[dchabby]

I am looking at picking up an older second hand computer to be used mainly for XBMC and maybe some old retro emulator gaming.

I don't know what the minimum requirements are for playing HD blu ray rips but can someone let me know if these specs would work ?

Acer Aspire 3800
Windows Vista Home Premium
640gb of HDD
Intel core quad processor Q8200
DVD super multi
intl GMA X4500 integrated

I think it has a 250w power supply but I do have an extra 400w psu that I can swap in there as I realize I may need a new video card.

Most of my videos are 1:1 bluray/dvd rips made from my disks with Makemkv and Mpeg-2 recorded TV

Will also mention that I am picking this up for $75 CDN so with a new video card will probably be looking at just over $100 - is this a decent price ?

[ulibuck]

Did you have a look at the Windows Requirements ?

Your specs might be at the lower end.

With the Intel core quad processor Q8200 it might work. But I am not sure.

In my case of a seven year old HP Media Center PC with Core 2 Duo E6600 CPU I went like this
- Vista --> Linux Mint 16 Petra (Ubuntu 13.10)
- 500 GB HDD --> 120 GB SSD
- ATI Radeon x1650se graphics --> NVIDIA GeForce GT 630 graphics
- kept mother board, CPU and 300W PSU
- changed the CPU fan to reduce noise a bit

I am very happy with the XBMC performance; with out the new graphics card I was not.

just over $100 - is this a decent price ?

IHMO: yes; with a decent graphics card and a OS that supports it you should be getting quite decent XBMC performance. Vista does not support XBMC hardware video decoding (see the Windows requirements). So a new graphics card will only make sense if you also change the OS to W7 or a Linux.

I am not in Canada, but it might be thight to get a decent graphics card at just $25 or so.

[RaggSokk3n]

My old recycled build handles xbmcbuntu just fine so as long as you're not keeping Vista it's a ok buy. Not sure how much your money is worth these days compared to average salary but if you have a calculator you could probably get the value by using this formula while changing the salary:
50.000$(usd)(average annual salary in my country ) / 100$ (estimated computer value in my country) = 500(basically 1:500 salary/value ratio)
So putting in your numbers would look something like this:
30.000$(guesstimate) * 1:500 (value to salary ratio) = 60$ so in that case you might want to haggle.

[dchabby]

well i did buy it and so far everything is working great. played some bluray rips and no problems whatsoever.

i may look into upgrading to windows 7/8 but for now i am happy for $75 which would be about $60-$65 USD

[Topken]

There is always the possibility to install linux like linux mint or ubuntu onto the machine and get away from vista if really needed. I have xbmc running on weaker hardware ontop of PCLinuxOS Mate Edition 64bit myself and have had no issues.

Specs of the machine in case you want to know

Intel Pentium Dual Core E2180 @ 2ghz
Ram 2gb
GPU Nvidia GT 220 1GB DDR2
OS PCLinuxOS Mate Edition 64bit
160GB HDD