Hey guys.

I just clicked "Buy it Now!" on a refurbished PC from the Curries/PC World Outlet, but I want to get some comments on it's suitability. (I may cancel depending on the comments here)

I'm on a really tight budget and I was pricing up an own build system based around an Radeon 6850 and a sub £80 AMD CPU (maybe a Phenom II 965, FX4100 or 6100). My understanding is, a Radeon 6850 would usually be the limiting factor and more CPU power wouldn't raise the frame-rates in most games. The budget was going to be £350-ish, while re-using my current HDD, OS (Vista 64) and monitor (only a 18" 1280x1024).

So here is the spec of the refurbished PC......

Processor: Intel Core i5-2320 Quad Core 3.0Ghz
RAM: 8GB DDR3
Hard Drive: 1.5TB
Graphics: AMD 6672 2GB graphics (probably a typo, but appears to be a 6670 with 2GB of DDR3 - not great)
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

More detail can be found here Ebay Listing

Pro's
Extra CPU Power
More HDD space (not in my original budget, a bonus)
Upgrade to Win7 (also not included on original budget)
Price (assuming everything works out, a risk I'm willing to take)

Cons
Relatively crap GFX card
Can it be expanded? (is there enough space, will the PSU allow it?)
Generic cheap parts - PSU, MB, Case etc.

The main reason I'm buying is to play ARMA 2 (+Day Z) and Skyrim - and other games later. I also want 4 proper cores for my general usage, encoding video and music files, tinkering with virtual machines.

Is the weak GFX a show-stopper? Am I going to be happy with the performance in ARMA and Skyrim, versus my own build ideas?

I got the mobile version of that GPU in my laptop, and while it performs better than Intel integrated graphics, it's well below performance for ARMA 2. Maybe Skyrim on low-medium settings, but that I have not tried.

+1 with what Bib4Tuna said.

With such a low budget, maybe upgrading your current PC would be a better option? Like get a beefy GPU first?

The AMD 6850 - desktop, not mobile version, those are renamed versions of lesser GPU & use lower speed - should run absolutely everything at the given resolution of 1280x1024. I do know it runs Skyrim and Crysis in 1680x1050 without any problems. I cannot comment on the 6672 card, I do know that huge OEM customers at times get cards with such wierd names, which often are variants of similar named end market cards, in this case the 6670, with different clock speeds, but I never heard of this one.

Otherwise you listen the pros and cons perfectly yourself, if you intend to stay at the low resolution for the time being, a relatively weak PC should do okay.

Believe me, option 1 was an upgrade to my current PC - the HDD was the only thing worth keeping! Considering the budget, I was pleased with the amount of power I could have got for the money.

The AMD 6850 definitely looks like the sweet-spot for graphics power versus cost at the moment, if all goes well with the refurbed Advent it's the card I will put in there, if I can.

I would take a look at putting a solid PSU in that one as well. A good PSU is a wise investment, and you can carry it over to your future builds as well when the budget allows. I recommend at least 650W, modular PSU.