There are many people selling PC's on Ebay. Some are name brand and some are either Custom made or OEM. Some look like great deals especially to people who don't know a lot about computers. More times than not you will see a PC for sale and it appears to be a great deal, but there are questions that you should be asking the seller:

1) Does the PC come with a Monitor?   2) Does it come with a Keyboard, mouse, speakers, webCam, Operating System (Windows), back-up disk?  3) What make and model of: CPU, Motherboard, Memory, Hard drive, CD-ROM, DVD, CD-RW, DVD-RW, Video, Modem, High speed ethernet 10/100/1000? Sound Card, Floppy drive, How many USB Ports, how many Cooling fans, BIOS, Burning Software, Blu-Ray, Office Software, Anti-Virus & utility software, ad/Spy/mailware.  4) The last 2 questions and very important: Is this PC expandable for the future? And warranty information! Please ask and do your home work on all of above. Remember, there is no such thing as a dumb question.

Many PC's have a good name like Dell-HP-Gateway-Sony-Asus-Acer, and more... But may come with low end motherboards, memory, video cards, sound cards, and drive devices. Also it is very important to find out what name brand and type CPU that is installed. It makes a Very big difference for example: The Intel celeron and the AND Athlon CPU are low end CPU because they run at relatively low MHz, slow FSB (front side bus), and a very small cache, 512KB. If you don't know what these terms mean It translates to slow running computer that has to have it's cache emptied often. If the cache is not emptied often your computer will so down and eventually freeze up.

On the other hand, a CPU like Intel Pentium "D", Intel Core Duo, AMD A64 X2 5000+, AMD Opteron 1216 CPU, are middle-high end offering around 1.7 - 3.0 MHz, FSB around 800 - 1000 MHz (front side bus) Good speed, and a big cache around 1MB thru 2MB.
Last but not least there is the high end CPU's: AMD Phenom X4 9850 That has 4 MB of Cache, and 2000MHz FSB & The Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 that has a whooping 8MB of cache and a Front side bus of 1066MHz.

So you see there are big differences on the inside of a computer. I hope this Guide will help you decide how to choose your next computer purchase.

One Last Tip, and it's a good one: Purchase a Square Trade Warranty on your PC or any Electronics. They carry the very best warranty bar none. Often Square Trade Warranty's are 1/3 the price of manufactures warranties. Square Trade guarantees your computer will be fixed with-in 5 days or pay you full price!

Jonathon Mt Pocono Auctions 1357