The popular saying “cheap in the end is expensive” applies to both desktop and laptop computers in an exaggerated way. Buying a cheap computer does not necessarily mean buying a cheap computer. It means obtaining a good relationship between benefits and prices. 

Almost all of us who are dedicated to computing have met and friends who have asked us for advice to make the purchase of their laptop. They usually start with the following sentence: “I don’t need something very powerful … with the office working, I can connect to the Wi-Fi at home and use the internet browser is enough for me. 

But it is a matter of minutes that they tell you too I would like to be able to play a little game from time to time and that is when you say well, you are already asking for something completely different from what you were telling me at the beginning.

Whether you are a professional in the computer sector or if you are an individual who is looking to buy cheap computers on the internet, or in a physical store, new or second-hand PCs, I recommend that you carefully read the following tips to keep in mind. You can save yourself some problems and you will get much more for your money. Sometimes less is more if the purchase is made knowingly.

The first thing you have to be clear about before buying a cheap computer

Before looking at prices, features, processor, memory, hard disk, and everything you want, the first thing you have to be very clear about is what you are going to use the equipment for. The most common profiles are usually the ones we show you below, so we are going to help you determine your user profile.

• Multimedia and entertainment. What has been using for movies, videos, music … a very typical profile in adolescent girls.
• Office automation. The typical office computer that will work mainly with the word processor and the internet browser
• Occasional gaming. Basically someone who, if he finds a game that he likes and the computer supports it, plays it, but if the computer is not able to move it, he desists it and does not cause any “problem”.
• Demanding to the game. The player of all life. You are going to demand a machine that is not only capable of moving the most current games, it will also want them to work at high resolutions and with fluidity.
• Scheduling, virtual machines, multi-monitor work, and professional tasks (heavy duty). The typical profile of network and system administrators.
• A mix of all of the above. We are the one who does not decide and wants to do everything. Then he will focus on one or more profiles but a priori, since he does not know what he wants, he does not want to close doors.

It is very important that before continuing reading you spend a few minutes thinking about which profile your needs respond to. The computer equipment to be purchased for an office has nothing to do with that for a video game player. It is more if you have doubts about buying a Best laptop for Pentesting or a desktop computer, being clear about its use can help you decide.

We are still not going to talk about the minimum benefits for each profile. Before we want to show you a graph on how the price of computer equipment behaves against its benefits. 

That is, we are going to see the two extremes, on the one hand, the upper end, from which price you pay a lot for very little more in benefits, and on the other hand, the lower end from which price you save very little and lose too many benefits. The curve that reflects the behavior of the price according to the benefits has always had, has, and will continue to have this aspect for many years:

As can be seen, there are 3 areas in which the curve changes its behavior. We have separated these 3 areas with the green lines. In the first zone, we find that the curve hardly grows. This means that buying a computer in this area will save us very little but we will have a great loss of performance. 

We see that in this area the price hardly grows but we do gain benefits. It is a very bad idea to buy a computer and if it is a worse laptop still classified in this first area. In the second zone, the curve changes. At the beginning of the second zone (the standard zone), the price grows a little faster than the benefits. 

This is because we are already seeing useful equipment, equipment that is worth us to work with. As we get closer to the median of this area, the curve loses slope and benefits grow faster than prices. This is where we find really interesting equipment. And finally, we have the third zone. In this area, exaggerated amounts are paid for a minimum of improvement. 

This zone is basically made for people who like to “throw money away” or for research companies that do need that bit more and can afford that exaggerated price. To give you an idea; we are going to give a very simple example.

As you can see, buying something from the first zone makes you save $ 200 compared to the central one, but the power has nothing to do with it. You are already buying outdated equipment. Buying something from the third zone shoots up the price and hardly gives you benefits. 

This example may appear to be exaggerated but it varies very little from reality. And this is where the question kit is. Saving, buying a cheap computer means analyzing what is on the market and choosing one in the central area that has the minimum benefits for your user profile and will not be out of date in less than a year.

Buying a new desktop computer cheaply

If what you are looking for is to purchase a desktop computer, you have an advantage over users who are looking for portable computers. The towers are easily removable and allow them to change almost any part. 

On laptops, you can also change certain parts, but the high price of the same means that it is not always profitable to change them. So if your choice is to buy a desktop computer, what you have to take into account mainly is the motherboard and the processor. It is the fundamental pillar where you are going to mount the rest of the components. 

It does not matter that you put a hard drive that later becomes small, you can expand it without any problems, it does not matter that you put a not very powerful graphics card if you finally want to play games or perform graphic rendering tasks you can expand it. With graphics cards, the price versus performance curve grows exaggerated if you choose the very latest generation. So I would not recommend spending that price for what little advantage you are going to get.

Buy Second-hand Computers

Do not do it unless you know the owner or want them to set up workshops or do tests. Why shouldn’t you buy a second-hand computer? Well, because there is much defective equipment on the second-hand market. They work but they do strange things, they turn off, they give blue screens … the owner is bored, he does not know how to solve the problem, and to get it out of the way he tries to sell it before it is very out of date and is worth almost nothing.

Electronic components as well as mechanical components have their useful life, after that “time” they will die in most cases. Imagine, 2 computers bought the same day, one of them used occasionally and another of them that has never been turned off, that has always been downloading things, and used for games. 

The first of them would be a good buy, the second would not. If you do not know the seller, you will not be able to know the use he has given it. And this is not like the one who buys a car that listening to the engine can intuit how it is. Here in both cases the two computers start up and work fine, but one of them will start to crash shortly and the other will not.