PC valuation and Laptop ideas

[alexondrums]

I'm thinking of replacing my custom made PC with a laptop.

Firstly does anyone have an idea how much my PC might be worth?

Coolermaster tower case
Asus P5K Premium motherboard
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 (2.66GHz)
4GB DDR2 RAM
NVidia GeForce 7600 GST (128MB)
320Gb 7200RPM SATA hard drive
750Gb 7200RPM SATA hard drive
2x LG Lightscribe DVD-R/W
Built in memory card reader
Upgraded CPU heatsink/fan
550W PSU

And can anyone suggest a decent laptop to replace it?
Budget around £500? Ideally it needs to be compatible with a docking station.

Mostly used for web/graphic design (photoshop), surfing, music, light gaming. Will use external monitor and keyboard etc most of the time.

Thanks

[Altair]

Firstly Welcome to the forum

Unfortunately PCs lose their value incredibly quickly, especially custom built PCs. I am guessing the PC is quite old based on the Q6700 CPU, DDR2 RAM, and 128MB GPU, i recently purchased a cheap 512MB GPU of higher spec than the GeForce 7600 new for £30. This means that my recommendation is that it is simply not worth selling it and you might as well keep it.

As for laptops there is a very good range for £500, you want one with good resolution and graphics capability for Photoshop and light gaming so i am going to throw this into the ring, mainly because it has Nvidia graphics output

Alternatively, this is the cheapest dockable laptop.

[Cmdrx3]

As a complete unit, probably around £150-£200, more likely closer to the £150

Sometimes it's better breaking the unit down and selling the bits individually. The trouble with this is that the things like the DVDRW's and HDD's aren't very valuable and even less so in the used market. If the PSU & CPU cooler aren't good named brands then they aren't either. Your big sellers will be the CPU (£50-70), motherboard (£20-30) Memory (£15-£25) and Graphics card (£20-30)

As with selling anything, sometimes you get lucky. It just depends on who wants what at a particular time. It's probably a good idea to try and sell it on Gumtree first. If you put a sale price of £250 ono, at least you've got room to operate and still get a reasonable price, and you are not committed to sell it if you don't get the price you want.

[Altair]

Graphics card (£20-30)

Not likely as (detailed above) i purchased a (new) 512MB HD4350 for £30 not on sale or anything. although the RAM, being DDR2 is quite expensive these days owing to it's relative scarcity.

Basically with new PC components quite cheap these days and as this PC is so far behind the current ranges there really is not any value in buying second hand.

Unless you are buying a laptop.

[Cmdrx3]

I sold a nine year old Soltek board with an old AGP Graphics card for £26 a few months ago. It might surprise you what people will pay for something. I have seen many a 7600GT go for that price, one went today for £27 with quite a few bids on it. Although I've just looked again and its a GTS he's got so perhaps £20-30 is a bit optimistic. I would still recommend going the Gumtree route though over a breaker sale.

It's amazing how many times I've went to fix or upgrade a PC only to find it's long past the point of diminishing returns, and on informing the owner hearing the phrase "I've only had it about four years".

[Altair]

It's amazing how many times I've went to fix or upgrade a PC only to find it's long past the point of diminishing returns, and on informing the owner hearing the phrase "I've only had it about four years".

Computer technology is still accelerating rapidly. not as fast as it used to but new components are made obsolete very quickly.

take for example the motor car. you can buy classics from the sixties and fit new engines, brakes, suspension, etc, and even put the old parts into new cars if you so wish, but my PC doesn't support E-IDE which by contrast is only a few years out of date

[2o2o]

Ha or in the case of PC's from PC World "I only bought it last week" , if I have to fix my machine unless it is almost new it will get a large upgrade with the fix it's the only way to keep up. However saying that I am still running a 6 year old processor and it is flawless I have used i5's i7's etc and cannot justify the cost of an upgrade for a few seconds rendering speed improvement. The problem is software that tests your PC tend's to score on a scale that doesn't start at 0, and gives big boosts in score based on number of cores or something similar so under 3D mark vantage the i7 2600k score 5x more than my processor yet I would love it to try and perform 5 times better





<<<<<<<<<<< I win

[Altair]

<<<<<<<<<<< I win

Congratulations, still only hardcore though

[Tonyh]

But you do make a valid point 2o2o, for example the windows index score varies on how new or how many you have.. for example i had 2gb ram in my laptop it rated it 4.9 i have 8gb ddr3 in my new build and it gives 7.7, but what is also weird is that my 160gb hd that spins at 5900rpm in my laptop compared to my 1tb hd at 7200rpm get the same scores on the index at 5.9 for primary hd :P

[Altair]

what is also weird is that my 160gb hd that spins at 5900rpm in my laptop compared to my 1tb hd at 7200rpm get the same scores on the index at 5.9 for primary hd :P

The 160GB drive may have a quicker read/write speed or search time, also smaller drives may search faster than larger drives.