need some help....

[invisibledemon]

so, i came across an old alienware desktop that i may be pickup tomorrow morning for $100.
im not expecting greatness out of this, just hoping its a bit faster than the shitty dell desktop that i have now (its a fleet desktop with bare bones everything. i mean everything).

but, heres the ad that he has up:

had to get a new desktop to meet my needs so i have this sitting around. I bought this a couple years ago when comp USA went out of buisness in cool springs. It was used as a Floor model so i bought it as is. It works great, its fast but some of the components are a bit outdated so The performance aspects wont run windows 7 perfectly/smoothly. (tried it for awhile). It will however work perfect with windows xp and play games and videos great. Ill get detailed info on the hardware in the morning and i will get a few pics up. I will reformat the hard drives and install windows xp with the alienware themes before i sell it.

I will include 2 hard drives, one is a 60 gig which i will install xp on, and i have a 300 gig i used to store music and stuff (slave).
-Has 1 gig ram,
-60 and 300 gig hard drives,
-450w power supply,
-3 cd drives (one doesnt work)
-floppy drive,
-4 cpu fans,
-extra usb card (8 usbs total),
-soundblaster sound card,
-pentium4 processor.
-blue alienware keyboard.
-Radeon 9200 graphics card and a
-lan card for high speed internet.,
-has a tv tuner card.


The bad- It doesnt have side cover nor the front cover. i bought it like that, hasnt affected its performance in the 2 years ive had it. cosmetic only

if you have any questions, just send me a message and ill answer them asap. thanks

worth $100? im not too worried about the missing case pieces, this thing is just going to be tucked away under the desk, will try to rig something up for the side though, im assuming that that being gone would affect the cooling a bit considering the air from the fans would just be blowing out the side instead of around the components.


anybody know anything about these? i know shit about computers, and even less about alienware.
can i upgrade just the processor? or would i have to get a whole new board?

potentially wanting to use this in the future to do some recording on.

 

[jeffie7]

Personally I'd put the 100 bucks towards building your own PC.
That computer is pretty dated.

 

[endlesszeal]

i suspect there is some fuckery with the ad.

1) most recent alienware desktops use the case that looks like an alien (aurora). and the case in the picture looks like an old chenbro case.
2) the blue from the keyboard and the case itself 3-4 shades off.
3) ATI 9200? ummm that was from 2002
4) AGP? The last AGP system sold was like in 2005/6.
5) 60 GB? I cant even remember the last time a desktop sold with such a low hdd space.

thus, im willing to bet $100 this setup is really more like 4+ years old. not a "couple" years old. however it could be from alienware, but does that matter? and im really sketchy if he forgets to put in the specifid model number for the system and he doesnt even list the CPU.

i would take jeffies advice and save towards a new system. $100 on something tired and about to kick the bucket? or around $200 that would walk around that POS.

$100 - Budget dual-core cpu- mobo. Roughly as fast as something mid-range circa 2007/2008.
$30 - 40 for 2GB of DDR3
$50 - Decent case+PSU setup.

----------------- (below are optional/scrubbed from just about any computer)
$20 - DVD Burner
$40-50 500GB hard drive
FREE - Old Windows or Linux OS

 

[phunky.buddha]

Agree with all previous comments...

It's not a bad deal for the raw hardware if you want to just use it as is, but upgrading it is going to cost you way more than it's worth. You could upgrade the CPU, but an Atom processor is just as fast as the P4s of yesteryear. DDR RAM costs about twice as much per GB as DDR2 and DDR3 (which is now finally getting cheaper than DDR2, but I have 24GB of DDR2 oops), AGP cards are impossible to find and cost way too much on the used market compared to a PCI-E card that outperforms it 2-3 times for the same amount of cash. 1TB drives are now in the $50-60 range...

The case is nice if you find the missing panels- I have one just like it from when I paid for a Koolance tower (mine's a bit taller), but it's HEAVY.

So yeah, build yourself something new-ish for $200-300.