Debating used OEM box

[porina]

Budget (including currency): £235

Country: UK

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: BOINC, some game/CPU testing

Other details: I have spare DDR4, SSDs and GPUs.

 

Spotted this in a local store earlier today. It's tempting me a bit. Talk me in or out of it?

 

 

I don't need another system, but this one is both cheap enough and new enough to be of interest to me. Store warranty!

 

Things I would do with it:

• Test graphical performance of that gen APU - this would be my only active modern AMD GPU in a PC and I also want to try out a FreeSync HDMI only monitor I have
• Run BOINC projects. I focus on CPU ones. Zen 3 isn't too old for that. It indirectly doubles as winter heating even if less cost efficient than gas.
• It could serve as a Zen 3 era reference device. My laptop is also Zen 3, but I have zero control over it. As this is an OEM box, I'm not sure I'll have any more.

 

Why not:

• For about the same money according to pcpartpicker I could get, NEW, the same CPU, cheapest mobo, 1x8GB ram, 256GB SSD. All cheapest. So what I'd get extra by going used is case, PSU, HD, optical drive, OEM Windows licence.
• I haven't looked at what else I could get new at newer gen, although I think AM5 is probably out at that price, and I already have a 12th gen Intel DDR4 system.
• I haven't looked up what internals are like but I'll assume for now limited upgradability, limited bios.

I could probably sell it at a small loss later if I get bored of it. Or maybe upgrade it a bit with what I have spare already and make it more desirable.

 

[WereCat]

If the RAM and storage can be upgraded, sure. If not... bleh!

[porina]

53 minutes ago, WereCat said:

If the RAM and storage can be upgraded, sure. If not... bleh!

Mini tower layout. I can't find this specific model number but similar ones seem to have a mobo with 2 ram slots, 1 M.2, 2 visible SATA ports which may be taken up by the HD and DVD, 1 PCIe x16, 1 PCIe x1.  So pretty minimal. Possibly a Wifi module but that might be optional depending on model/mobo. They do both AMD and Intel versions so I can't be sure what I'm seeing is the same as what's in the shop.

 

Edit: the images I found showed a 310W PSU. Again, might not be same model. CPU is 65W TDP, so 88W PPT. Would be limited to only slot powered GPUs without PSU replacement.

[porina]

Having slept on it, I think I'll pass. Again, it isn't a need. And looking again at the limitations of both the OEM build and that gen APU it wouldn't be a great fit for the BOINC stuff I run. With the reduced cache compared to the non-APU equivalents, it will impact use cases and put it behind Rocket Lake, which is another system I'm debating if I should keep around for much longer. Still, for a shop sold used box with store warranty it isn't that bad, especially if you look at stuff on facebook marketplace!

 

I'll save my pennies for a bigger new system build later on once we see how Arrow Lake compares against Zen 5 retested with all the various recent updates.