How good is my new (second hand) pc?

[EvilPie]

A friend of mine has recently decided that she needs a laptop instead of a pc because of space issues.

I know the PC is decent because she got it off her deceased brother who's job was to be a PC dude.

I needed a PC so I bought her a cheap laptop (£300) and took possession of the PC.

The thing is I'm pretty shite with pc's so I don't know how to figure out who got the best end of the deal.

Like I say I know it would've been good at some stage but I've no idea how old any of the bits are. He was always changing things so some bits could be years old and some from just before he passed away a year or so ago.

The bits I've figured out so far:

Giga-Byte GA-790FXTA-UD5 Motherboard - Means sweet F.A. to me but somebody might know what it's like.

AMD PhenomII X4 965, 3.41GHz Processor - Any good by today's standards?

4 GB of DDR3 RAM - upgradable to 16GB from what Mr Crucial reckons.

2 x 1TB hard drives - Don't know what sort they are just how big they are. How do I find out?

Dell 2405FPW monitor - 24" jobby. Seems pretty cool.

ATI Radeon HD 4770 - Is this the graphics card? Looks like it runs 2 monitors but only DVI output so I can't use my old monitor as well.

2 x DVD/RW drives.

It's currently running XP but this is because my friend had someone remove vista / windows 7 because she wanted the familiar look.

One of the hard drives currently has about half it's space used which seems a lot. I guess there's still a lot of old stuff on it.

My plan is to just wipe the whole thing clean, purchase and install windows 7 and treat it as a new machine. Is this a good plan?

I assume it's more than capable of running windows 7? Will having 2 hard drives cause me problems? I'm quite looking forward to sorting this as it's something I've never done before so I'm hoping to learn a few things as I go.

Should I have just spent the £300 on a new PC for myself?

Any advice much appreciated.

[paulpitchford]

I think you got an OK deal, not mega. Second hand pc's never make millions. I'm more of an Intel person myself than AMD and AMD's tend to go a bit cheaper but you've got good grounds for a poker PC. I would put another 4GB of RAM in it and put Windows 7 on it.

The 2 hard disks wont cause you a problem. When you install Windows just chose the correct target disk you'd like to install on to.

Have fun.

[EvilPie]

One of the hard drives says it is 931GB with 511GB of free space.

If I click on the drive and have a good look through it I can't find anything totalling more than about 10GB.

So where's the rest of it?

Could it be a faulty hard drive or is something just hidden out of my view?

[paulpitchford]

One of the hard drives says it is 931GB with 511GB of free space.

If I click on the drive and have a good look through it I can't find anything totalling more than about 10GB.

So where's the rest of it?

Could it be a faulty hard drive or is something just hidden out of my view?

I doubt there is > 400GB of just operating system and application files, there is probably a large amount of media somewhere on it. Having said that, if he installed 'copied' games then games such as NFS and Fifa can be ~80GB each copied to the HDD.

If the previous lady is certain she doesn't want anything off of the drive I'd just erase the drive. During the windows 7 install you can highlight the drive, delete the partition then set it back up and format it and away you go.

[EvilPie]

One of the hard drives says it is 931GB with 511GB of free space.

If I click on the drive and have a good look through it I can't find anything totalling more than about 10GB.

So where's the rest of it?

Could it be a faulty hard drive or is something just hidden out of my view?

I doubt there is > 400GB of just operating system and application files, there is probably a large amount of media somewhere on it. Having said that, if he installed 'copied' games then games such as NFS and Fifa can be ~80GB each copied to the HDD.

If the previous lady is certain she doesn't want anything off of the drive I'd just erase the drive. During the windows 7 install you can highlight the drive, delete the partition then set it back up and format it and away you go.

OH MY FUCKING GOD!!!!

I've found the rogue 400GB.

It's his porn stash!!

#scarredforlife

[paulpitchford]

Excellent Disgusting . I repeat: During the windows 7 install you can highlight the drive, delete the partition then set it back up and format it and away you go.

[EvilPie]

I should add that it's not just porn.

Lot's of films, music, pics etc.

Nothing dangerous either just not my cup of tea otherwise I'd be keeping it

[EvilPie]

Excellent Disgusting . I repeat: During the windows 7 install you can highlight the drive, delete the partition then set it back up and format it and away you go.

Definitely going to go for this.

Just got to wait a few days to make sure my mate's got everything she needs on the laptop then I'm wiping the lot!!

From what I can gather I've almost got my money's worth just from the monitor. Good bit of kit.

There's a decent set of speakers as well which I think will make a lot of loud noises.

[redsimon]

Excellent Disgusting . I repeat: During the windows 7 install you can highlight the drive, delete the partition then set it back up and format it and away you go.

Definitely going to go for this.

Just got to wait a few days to make sure my mate's got everything she needs on the laptop then I'm wiping the lot!!

From what I can gather I've almost got my money's worth just from the monitor. Good bit of kit.

There's a decent set of speakers as well which I think will make a lot of loud noises.

Did you discover that from watching the porn stash?

[Amatay]

Nothing dangerous either just not my cup of tea otherwise I'd be keeping it

haha, what sort of stuff we talking Matt?

[EvilPie]

Nothing dangerous either just not my cup of tea otherwise I'd be keeping it

haha, what sort of stuff we talking Matt?

Can't really say mate.

Definitely niche market stuff but nothing illegal.

If you really want to know I'll tell you via PM but it ain't pretty

[millidonk]

<-------------- See EP's pic for clarification

[George2Loose]

Nothing dangerous either just not my cup of tea otherwise I'd be keeping it

haha, what sort of stuff we talking Matt?

Can't really say mate.

Definitely niche market stuff but nothing illegal.

If you really want to know I'll tell you via PM but it ain't pretty

Thread finally delivers

[EvilPie]

<-------------- See EP's pic for clarification

OI!!!!

That's my baby you're talking about!!