What config should I look for when buying a used PC for close to €1000?

Bashrag · December 8, 2018

I posted here a few weeks back about upgrading my SO's 2012 PC and after much consideration, figured that we would have to upgrade almost every component in that machine. The new plan is to increase our budget by a little and purchase a "new" system. As Christmas is around the corner, we figured we'd find some sweet deals on our local (Austrian) seconds website. Here are some details from my last post as well as some more info:

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Here's what my SO's tower has at the moment:

CPU: Intel Core i5-3570 CPU @ 3.40GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.8GHz

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650

RAM: 16 GB (Not sure if DDR3/4/5)

Storage: Samsung 850 Evo 500 GB

She plays two games: Overwatch and The Elder Scrolls Online. Neither of us are planning on playing more games in the future (if anything, we'll likely have less time once we have full time jobs). She'll be getting a 144 Hz (or 240 Hz) display (definitely not 4K) some time soon (depending on what shows up on the used market). Ideally, being able to run Overwatch on medium to high settings and getting well over 120 FPS and being able to run ESO at medium to high settings would be amazing. Other than that, she uses Photoshop every now and then, but nothing crazy.

There will definitely be two monitors connected to the system, but the second monitor will be a random, cheap-ass monitor that'll mostly be used for twitter or whatever else. She already has all the peripherals so we won't need to spend on that. For about €1,000 (US $1,140), what would classify as "not worth it"? Ideally, I'll try and find something that isn't over 3 years old.

Based on comments on the old thread, here's what I gather:

CPU: i5 8th Gen / i7 7th Gen or above

GPU: GTX 1060Ti or above

RAM: 16+ GB, DDR4 or above

Storage: HDD: 1 TB or more (already have a new 500GB Samsung 850 Evo)

PSU: 550W or more

I'm not very well versed with AMD's hardware and have no idea what the minimums there would be. I'm not sure what kind of a MoBo I should look for.

We haven't thought about which monitor to buy yet, so recommendations on that would be pretty dope as well! We're thinking of allotting about €200 to the monitor, but if we find a bombass deal on the system, we could might be able to increase the monitor budget (we'll try buying a used monitor as well, but so far I haven't had any luck finding any 120+ Hz monitors on our seconds site).

Edited December 8, 2018 by AkshayRao27
Specified more details about monitors

S3PP3L007 · December 8, 2018

I would go for an 8th Gen intel CPU or ryzen 2nd gen a gtx 1070, maybe even 1070 ti if u can find an affourdable one.

16 GB DDR4 at 1000€ is a must, 32 are not rly needed if gaming is all you do. The speed wont matter to much, but if you get a ryzen deal, look for higher speed, like 2666 or more.

1 TB HDD should be enough, u can upgrade storage later easily. PSU...i think 550 W is ok, if you don't plan crazy overclocking.

Where do you come from?^^