dustyraven27 said:As far as reliability goes—honestly, I can't say for sure... I've had a WD in my laptop for almost three years without a single hiccup, and a Samsung in my desktop for at least six years now, also running smooth as silk..
Look, it’s basically a roll of the dice—there aren't any real guarantees here. Your drive might crap out after a year, or it might just keep chugging along for ten. It doesn't matter what brand you pick.
silverseal20 said:I'm looking to buy a 2TB external hard drive. Any recommendations? Planning to pick it up at Best Buy.
Grab some other speakers from somewhere just to test things out—though honestly, I’m pretty sure these ones are heading straight for the trash. Most likely, the amp in the woofer just kicked the bucket.
Actually, Verbatim drives are those green models. In my experience, Western Digital drives tend to fail quite a bit—honestly, I’d probably go with Seagate instead.
Look, if you’re dead set on getting a 7200 rpm drive, you’re basically looking at buying a separate hard drive and an enclosure to house it—because, honestly, that kind of speed is overkill for basic storage, so manufacturers don't bother making pre-built external drives that fast. You could just grab a chassis like this one and pop in whatever specific drive you're craving:
David Sanders4 said:Look, I’m telling you—some used parts are just straight-up overpriced. It’s exactly what Benjamin King2 was getting at regarding $500 used gear versus being able to grab something brand new for $667. And hey, I wasn't calling the guy stupid—just being realistic. He jumped to a newer platform and wanted to offload his old stuff, which actually worked out great for me. But some people? They just have a hard time swallowing the fact that something they dropped a fortune on a few years ago isn't worth nearly as much today.
Exactly. Tech moves way too fast—give it two years and you've basically flushed half your investment down the drain.
Matthew Young35 said:Benjamin King2, no offense, but how are you actually calculating value here? Do you just grab the parts and look up the absolute lowest prices on eBay and add them up?
In my opinion, you need to tack on at least an extra $500 to any of the estimates Benjamin King2 provides if we're talking about a complete PC build.$267
I’m comparing similar Intel and AMD platforms—comparing them against current retail prices for new components, too. For instance, looking at those top two scenarios, you can snag an Intel E7200 for $50, and honestly, it'll absolutely smoke both of those AMD processors.
With a full system, your only real option is to slash the price and pray someone actually buys it—because there's a massive surplus of these old junkers out there. If you actually want to offload this kind of scrap, you have to be significantly cheaper than everyone else selling similar trash if you want your listing to stand out. Someone might pick up a few individual parts if their own hardware dies and they don't need anything high-end, but these aren't machines meant for any serious work.
If you can walk into Best Buy and grab a brand-new budget PC for $667 that handles basic tasks, nobody is going to shell out $500—or whatever you think these buckets are worth—for a used one. Plus, there's zero warranty; something could die tomorrow and you'd have no clue because you have no idea how much the previous owner abused the thing.
If I were selling those top two rigs, I’d list the Catalyst one for $300 and the other one for 1200—keeping in mind both are missing cases and optical drives, and the second one is missing the PSU too. If they don't move, you just drop the price.
Which GPU is the better deal? You already have a graphics card sitting there—so why bother? If that Intel combo fits your budget, just grab it. Honestly, you can always slap in more RAM whenever you actually need it, so don't go blowing all your cash on memory right now if you're already cutting it close with your budget.
What can actually unscrew what? And while you're at it, let me know the screen resolution—don't worry about the physical size, that doesn't matter much here.
What an absolute clown of a salesman. Those AM3+ processors aren't going to work on that board—it's strictly limited to AM3. Your best bet is to hunt down some used Intel Core i7—you'll actually be able to add DDR3 RAM that way. You can't even touch DDR3 without an AM3 processor, because those older LGA 775 setups are stuck playing in the DDR2 sandbox forever.
You can always slap an SSD in later—it’s basically a plug-and-play afterthought—so you really need to put all your focus into the parts that aren't easy to swap out mid-build (think CPUs, GPUs, power supplies, motherboards, and all that good stuff).
And why on earth would you even want to swap for that Dell Inspiron 15? It’s got a slightly beefier processor and a bigger hard drive—not that it matters much since it isn't a gaming laptop, so that graphics card isn't exactly anything to write home about anyway. Plus, there's the larger screen. Honestly, it's a bit newer than yours too. I don't see what you're actually gaining from this trade. You could probably get around $667 for your laptop, maybe even more, so you'd basically be breaking even.
Can you get specific about the specs on both laptops? Which i5 are we talking about here? Those EliteBooks come in at least half a dozen different configurations.
The i5-520m is barely an upgrade over something like a T9500—honestly, you might be better off paying more for the other one instead. Not to mention, those EliteBooks are built like tanks compared to that Dell.