited

ConnD3mned wrote:

The response time isn't that great on it. I'd like 8ms at the most.

Fair enough, but as I said, you cant judge a monitor on specs alone
Plus - I wasnt telling you to buy it - It's a well regarded monitor by alot of people on very knowledgeable forums.

unkel

No way you'll get €500 here on boards - sorry if I'm the bearer of bad news

Eye wrote:

When i sell it, it will be sold as a machine not in parts, no good to me getting a buyer for 2 or 3 parts and then getting stuck with the rest and not being able to use or sell it.

My estimate is you'll get something like €350 if sold as a whole or more towards €400 if sold in parts, even if that leaves you with some unsellable parts