Refurbished latop

ImARebel

Anyone got any recommendations for sites to buy from?

Looking for i5, ssd, 8gb ram minimum

Budget is up to about 400eur for a good one

Edited to say I see loads of places\people selling just not sure if they're reliable

plenty of bad experiences from laptopsdirect who would be one of the main players in this market

I would be more inclined to buy from a trusted seller with a lot of feedback on adverts to be honest

i5 doesn't mean that much on older models when the newer i5's and ryzen 5's are 4-core in laptops (intel 8 series e.g. 8250-u and newer) and older ones are less powerful 2-cores.

newer i3's have more power than older i5's

if the laptop is quite old the battery capacity could easily be so degraded that it would be in the order of 1 hour off the mains so be prepared for that.

if you're ok with a lower rez screen (720p) which you will probably get on an older laptop anyways this is 380 new with a current model ryzen 3 that is going to be more powerful than up to 7th gen i5's

https://powercity.ie/product/753230

buy ram extra on amazon for not much if you find that you need it

ram is checked to be upgradable. a 4gb ddr4 stick is cheap - 20£

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-CT4G4SFS824A-PC4-19200-Single-260-Pin/dp/B019FRDKWI/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=4gb+ddr4+sodimm&qid=1586606327&sr=8-2

ressem

EuroPC, Aspen Solutions in the UK.
You can get recent Dell and HPs still with 2 1/2 years NBD warranty, the higher end stuff has large price discounts.

Not a good time to look for a bargain currently though. With the manufacturers having long lead times for new machines, the refurbishers are charging a premium of 50-80 euros.

ImARebel

Thanks for all the feedback I'll take a good look later in.

There's a local guy that does refurbishments will contact him and see what he's got. Thanks for all the info

I thought by going refurbished I'd get a better CPU for my money but maybe I need to rethink that based on what ye said.

integrated graphics are also better on recent cpus, especially the amd ryzen 3 and 5 ones (ignore amd A series cpus)

ImARebel

ImARebel wrote: »

Thanks for all the feedback I'll take a good look later in.

There's a local guy that does refurbishments will contact him and see what he's got. Thanks for all the info

I thought by going refurbished I'd get a better CPU for my money but maybe I need to rethink that based on what ye said.

you can get an idea of cpu power by searching on this site for benchmarks scores - here is a 7th gen intel i5 that is less powerful than the ryzen 3 in the powercity amd ryzen 3 3200u

(the amd also has much better graphics capability)

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-7200U+%40+2.50GHz&id=2865

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+3+3200U&id=3431

AulWan

I had an excellent experience recently, buying a refurb from a guy on Adverts, who also gives a warranty. I will pm his user name, if you're interested.

fryup

grabalaptop.co.uk

davyboy1975

greenit.ie deal with them all the time never had an issue

older cpus in laptops often have higher power draws also so that coupled with the degraded battery can produce some truely bad battery life

e.g. i5 4300m laptop cpu is 37 watts vs 15 watts for more modern latpop cpus of the same class. so the older cpu draws pretty much 2.5X more power.

any warranties you will get will exclude batteries on older machines

ImARebel

AulWan wrote: »

I had an excellent experience recently, buying a refurb from a guy on Adverts, who also gives a warranty. I will pm his user name, if you're interested.

Yes please

ImARebel

Cheers for all the info

My head is completely and utterly wrecked from trying to figure out what's half decent and what isn't

It seems I can get an i5 4th gen 8gb and 256ssd it was a ThinkPad or a Dell (both 4th gen) for my budget but from what you guys are saying this might not be the way to go after all

Edited to say I need it to have some bit of power I want to run SQL server I'm trying to learn about data warehousing

my advice would be if you can get a good saving and will be using the laptop on mains power pretty much all the time then you can go refurbished or 2nd-hand on an older model

but if you plan to use it as a laptop with the battery go new or recent refurbished (e.g. dell uk outlet or check that it's a cpu from the last year or two)

a proper quality battery replacement will cost 100€ or so and may not even be that good as batteries degrade over time in storage so if it's an original model that has been in storage it will not work as well as one from when the laptop first came out

BailMeOut

I bought 4 refurbished HP Elitebooks for wife and kids over last two years on Amazon.co.uk and they are really good. 512GB SSD, 16GB RAM, really long life batteries, Windows 10 pro, etc... and all for less than €300 each. (two have DVD drives) Zero issues with any them.

ImARebel

Local guy will do hp elitebook x360 1030 G2 i5 7gen

512 ssd 16gb ram

500eur. I think it's not too bad a deal

ImARebel

ImARebel wrote: »

Local guy will do hp elitebook x360 1030 G2 i5 7gen

512 ssd 16gb ram

500eur. I think it's not too bad a deal

i5 7th gen is only 2 core and less powerful by a decent amount than basic ryzen 3's or i3's of this or last gen.

16gb ram not of much benefit unless video editing really or high volume data analysis which this cpu would not be much good for.

ImARebel

and I then realised it's only 13.3 inch screen - i told him I'd wanted 15

think I'll park it for a while not much out there at the moment

if you are going to pay €500 you can buy a new laptop

this is about €450 or a little more

use addresspal or parcel wizard etc if required

https://www.ebuyer.com/947187-asus-m509da-full-hd-ips-ryzen-3-8gb-256gb-ssd-15-6-win10-m509da-bq349t

£400

ryzen 3,

8gb ram,

ips full hd screen 15 inch,

256gb ssd

ImARebel

I hadn't planned to spend 500 but I was starting to fall for his sales pitch

Lesson learnt

Thanks for all the feedback I really appreciate it

(As you can tell hardware is not my strong point at all)

beauf

ImARebel wrote: »

...
Edited to say I need it to have some bit of power I want to run SQL server I'm trying to learn about data warehousing

If I were you I get a machine with decent spec. SQL server Management studio is real resource hog. We upgraded workstations (desktop) about 6 months ago and it made a big difference to SQL Management Studio, and we don't even run any databases on our machine. Microsoft Development tools are quick bloaty, and need decent hardware to run well. Our old machines were decent dual xeons too.

When I'm at home I generally plug my laptop into a 24" monitor, still find it limiting. At work I'd normally have a bunch of monitors. I really hate doing dev work on my laptop screen. It ok for support stuff. When you start getting into big queries and lots of things open, you want a big screen. My work laptop is a 4 core Ryzen and I wouldn't be going much lower for a dev laptop.

beauf

glasso wrote: »

...16gb ram not of much benefit unless video editing really or high volume data analysis which this cpu would not be much good for.

You are right that most people won't use it. But if you are doing a lot of development, and have a few dev enviroments open, perhaps a VM or too. A bit more RAM is handy. 8GB is too little on our Dev machines.

Not that the OP has that kind of budget.

beauf

Unless you really need a laptop you get better bang for buck with a desktop.

his stated budget is 400

you're not going to get a quad-core refurbished for that money is this market (high demand due to work from home)

a ryzen 3 with 8gb ram and an ssd will do fine for learning - you don't need to use real-world data volumes for learning data warehousing.

many people don't have the space to dedicate to a desktop

beauf

The performance is not needed for the data.

Its the actually dev tools, the GUI that are bloated and slow.

I can run visual studio and relational databases fine on a less powerful dual-core i5 on my laptop.

beauf

I don't disagree that its fine for you and the OP.

All I'm saying it made a difference for me. More so for data analytics tools. YMMV.

ImARebel

I think given the current climate and I am not desperately in need of one (I've waited this long!) that I think I'll park it for now and look again in about a month or 2's time.

I'd stupidly thought 7th gen automatically meant a good CPU, but looks like their's good and bad ones no matter what the generation. I need to do a bit more reading on this so I can understand the specs when I'm reading them better. Don't know why but my eyes glaze over at anything hardware related.. databasing no problem, CPU and specs -> snore

not sure a lot will change in this budget range in the next while to be honest.

BailMeOut

glasso wrote: »

16gb ram not of much benefit unless video editing really or high volume data analysis which this cpu would not be much good for.

anyone reading with 16GB or RAM look at your task manager now. I am running teams, Chome , firefox and outlook as well task tray items (Google drive and one drive) (noting big or intensive) and using 10.5GB RAM out of 15.9GB and I rebooted earlier.

16GB is minimum memory I'd ever spec right now.

I've got 30 tabs open in chrome and have 4.4 gb ram usage.

much more efficient to use one browser

I would argue 8gb is plenty unless you're a very regular heavy video editor or of some other app that uses large ram amounts

simple management of start-up items also helps.

that seems to be the advice from the experts also...

https://www.minitool.com/news/windows-10-ram-requirements-009.html

ImARebel

glasso wrote: »

not sure a lot will change in this budget range in the next while to be honest.

probably not. I would have gone up to 500 for a decent spec refurb but it doesn't even look like it'll buy me that even

that ryzen 3 with 8gb ram, 256 gb ssd, ips screen from the UK is a decent deal

BailMeOut

For refurb I have gotten some great workstations from these folks https://kelsusit.com/

Laptop options very spares at moment but maybe contact directly to see what they have coming in.

maddog1983

glasso wrote: »

if you are going to pay €500 you can buy a new laptop

this is about €450 or a little more

use addresspal or parcel wizard etc if required

https://www.ebuyer.com/947187-asus-m509da-full-hd-ips-ryzen-3-8gb-256gb-ssd-15-6-win10-m509da-bq349t

Hi do you have this particular model I'm looking to spend 500 max and might go for this.. Not a heavy user just for minaml gaming football manager, word, excel and browsing?. Would you recommend this I'm not savvy at all when it comes to tech,..

no I don't have it.

reviews seem ok.

about as good value as you will get at the moment.

will suit those uses and run football manager - perfectly playable just not will 80 leagues and highest 30 settings obviously.

it will even play some higher end more intensive games

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-M509DA-Review-Slow-Speed-WiFi-in-Ryzen-3-Notebook.451183.0.html

battery life is not amazing due to a smallish battery but won't be an issue for most people unless you're away from a power point for the whole day. for gaming / very intensive apps you would want to be on power anyways

so yes I would go for it for your budget.

maddog1983

glasso wrote: »

no I don't have it.

reviews seem ok.

about as good value as you will get at the moment.

will suit those uses and run football manager - perfectly playable just not will 80 leagues and highest 30 settings obviously.

it will even play some higher end more intensive games

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-M509DA-Review-Slow-Speed-WiFi-in-Ryzen-3-Notebook.451183.0.html


battery life is not amazing due to a smallish battery but won't be an issue for most people unless you're away from a power point for the whole day. for gaming / very intensive apps you would want to be on power anyways

Thanks very much for reply appreciated

having a dual-channel ram setup in this Asus lets it get the most out of the the Ryzen 3 APU

not a bad little performer at all really

Melanchthon

BailMeOut wrote: »

anyone reading with 16GB or RAM look at your task manager now. I am running teams, Chome , firefox and outlook as well task tray items (Google drive and one drive) (noting big or intensive) and using 10.5GB RAM out of 15.9GB and I rebooted earlier.

16GB is minimum memory I'd ever spec right now.

Chrome and Firefox are absolute memory hogs though aren't they? I know I don't use either unless I need a specific plug-in or so on.

I just checked and I have 36 tabs open in Opera and it's drawing roughly a gig of RAM, I think Microsoft edge is lighter too.
Seriously though unless Microsoft Teams is a memory hogs something seems very off about using that amount of RAM

Melanchthon

Melanchthon wrote: »

Chrome and Firefox are absolute memory hogs though aren't they? I know I don't use either unless I need a specific plug-in or so on.

I just checked and I have 36 tabs open in Opera and it's drawing roughly a gig of RAM, I think Microsoft edge is lighter too.
Seriously though unless Microsoft Teams is a memory hogs something seems very off about using that amount of RAM

Yes that does seem like huge ram usage

I've tried using different browsers but found that it hasn't made any significant difference.

Chrome seems to have cleaned up its act a bit recently with smarter ram mgt.

If you have 2 browsers open at the same time that's a bad idea as you'll just end up using lots more ram

one-tab is a very handy extension for chrome also

check your "start-up" tab in task manager also and keep "enabled" to the bare minimum - this needs to be checked after installing new programs as they like to default to stay open

also generally set programs to close-close as opposed to run in background close!

BailMeOut

Melanchthon wrote: »

Chrome and Firefox are absolute memory hogs though aren't they? I know I don't use either unless I need a specific plug-in or so on.

I just checked and I have 36 tabs open in Opera and it's drawing roughly a gig of RAM, I think Microsoft edge is lighter too.
Seriously though unless Microsoft Teams is a memory hogs something seems very off about using that amount of RAM

I'll send a screenshot next time I am boot up my work machine.

Melanchthon

BailMeOut wrote: »

I'll send a screenshot next time I am boot up my work machine.

Ah I am no IT person at all! Just seemed way too high to me!

maddog1983

glasso wrote: »

if you are going to pay €500 you can buy a new laptop

this is about €450 or a little more

use addresspal or parcel wizard etc if required

https://www.ebuyer.com/947187-asus-m509da-full-hd-ips-ryzen-3-8gb-256gb-ssd-15-6-win10-m509da-bq349t



£400

ryzen 3,

8gb ram,

ips full hd screen 15 inch,

256gb ssd

Just to let people know these won't ship to parcel wizard which is a shame great price,, keeps cancelling my order

maddog1983

maddog1983 wrote: »

Just to let people know these won't ship to parcel wizard which is a shame great price,, keeps cancelling my order

try addresspal (free to set-up)

maddog1983

glasso wrote: »

try addresspal (free to set-up)

Same issue could it be I'm using revoult card, very strange never had a problem ordering before from UK

maddog1983

maddog1983 wrote: »

Same issue could it be I'm using revoult card, very strange never had a problem ordering before from UK

ah maybe they know the address and don't want to deal with fwd'ng services

can only suggest if you know someone in the UK who could get it and send on again...

maddog1983

glasso wrote: »

ah maybe they know the address and don't want to deal with fwd'ng services

can only suggest if you know someone in the UK who could get it and send on again...

Ya looks that way said address doesn't match delivery address,, il try and get a mate over to send it
Thanks

blackbox

I've bought a number of desktops and a laptop (all pre-owned) from greenit.ie and have been very pleased.

They appear to buy job lots from businesses.

byronbay2

maddog1983 wrote: »

Just to let people know these won't ship to parcel wizard which is a shame great price,, keeps cancelling my order

Yeah, won't ship to any forwarding service. Very annoying as they don't tell you, just cancel the order. I had to email them (ebuyer) to find out.