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A Core 2 Duo desktop is not what I would consider "perfectly good" anymore, for the exact same reason I threw my PowerEdge 1950 in the trash - these older chips

A Core 2 Duo desktop is not what I would consider "perfectly good" anymore, for the exact same reason I threw my PowerEdge 1950 in the trash - these older chips will use more power to get the same job done, DDR2's significantly higher voltage than DDR3 plays a huge role here as well. They may perform acceptably, but you're paying more in the long run via your power bill.

zanny 9y ago
The target audience of a refurb Core 2 desktop has no overlap with the camp that will have their PC on enough to even bring power efficiency into consideration. The hundreds saved reusing an otherwise-waste computer would take decades of rising power bills to make back during which even the new system would probably die well before you broke even.
- snuxoll 9y ago
  Even just going from a system with a Core 2 Duo E8400 to something more recent like an i5-2400 can result in 50W savings or slightly more at idle. This can be a big difference in areas with high energy rates (PG&E is something like $0.25/KWh) when you consider not only idle power draw, but also general improvements to performance and power efficiency making the CPU take less power when under everyday load and also returning to idle faster. You could easily save $30 or more a year, especially considering most people could get away with the iGPU and use even less power driving a PCIe graphics card. There's plenty of people offloading sandy bridge or newer systems at this point and they're dirt cheap, being that I live in Boise, ID the power savings of desktop components aren't terribly important to ME - but I realize I live in a little bubble when it comes to cheap electric rates.
  - ac29 9y ago
    >There's plenty of people offloading sandy bridge or newer systems at this point and they're dirt cheap I recently picked up a couple Ivy Bridge Core-i3 Dell Optiplex desktops for under $100 each to replace some older machines at work. Totally worth it, and they came with Win 7 Pro, which can still be upgraded for free to Win 10 Pro. I'd imagine by this time next year Haswell desktops will have fallen to the same price.

zanny 9y ago

The target audience of a refurb Core 2 desktop has no overlap with the camp that will have their PC on enough to even bring power efficiency into consideration. The hundreds saved reusing an otherwise-waste computer would take decades of rising power bills to make back during which even the new system would probably die well before you broke even.

snuxoll 9y ago
Even just going from a system with a Core 2 Duo E8400 to something more recent like an i5-2400 can result in 50W savings or slightly more at idle. This can be a big difference in areas with high energy rates (PG&E is something like $0.25/KWh) when you consider not only idle power draw, but also general improvements to performance and power efficiency making the CPU take less power when under everyday load and also returning to idle faster. You could easily save $30 or more a year, especially considering most people could get away with the iGPU and use even less power driving a PCIe graphics card. There's plenty of people offloading sandy bridge or newer systems at this point and they're dirt cheap, being that I live in Boise, ID the power savings of desktop components aren't terribly important to ME - but I realize I live in a little bubble when it comes to cheap electric rates.
- ac29 9y ago
  >There's plenty of people offloading sandy bridge or newer systems at this point and they're dirt cheap I recently picked up a couple Ivy Bridge Core-i3 Dell Optiplex desktops for under $100 each to replace some older machines at work. Totally worth it, and they came with Win 7 Pro, which can still be upgraded for free to Win 10 Pro. I'd imagine by this time next year Haswell desktops will have fallen to the same price.