Second hand kit, what to trust?

As long as it has at least a 30 day guarantee I’d go for it. That will give you plenty of time to run all the diagnostics you want.

TBH I haven’t had any ram issues since DDR3. These days I get the best deals from Amazon and lately that’s all been Timetec Hynix, both desktop and laptop. I don’t pay any attention to speed and latency, it’s all more than quick enough. It’s all coexisted with whatever ram was already in the systems.

Timetec have a lifetime guarantee and their website is along the lines of the big boys with a memory finder by system / mobo etc https://www.timetecinc.com/

Cex  still offer a two year warranty which I think makes it stupid to buy second-hand anywhere else!

link

My question is always, why are they selling it, as it sounds a tasty bundle for an apparently modest cost?

I agree the price is about right. You have to remember just how old the i7 920 is, a £40 Pentium G4400 will show it a clean pair of heels in single threaded applications with a TDP of 54 watts vs 130 watts. The HD7870 is another electricity guzzler.

If you need the multi-threaded performance I’d swap the graphics card for a cheap GT710 .

If it’s just for an “office” type machine £220 buys you a new Punch Technology SFF G4400 / 4GB / 1TB from E-Buyer

Let’s put it this way, I have an almost identical spec machine donated to the charity I look after and it’s used as a spare. The main office machines are dual core Celerons or Pentiums with SSDs. There’s nothing wrong with it apart from it’s age, but don’t expect anything spectacular.

Chist that’s almost the rig i game in still. i7 920 8gb ram and gtx970. The old i7 920, its like the terminated of cpus.

As dave said, there is far less power hungry alternatives out there today. I just can’t bare part with mine. The day will come.

Pm – I found the triple vs double gave little difference.

The real reason is I stole ram out of it for anther rig. Didn’t have any real world noticeable drop off, so never bother to replace it. Even though I have a few sticks of ddr3 kicking around now,  just o lazy to break the PC open. Well scared, its old and working, i don’t want to jinx it by trying to fix something that isn’t broken.

Also i use it to work on most of the time now, may gaming 5ime on not is very low these days. I’d love to game more, i just don’t. I don’t think I’ve played a game this side of Xmas on it.

Buts its been a manic few months here tbh.