Opinions on refurbed Dell Precision 390s?

[QBZ]

In my travels to upgrade out of my 4 year old AGP system to PCI-E, Quad Core, and all the other good stuff, I've been surprised by several people I know with glowing endorsements of going the route of buying a refurbed Dell Precision 390.

I've been told things like:

Dell's refurbished systems are one of the best-kept secrets out there. There's a reason why they offer a 3yr warranty on a "refurbished" system.

And so on.


I see some on Ebay right now fairly loaded at south of $1500. Q6600 coupled with an 8800GT on a non SLI but solid Intel motherboard.


What do you all think of something like that? I'm pretty wide open on all alternatives.

I do know that building it myself is usually the best option, but I just can't do it right now.

 

[Roguestar]

Build it yourse- oh.

You can get a pre-built quad-core PC with crappy graphics, and buy a seperate 8800GT for less than $1500.

 

[QBZ]

Originally posted by: Roguestar
Build it yourse- oh.

You can get a pre-built quad-core PC with crappy graphics, and buy a seperate 8800GT for less than $1500.

Yeah, that's an idea, too. Suggestions for where to buy the pre builds from? Any favorites?

 

[JDMnAR1]

Go big or go home!

And to answer your OP - I have purchased numerous Dell refurbs over the past several years (although no Precision 390s) and never had a single issue with any of them.

 

[Roguestar]

Uhh... Dell?

Try getting one of their decent systems, they tend to skimp on graphics anyway, then you can toss out the crappy bundled card and flog it on eBay.

Quick example:
http://www.dell.com/content/pr...&s=dhs&~tab=bundlestab
The 'media powerhouse' on the left, then buy an 8800GT and sell the AMD HD2400. Something like that, anyway .

 

[QBZ]

Originally posted by: Roguestar
Uhh... Dell?

Try getting one of their decent systems, they tend to skimp on graphics anyway, then you can toss out the crappy bundled card and flog it on eBay.

Quick example:
http://www.dell.com/content/pr...&s=dhs&~tab=bundlestab
The 'media powerhouse' on the left, then buy an 8800GT and sell the AMD HD2400. Something like that, anyway .

^^ Do you know what motherboards they're using on those?

 

[bamacre]

Originally posted by: QBZ

Originally posted by: Roguestar
Uhh... Dell?

Try getting one of their decent systems, they tend to skimp on graphics anyway, then you can toss out the crappy bundled card and flog it on eBay.

Quick example:
http://www.dell.com/content/pr...&s=dhs&~tab=bundlestab
The 'media powerhouse' on the left, then buy an 8800GT and sell the AMD HD2400. Something like that, anyway .

^^ Do you know what motherboards they're using on those?

The XPS 420 has an Intel X38 chipset.

 

[QBZ]

One potential downside to this concept that I'm aware of is that you can't overclock CPU's on any prebuilt system.

This is not a dealbreaker for me by any means. The most I'd probably do is some fairly modest GPU overclocking.

Any other downsides I should consider on any of the options mentioned so far in this thread, besides the $6000+ Xeon beast in one of those earlier links?

 

[magreen]

Somebody told me that sometimes the refurbished dells have been used by a customer who fills it up with spyware and malware and then returns it b/c it doesn't work. Then they clean it up a bit and resell it as refurb, without doing a fresh OS install, so you could get stuck with the malware.

I have no idea whether that's true. But when I bought my system from dell outlet I went with a scratch&dent one to avoid that issue. I'm very happy with it btw--you can barely notice the scratch in the case, and that's when you're actually looking for it.

 

[bamacre]

Originally posted by: magreen
Somebody told me that sometimes the refurbished dells have been used by a customer who fills it up with spyware and malware and then returns it b/c it doesn't work. Then they clean it up a bit and resell it as refurb, without doing a fresh OS install, so you could get stuck with the malware.

:laugh:

Impossible.

You think Dell would actually take the time to "clean up" spyware and malware, when they could kill the partitition and image a clean one in seconds?

:laugh: