Rokkaholik Posted January 16, 2016 Posted January 16, 2016 My daughters PC is a 2009-10 Dell with Windows 7 and 4gb of memory. It's a "decent" machine for an 8 year old, but my brother in law recently had shown her his Minecraft game and she's turned into a crafting maniac. I'm currently looking at a cheap but newer tower for her. Probably another Dell since I've had fantastic luck with them. It'll be a 2nd-3rd gen i5 CPU with 4gb+ memory. The kicker is the video card... I'm honestly not too up on the whole Minecraft game so I have no clue how graphics intensive it is. I'd assume a mid level card would suffice? Like a GTX 750/760 or a Radeon R7 370 or R9 270? or something? I "DO" know that the space inside the PC will be limited so I'm looking for a shorter length card. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Braegnok Posted January 17, 2016 Posted January 17, 2016 The GTX 950 series would be fine they are short with single fan,.. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127919 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waco Posted January 17, 2016 Posted January 17, 2016 Integrated graphics in the i3/i5 might be sufficient, to be honest. I'd try and see before dumping some cash on a new GPU. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rokkaholik Posted January 17, 2016 Posted January 17, 2016 HA! I was just looking at these on the egg too, and I came back here and saw this post. I just bought one. Thanks! I scored a Dell Inspiron 660 with an i5, 8gb of memory and a 1tb hard drive for $160 on evilbay too. My budget was going to be $300 (she's only 8) so this came together nicely Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Braegnok Posted January 17, 2016 Posted January 17, 2016 (edited) She will enjoy that rig a long time,.. The Dell 660 does have built-in HDMI 1.4,.. but the GTX 950 is the way to go. Edited January 17, 2016 by Braegnok Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rokkaholik Posted January 17, 2016 Posted January 17, 2016 She will be good for about 3 years. I can sell her current Dell for appx $125-140 and make almost half my money back. I have a 500 watt OCZ power supply here too just in case I need it, so more money saved Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
IVIYTH0S Posted January 17, 2016 Posted January 17, 2016 That's an amazing deal! Is that an ivy bridge i5 in there? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rokkaholik Posted January 17, 2016 Posted January 17, 2016 It's an i5 3330 which isn't the upper register of the i5's, but good enough for an 8 year old Her current Dell is an Inspiron 546 with an AMD Athlon II x2 and 4gb of DDR2 memory. It's still a good machine, but I wanted to future-proof a little for her. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rokkaholik Posted January 17, 2016 Posted January 17, 2016 I just put a Wireless-N small PCI Express in her tower about 2 weeks ago before deciding to upgrade the entire tower. I had been looking for anything 2nd-4th gen i5 and i7 and the smaller OptiPlex's kept coming up. I don't care for "desktop" or smaller cases so it was going to be a mini tower or larger. The mid tower OptiPlex's are great machines, but the layouts of their motherboards kept showing the small PCI slot right under the main PCIE graphics card slot which then would only allow for a single slot graphics card. I finally found that the 660's had better options for her wireless card since I didn't want to go and buy yet another one. The first search yielded one on auction that was up in 20 min with 21 bids and at $142... so I sniped it with 2 sec to spare at $160 (bidding $202-50). All the others with similar specs were Buy It Now at $300+.... I'm happy with the deal Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
IVIYTH0S Posted January 17, 2016 Posted January 17, 2016 I would be, that's a great deal! You couldn't get all those parts alone for that Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rokkaholik Posted January 29, 2016 Posted January 29, 2016 (edited) I would be, that's a great deal! You couldn't get all those parts alone for thatJust scored another one, almost identical specs, off ebay for $113 plus shipping. Bid sniping FTW....LOL Side note: back in 2005-2008, this is what I did as a hobby and made a shitload of money. Bid sniping the auctions that people would have listed to end in the middle of the night for some dumb reason. I was picking up Dell e510's and e520's along with some of the XPS models for $120-150, redoing the operating systems and reselling them for $350-500. I would sometimes make more money at that in a 2 week period than my job...lol Edited January 29, 2016 by Rokkaholik Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
IVIYTH0S Posted January 29, 2016 Posted January 29, 2016 I used to bid snipe but then I realized it's silly because a max bid will still be a max bid, you could always win/lose the same auctions IMHO. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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