Help buying my used PC

I'm buying a used computer.
This guy posted it on craigslist, so I'm going to buy it from him.
I think I've found a really good deal here, but I wanted to get some thoughts from everyone here

Specs:

DVD RW Drive + Lightscribe

4 gig ram OC

160gig Hard drive

4000+ 64x cpu AMD 3ghz

8600GTS 512 OC PCI x16 Video Card

I asked him what the motherboard and PSU are, but he doesn't know.

and the price: 150$!

I think it's a helluva find, as nothing is wrong with it except that it needs an OS.

But I was thinking of buying a processor (Probably Phenom II) to upgrade it, but do you think the motherboard is likely to limit it. I know I need to check if the motherboard will support it, but if the motherboard supports AM2+, then will run for sure, right?

I also plan on putting in an additional 80 gig hard drive, maybe even a third HD if possible, is it likely all these upgrades will push power use above the PSU?


Any help is much appreciated. Just remember I'm on a real budget here, being in high school, about 350$.

Hmmm, a 4000+...what socket is it? It isn't an old S939, is it? You should find out what the mobo and PSU are.

How difficult is it to open the case and see what motherboard and PSU are in there and he said that he doesn't know? I know what motherboard was in each of my last 5 systems, obviously he has no idea what he's doing.

I would offer him $50, it sounds like he garbage picked it.

The video card being $89 is just ridiculous. I had one of those cards a while back and it's not very good. You can get a 4850, which is about 6-7 times faster than the 8600, for $90. 4gigs of DDR2 you can find for $25-$30. I'm sure the hard drive is old, being 160gb, you can get a new 500gb for $50. Here's a 750gb drive for $58.58

The only 8600GTS on newegg is ... drumroll ... wait for it ....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814130394

29.99$ /w MIR

Tell us what you're looking for and we can easily piece together a good system for $350. Or offer him $50 like I said and then I think you've gotten a good deal. It would also concern me that he's been running everything overclocked and has no idea what he's doing. Has he been good about cleaning the system out to keep the temps down, has he even monitored the temps to be sure nothing is overheating? Email him back with a link to this thread, I'm sure he'll come down off his $150.

All of a sudden your tone has gone from excited to depressed. Just be thankful you asked before paying him the money and being disappointed with your purchase. When you're ready to buy someone will be here to help you out. Good luck.

For $150 it's not too bad to start off on. The fact that the CPU is AM2 makes it much better than if it was socket 939. If he managed to overclock it to 3GHz then he must have a pretty good cooler on it that you can use when you save money to build a computer. The 8600 is a little weak though of course, but at least since it's a GTS version it has higher clocks and isn't too bad .

I say if you don't have anything to work on buy it. Research the motherboard to see what CPUs it supports and you should be able to drop in a cheap Athlon X2 for the meantime and overclock it. You also need to replace the video card if you expect to play some games. From there you can upgrade it as you get money.

What's the warranty? How do you know it's not being sold because it's having problems? If it's too good to be true...

If you don't have a PC already, and a very limited budget, I'd offer 75-100 dollars, but no more than that.

If you already have a PC, and/or have a bigger budget than $100, I would say save up a bit more and build your own system.