Is this a good deal?

[king smp]

I have a distributor for stripped towers.
Right now he has a custom box with a Pentium D one of the 9xx series.
It comes without HD,Optical, or ram.
It uses Sata II,Pci Express.
He is asking $55 USD.

I have HDs and DVDrw laying around.
I would just have to buy ram which he has cheap.
I currently have a Dual Xeon 3.2 P4 Prestonia setup.
Would it be worth buying to upgrade on my setup?

It should be an ATX case and PSU and a LGA775 board which might be able to upgrade to a C2D.
So I figure for $55 bucks I cant go wrong because I can upgrade later.
As you can tell I am on a low budget.

 

[suteck]

I don't know alot about those but I don't see how that's an upgrade. Isn't the "D" only 3.0 GHz? Do you mean 2 seperate XEONs or a 2 core? If you're mostly looking for the board then as long as the pci-e slot is 2.0 X16 and you want to upgrade to the C2D it's not too bad. But if your talking a year or so before you upgrade then you might as well wait and get a new board and C2D. It will probably be fairly cheap by then.

 

[king smp]

The pentium D actually went up to either 3.4 or 3.6 i believe plus the Extreme had HT.
I am not sure yet which one this is only that it is a 9xx series which was top end Pentium Ds.
The problem is I have a Dell 450 with a Dual Xeon(two seperate chips on one mobo) at a 533 fsb.
The pentium d will be on a 800 fsb so that will help.
Also my tower uses a BTX form factor so I would have to build completely from ground up so that would be roughly $500 for case,psu,mobo,cpu,gpu,ram etc.
I figure that this tower will have a atx case and psu which hopefully i can use later and for now the Pentium D plus sata and PCI Express will be an upgrade from my ide/agp mobo.

 

[Plumble]

The Pentium D is not a good processor anymore. Please bear in mind that if this PC was a workstation, you will have very limited options to speed it up.
For comparison, one of my machines is a Dell 670 dual xeon 2.8 (single core with HT). The latter Pentium Ds do outperform the dual Xeon but not really noticeable. Also, will the Mobo accept the RAM you already use? I'm assuming a dual CPU Dell uses EEC DDR2 400MHz.

 

[king smp]

No my system uses PC2100 266mhz.
I looked at 3dmark03 scores and PDs outscore my Dual Xeon 3.2 HT 533fsb/L3 1mb.
I figure going from AGP/IDE (current Dell 450 mobo) to PCI-E/Sata will really help total performance.
Plus nowadays PCI-E and sata are cheaper than AGP/IDE parts usually.
At the very least if the case and PSU are decent then it is worth the $55.
I can get a decent PCIE gpu cheap (something that will carry to next build).
I have to get more specs on tower (psu brand and wattage and case).
I figure it is a temporary upgrade till i can raise some more money and this way I will have a ATX case and PSU.
Also depending on mobo it might accept a Core2Duo.

 

[Plumble]

No my system uses PC2100 266mhz.
I looked at 3dmark03 scores and PDs outscore my Dual Xeon 3.2 HT 533fsb/L3 1mb.
I figure going from AGP/IDE (current Dell 450 mobo) to PCI-E/Sata will really help total performance.
Plus nowadays PCI-E and sata are cheaper than AGP/IDE parts usually.
At the very least if the case and PSU are decent then it is worth the $55.
I can get a decent PCIE gpu cheap (something that will carry to next build).
I have to get more specs on tower (psu brand and wattage and case).
I figure it is a temporary upgrade till i can raise some more money and this way I will have a ATX case and PSU.
Also depending on mobo it might accept a Core2Duo.

I'm not sayin don't buy, just be aware that there may be extra costs

Do you know what RAM the new system takes? I only ask becuase $55 can easily become more as the RAM has been stripped.
Is the cased generic or is it a bespoke workstation case that will only accept a particular mobo?
If it is a bespoke workstation, will the PSU fit a new case? My Dell, HP and Compaq branded (HP) worstations all have bespoke cases and mobos with PSU that are very non standard sizes. For example my Dell 670. Great PSU but only an inch and a half thick. the problem is its fourteen inches long.

Do you have the mobo or model number?

 

[king smp]

No I have to get more specs from the guy.
He has roughly 60 towers onhand stripped at a given time so it is hard to get specs from him on the phone.
I wont really know until I see it.
I understand what you are saying. I have a Dell Precision 450 Workstation which is a BTX form factor so that is why I want a new tower since my case and psu dont work with standard boards.
He told me his is a custom build so more than likely it will be a mid atx case or full atx case.
He is about an hour away and I am going to pick up some towers to refurb (P4 2.8HT) and sell so I will look at the case then.
Also he has the ram for the mobo dirt cheap.
He is a scrap/recycler/wholesaler.

 

[Plumble]

O.K cool. Dirst cheap parts rock.

 

[king smp]

It is all older stuff (Pentium 4 Pentium D era) but I refurb towers to sell as internet browser/home office/student machines so it works great for me.

 

[Plumble]

I know what you mean. I got a Compaq 51s for my GF for internet (I had 3 but sold 2), an XP 3000+ for a file server and overnight internet downloads (shared house).

 

[king smp]

Oh you should see my wife's computer.
I call it Frankenstein.
It is a HP Compaq Evo D530 P4 2.4 small form factor with no top of the case.
A second hand thrift store where i do computer work for was throwing it out.
I put a 256mb Sappphire 9600XT,WinTV tuner,120gb HD and 1gb ram.
The whole top of the case is open - great air cooling!
I have tried to get her another tower but she loves this one.
She hated the P4 3.2 EE Dell GX280 I gave her.
Go figure.

 

[king smp]

No I bought for 50 bucks complete and sold it off on Craigslist for a 150.
P4 3.2EE 80 gb sata X300 pci-e (yuck) 4gb PC2-5300 (?)
I sold it with 2gb ram and sold off the other 2gb for 30 bucks.
so for 50 bucks I made 180 (130 profit) and had used the system for about 6 months.

 

[king smp]

You dont see many P4 3.6s around.
I do see P4 3.4 occasionally.
Try Craigslist.
In my area the towers dropped drastically in price the last few months.
C2D's for less than $250 for ie

 

[king smp]

Best answer selected by king smp.

 

[Plumble]

Thank you.

 

[king smp]

Welcome

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey