Buying a Computer -- Help!

[buffbabybear]

I've recently developed a newfound interest in computer gaming, so I need a new rig to play all the latest and greatest games on. Recently, my university buy and sell has listed this gaming rig for sale. I messaged the owner and he said the current bid is $700. I'm asking my fellow escapists whether this is a good deal, or if I should try and figure out how to build my own rig.

Thanks!

Here's the message:

"Selling Gaming Desktop.
Case: AZZA Mid tower computer case CSAZ-301 (Image)
CPU: I5-3470 Quad Core 3.2GHz
Storage: 128GB SanDisk SSD + (Optional 1TB SeaGate Hard drive for $70)
External CD/DVD Drive
Graphics Card: Xfx Hd 7870 Core Edition 10000Mhz 2GB DDR5
RAM: 8GB Corsair (2 x 4) - can be upgraded as it has multiple slots
Power Supply: Corsair Cs Series 500W
Operating System: Windows Premium 7
Motherboard: Msi. S.1155 B75 M.Atx. Csm 4ddr3
+ Amazing Gaming mouse [ R.A.T.5 Black edition ], Cyber Acoustics speaker that plays random radio frequency whenever it feels like it.
Description: The tower runs perfectly well, Personally built it myself only 8 months ago. I have researched every part and how they work together a lot, so it is perfect for all uses. The tower has 3 fans I believe [1 side, 1 back, 1 top(have to check)] so it never gets hot.
The whole thing costed me above $1250 Excluding the mouse and the speaker ($110 worth ). I will throw in a $1300 worth laptop 2011model (needs a new battery though)"

 

[Albino Boo]

What currency are you talking about? If its US dollars that price is a little over. If it is AUD I would expect to pay about $1000 for a second hand rig with that spec. The power supply and the graphics card are just passable, you will need to upgrade them both within a year or so.

 

[Aramis Night]

What currency are you talking about? If its US dollars that price is a little over. If it is AUD I would expect to pay about $1000 for a second hand rig with that spec. The power supply and the graphics card are just passable, you will need to upgrade them both within a year or so.

This doesn't make sense unless I'm misunderstanding what you are trying to say. $1000 aus is $921.40 us. How can it be a little overpriced at $700 us, but you would expect to pay $1000 aus($921.40us)?

As to the OP, it looks pretty solid. I'm not sure if you would actually need to upgrade that graphic card so soon. We haven't seen another big graphic leap since the HD 5000 series from Radeon. At this point Radeon is just releasing slightly modified versions of last years cards rebranded. The HD 7870 is still not a bad card. Especially the 2 gig version from XFX. I suppose you will want to upgrade if you're one of those people that must have top specs at all times, but I suspect if that was the case, you wouldn't be settling for less than the best on other components either, and then you would be spending a ton more on the PC.

For $700 though, it looks like a pretty good gaming rig. I can't see that machine not being able to handle anything in the foreseeable future at a reasonable performance rate. My spare computer is a similar spec to what your showing here and its only rocking an HD5770 XFX card. I play everything at med-high settings. I can push it to max settings on the games I play(mmo's mostly:GW2, Aion, etc.) but I prefer the higher FPS I get when going into mass pvp so I usually stick with the med-high settings. The 7870 is a couple generations later a card and a grade or 2 higher performance wise with twice the video ram of my old card, so in equivalent games, you should be getting high-max settings on current games just fine with decent FPS. Its comparable to the current Radeon R9 270 in fact which is a respectable upper-mid range GPU.

Only thing is if you decide to upgrade anything on it, I would start with the power supply. Especially if you do decide on a better GPU in the future. Any better GPU will likely need more juice then the 500 watt's that one offers. I'm actually kind of surprised it only requires a 500 watt for the gpu you have. I suspect there might even be a chance that the HD 7870 card could probably perform better with a power supply rated for a higher wattage since it may be hampered by power throttling. Often times they rate power supplies as having a higher wattage than they actually produce, on top of the fact that GPU manufacturers will often claim the min wattage needed is just enough to get it going, but not enough to actually get full performance from the card. They often under rate the power requirements of the card just to convince more people to buy the card, even if they cant utilize it at full performance. Better to get a power supply that gives you a little leeway in terms of wattage just to cover these issues.

 

[Frezzato]

What currency are you talking about? If its US dollars that price is a little over. If it is AUD I would expect to pay about $1000 for a second hand rig with that spec. The power supply and the graphics card are just passable, you will need to upgrade them both within a year or so.

This doesn't make sense unless I'm misunderstanding what you are trying to say. $1000 aus is $921.40 us. How can it be a little overpriced at $700 us, but you would expect to pay $1000 aus($921.40us)?

...

Actually, I believe Albino Boo was making a comparison not only for currency conversion but also for the higher pricing. I don't think it would be that much more expensive, but it would probably still be higher.

Take for example the Core i5-3470 3.2 GHz:

On the US version of PC Part Picker you can get one for, let's say $189.99 [http://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80637i53470].
On the Australian version you can get it for $225.00 [http://au.pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80637i53470] Australian.
Convert $225 Australian to US and you get $207.31 US Dollars, a price difference of $17.32 more for the same part in Australia. Again, I don't think the sum total would cost $200 ~$300 more, but I think it would still be fairly significant.

I also hope I haven't screwed up the math. Oh well.

However, this is all moot until the OP responds with where they live.

 

[Aramis Night]

What currency are you talking about? If its US dollars that price is a little over. If it is AUD I would expect to pay about $1000 for a second hand rig with that spec. The power supply and the graphics card are just passable, you will need to upgrade them both within a year or so.

This doesn't make sense unless I'm misunderstanding what you are trying to say. $1000 aus is $921.40 us. How can it be a little overpriced at $700 us, but you would expect to pay $1000 aus($921.40us)?

...

Actually, I believe Albino Boo was making a comparison not only for currency conversion but also for the higher pricing. I don't think it would be that much more expensive, but it would probably still be higher.

Take for example the Core i5-3470 3.2 GHz:

On the US version of PC Part Picker you can get one for, let's say $189.99 [http://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80637i53470].
On the Australian version you can get it for $225.00 [http://au.pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80637i53470] Australian.
Convert $225 Australian to US and you get $207.31 US Dollars, a price difference of $17.32 more for the same part in Australia. Again, I don't think the sum total would cost $200 ~$300 more, but I think it would still be fairly significant.

I also hope I haven't screwed up the math. Oh well.

However, this is all moot until the OP responds with where they live.

Ok. That makes a bit more sense. Wow, I heard aussies get screwed, didn't realize it was that bad. Seems especially odd since they are actually closer to the areas where most of these parts are manufactured in the first place. That just isn't right.

 

[Frezzato]

Ok. That makes a bit more sense. Wow, I heard aussies get screwed, didn't realize it was that bad. Seems especially odd since they are actually closer to the areas where most of these parts are manufactured in the first place. That just isn't right.

You know, I was going to downplay my response, saying that trying to compare apples to apples only works on paper. But then I looked up the cost of Watch Dogs on EB Games Australia. They have it listed at $99.95 [https://ebgames.com.au/any/any?q=watch%20dogs] (Australian), which at the moment works out to $92.09 US.

Yikes.

However, the minimum wage there works out to around $15 an hour (USD). But again, I don't live there so I don't know what the true cost of living is, like milk, bread, gasoline [https://www.blastr.com/sites/blastr/files/styles/media_gallery_image/public/images/road-warrior-humongous.jpg?itok=7Ifc0fcC] (just kidding!), etc.

The economics of it all confuses me greatly, so don't feel bad.

-

Regarding the original thread, I think it's definitely the OP's job to do the work of looking up all the parts on PC Part Picker (based on where they live) and just do a straight comparison. It seems to me that would be the most accurate way to come to a conclusion.