New Computer

Even though this computer is a tower as opposed to a laptop or an all-in-one desktop, it's not very powerful at all. Even new, it wouldn't have run Seasons or Pets on anything more than the lowest settings, and perhaps not particularly well. The base game and Ambitions might be fine, and possibly Generations if you're willing to play on low settings. But even that could be too much, especially given the age of the computer.

New desktops that can run Sims 3's most demanding packs (Pets and Seasons) on ultra settings generally cost around £600 (monitor not included), although there are often sales that bring that down to the £500 range. A refurbished but similar system is a bit cheaper, but you'd probably save £100 or less. There's a category of slightly cheaper lower-level desktops that would run the base game and some packs reasonably well, although Pets and Seasons might be too demanding to run properly. Still, these systems are much more powerful than the one you're considering, and they'd be more expensive too.

If you'd like some other options for a new or used computer, let me know how much you'd want to spend, and I can have a look around. But unless you're willing to buy on Ebay, you're not going to see a good Sims 3 computer for anything like the price of the one you linked.

@ClaraMaria123 - Would your budget for this purchase improve if you set the funds aside and waited 6 months to a year? It is not a reasonable expectation to find a new desktop (or a laptop, of course those are more expensive) to run the entire game with £300 as an absolute upper limit. Used and/or refurbs are always a gamble. Sometimes they will indeed work out well and sometimes not at all, most often experiences will be somewhere in between; the question to ask is if you spend upwards of that amount on a used system and you still cannot play the game, do you have the means to recover from the expense and start over? Depending on the source, typically used hardware does not come with a warranty and the purchaser is on their own if repairs are required even almost right away.

Personally I would never purchase a used computer even if I were the prior owner. Of course that last part about the prior owner is me not being serious, but there is really no way to know what condition a used machine is in and how heavily it has been used over the years once we get past a threshold of acceptable part specs. I've mentioned this on a prior thread of yours, but if you wish to play sims games with lots of heavy hitting expansions on what by necessity has to be lower-end hardware, perhaps TS2 if you have it available to you would be worth trying?

@puzzlezaddict

The laptop which I used to use cost around £280 and it ran Sims 3, Seasons, Pets and Generations for about two years, but eventually caved in when I installed ambitions. Now it doesn't run anything- I think I was just incredibly lucky for those first two years. I would be prepared to buy second hand from eBay, but I am very stretched budget-wise and wouldn't be prepared to pay more than £300.

Thanks for your help!

@igazor

I'll look into TS2. I have TS4 base game but I don't know if I would buy a new computer for that purpose only. I got TS4 free just because I could but for the brief time I played it I wasn't all that fussed about it.

Thanks for your help.

Of course igazor is right about the risks involved with buying a used computer, but there aren't really any other decent options for under £300, at least if you're looking to play Sims 3. There are always a few decent offers on Ebay U.K. though, and I know the consumer protections are better there than in the U.S. Here are a couple of current listings, in case you're still interested.

If you wanted to be extra safe, this one is £205 before shipping and comes with a 14 day return window, so you could get the system checked out once it arrived. It's not overly powerful, but it should still handle TS3 on ultra graphics settings, as long as it's in good shape. Its hardware is about 3 years old, or at least the essential components are.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Lenovo-Legion-Y520-Intel-Core-i3-7100-GTX-1050Ti-1TB-HDD-Optane-Gaming-PC-Win-10/264630157712?hash=item3d9d2fc190:g:10sAAOSw~aVeOF9h

At the higher end, this one is £300 and overpowered for Sims 3. Its hardware is no more than a couple of years old. The seller doesn't accept returns though, so you'd be taking a bit more of a risk.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Ryzen-5-2600-Gaming-PC-16GB-DDR4-3000-RX580-Graphics-SSD-HDD/124084780106?hash=item1ce4077c4a:g:oDMAAOSwvAReSBfF

There are always new listings on Ebay, so if you did want to go this route, you could keep an eye out for what you wanted and probably find something even better than the first system sooner or later.

@puzzlezaddict

I'll look into these! I appreciate your help.