Should I buy unneeded i7-2600 but super cheap?

[Blue_Max]

I grabbed a complete Lenovo SFF system 2 weeks ago for barely $200 -- it was an i7 2600 (not K) processor, 4GB DDR3, 320GB hard drive, Win7 lic.

I pulled the board out, bought a quiet cooler, and mounted them in a mATX case for a standard gaming video card. Still less than $300 in total.


...and another one came up for sale today and I'm debating getting it as well.

Technically I don't NEED it for myself, but I could probably resell it for at LEAST as much as I'm paying for it, right? I could probably either resell and profit, or run it 24/7 as a Folding@Home box with my old Radeon 5770 which has artifacts and no good for gaming purposes... or keep hunting for a 750TI low-profile and sell the mATX box I built at profit. Profit from this hobby is always nice.


I'm soliciting your opinions on the subject... $220 may not be huge cash, but I also shouldn't WASTE it... What do you think?

 

[Blue_Max]

I have to decide tomorrow morning, so please chime in!

 

[mfenn]

The CPU by itself for $220 or a whole machine?

 

[lehtv]

If it's the CPU itself... is that even particularly cheap? I mean, sure it's an i7. But it's also a couple generations old. I wouldn't bother buying it just to sell it for a marginal profit, if any. Used i7-2600K's go for about $220 in eBay auctions, which I think should reflect the price of a new non-K pretty well.

If you're itching to run folding@home 24/7 just for the sake of it, it'd be a good pick provided you already have an LGA1155 motherboard. If you need to buy the motherbaord too, you're probably better off with a Xeon E3-1230 V3 and a 1150 board for another $30. The 20 watts or so you save would pay back that $30 difference in 24/7 use in perhaps one year with average cost of electricity. And a LGA1150 setup better retains its resale value at this point.

If, on the other hand, you mean $220 for another SFF setup including the i7, then yeah sure, if you like. What can you lose?

 

[Blue_Max]

I should've been more clear -- the whole Lenovo SYSTEM is only $220 canadian (about $200US)

A pretty good deal... almost a "steal". Kinda' nice getting a legit Win7 license on top of it all.

 

[DominionSeraph]

Duh. Drop a G1610 in there for $40, sell it for $260, and have yourself a free i7.

 

[Blue_Max]

I was all excited when I saw him bring out a standard tower instead of SFF (yay! No buying another case and moving stuff over!)

Imagine my disappointment when it turned out to be a G630 processor.

I offered him a generous $100... he'll get back to me.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I was all excited when I saw him bring out a standard tower instead of SFF (yay! No buying another case and moving stuff over!)

Imagine my disappointment when it turned out to be a G630 processor.

I offered him a generous $100... he'll get back to me.

Too bad. $100 is generous, for a G630 rig. Maybe if it includes a 1TB HDD and Win7, it would be worth it.

I picked up a SFF G630 Gateway (Acer) rig, at Staples a couple of years ago, for $200 + tax, brand new.

I've since upgraded it with 8GB RAM, a 120GB SSD (couldn't keep the HDD too, stupid SFF mobo only had two SATA ports), and a PNY / NVidia GT430 card.

Was my primary rig for 6-12 months, but then I decided I wanted my Q9300 @ 3.0 and HD4850 back in service, I missed my quad-core. The G630 is alright, but it doesn't beat a quad (even an older one) for "smoothness". It did, however, have about half of the power-consumption.