looking to turn a cheap hp sff into a budget gaming pc.

[Charley Bentley]

I am looking to build a sleeper-ish gaming pc I am new here and have never built a pc before so I thought I could come here and ask advice, it needs to be under £$500 and be able to run a few basic games such as the S.T.A.L.K.E.R trilogy and some racing games, any thoughts of what I should do/parts that are compatible with the PC.

requirements:

8gb ram

basic gpu

preferably i5 or above

be relatively quite 

large storage.

thank you for any ideas

[Nolanl83]

id say buy a compaq or an Elitedesk with an i5 or i7 throw in a 1050ti or even a 1060 purchase a tb hdd and maybe a 250gb ssd or 500 if thatd be in your budget. this is fairly reasonable for where im at in the US but id say get onto local sites and see

[LukeSavenije]

why sff? do you already have anything? if so, what?

[DiabeticSeizures]

I would just buy an old used Optiplex, and slap a 1050 into it. they come with i5s and 8 gigs of ram. The storage might be something to turn away from. Maybe upgrade that too.

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-OptiPlex-790-SFF-Computer-Win-10-Pro-240GB-SSD-I5-2400-8GB-Wifi/132929684089?hash=item1ef33a0279:g:6nMAAOSwqjhcSvyI

https://www.amazon.com/MSI-GTX-1050-TI-4GT/dp/B01N2W8MJ9

https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-BarraCuda-Internal-3-5-Inch-ST2000DM006/dp/B01IEKG402/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1548951807&sr=1-2&keywords=barracuda+2tb

 

Something like this maybe? It comes with an SSD.

[Radium_Angel]

11 minutes ago, Charley Bentley said:

thank you for any ideas

Your biggest challenge is the power supply. Depending on the HP system you get, the PSU may be a special size, lack watts, lack the right connectors for the video card, or a combination of all three.

[markr54632]

Kind of what was said above. SFF is a royal pain. Alot of them have arbitrary power limits on the PCI express slots that keep you from running anything but a 1030 or 710. Power supplies are super dinky and proprietary.

 

Buy a mini tower. My favorite at the moment is the dell 7010. Newegg has a 7010 with a i7-3770, 16gb of ram, and a 1tb hdd for 250. Slap a rx580 in there for 200, a 500 watt psi for 30-40, and spend the rest on a cheap ssd.

[DiabeticSeizures]

22 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Your biggest challenge is the power supply. Depending on the HP system you get, the PSU may be a special size, lack watts, lack the right connectors for the video card, or a combination of all three.

The power cables will be fine, and the gpu takes motherboard power.

 

but yea, the psu might be a problem.

 

[Charley Bentley]

1 hour ago, Nolanl83 said:

id say buy a compaq or an Elitedesk with an i5 or i7 throw in a 1050ti or even a 1060 purchase a tb hdd and maybe a 250gb ssd or 500 if thatd be in your budget. this is fairly reasonable for where im at in the US but id say get onto local sites and see

thanks that is very useful and they should be roughly the same price as they are in the uk.

[Charley Bentley]

1 hour ago, markr54632 said:

Kind of what was said above. SFF is a royal pain. Alot of them have arbitrary power limits on the PCI express slots that keep you from running anything but a 1030 or 710. Power supplies are super dinky and proprietary.

 

Buy a mini tower. My favorite at the moment is the dell 7010. Newegg has a 7010 with a i7-3770, 16gb of ram, and a 1tb hdd for 250. Slap a rx580 in there for 200, a 500 watt psi for 30-40, and spend the rest on a cheap ssd.

ok I will have a look the i7 7010 seems like a good bet thanks.

[Charley Bentley]

2 hours ago, Nolanl83 said:

id say buy a compaq or an Elitedesk with an i5 or i7 throw in a 1050ti or even a 1060 purchase a tb hdd and maybe a 250gb ssd or 500 if thatd be in your budget. this is fairly reasonable for where im at in the US but id say get onto local sites and see

any thoughts on the HP pro 3300 mt mini tower 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-Pro-3300-MT-PC-Mini-Tower-Intel-i3-2120-3-3Ghz-4GB-250GB-Windows-10-Pro-64/323287476940?hash=item4b456f6acc:g:F-4AAOSw8Pda9vDF:rk:8:pf:0

[markr54632]

37 minutes ago, Charley Bentley said:

any thoughts on the HP pro 3300 mt mini tower 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-Pro-3300-MT-PC-Mini-Tower-Intel-i3-2120-3-3Ghz-4GB-250GB-Windows-10-Pro-64/323287476940?hash=item4b456f6acc:g:F-4AAOSw8Pda9vDF:rk:8:pf:0

You may think that's a cheaper setup, but that i3-2120 isnt going to be doing much of anything. By the time you upgrade the processor, ram, and psu you could have just started out with a better prebuilt and saved money.

I would shoot for at the very minimum a 3rd gen i5, and if you do some smart searching you might be able to pull off a 4th gen i7.

[Charley Bentley]

13 minutes ago, markr54632 said:

You may think that's a cheaper setup, but that i3-2120 isnt going to be doing much of anything. By the time you upgrade the processor, ram, and psu you could have just started out with a better prebuilt and saved money.

I would shoot for at the very minimum a 3rd gen i5, and if you do some smart searching you might be able to pull off a 4th gen i7.

ok I will I have been looking and found this xeon powered hp mini tower

[Charley Bentley]

14 hours ago, Charley Bentley said:

ok I will I have been looking and found this xeon powered hp mini tower

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-XW6400-Workstation-2-x-Xeon-5140-2-33-GHZ-80GB-4GB-Dual-Graphics/143090716638?hash=item2150df0fde:g:35UAAOSwj91cBsIN:rk:2:pf:0