The PC I've been slowly upgrading for the last year

Adorable Cat · March 22, 2019

I finally cleaned up my desk so I could get some good pics of my PC as it is now, so I figured I'd make a post about how my PC has changed since I first made it. Enjoy (or don't whatever)

Original -

Around this time last year, the laptop I'd been using for just about everything died (probably from being in the back of a car for a few hours when it was pretty far into the negatives, freedom units). It was pretty garbage, it had an A8 6410 APU with Radeon 5400 with R5 graphics, but 16Gb of RAM I'd upgraded and a 2Tb SSHD (that unfortunately also broke \:( ). I decided that instead of buying another laptop I'd build myself a PC with the goal of just making it better than my laptop, using just the money I could make doing chores and clearing snow. I'd just started watching LTT a couple months before and had gotten a few free PCs from the early 2000s, so I made this:

My beautiful re-use of my laptops 16Gb ->

(I later decided to spraypaint the front panel black, this was taken at my Dads place)

Specs -

Core i3 2120

16Gb (2x8) SO-DIMMS from my laptop

HP 8200 Elite Motherboard

Stock intel cooler

shady used galax GTX650 i got for 30 bucks

500Gb Hard Drive I found in a closet

Another 500Gb Hard Drive (I got this one when I upgraded my laptops HDD)

An old used OEM case

1360x768 TV

EVGA 400 watt PSU

some TP-Link 2.4Ghz adapter.

I decided to get a cheap Mobo + CPU on Ebay, so I payed 60 bucks and got a Core i3 2120 + HP OEM mobo. The GPU was basically I sorted by price - Low-High on Ebay and found something that would still play at 720p low/med. All I needed were the 2 RAM adapters which were 16 bucks for the 2 pack and a PSU adapter cable and I had everything else (well I also needed to get a PSU because the one I'd pulled from one of my PCs I got for free decided to die. I waaay overpaid for what I got (400 watts, just 80+, not modular) but it shipped quick so I didn't care. I could finally play my steam library at most of the time over 30fps, even if I had to go to low settings. Felt real nice.

First major upgrade -

It was toward the middle of the summer and I'd gotten some money ($200 amazon GC) from my Grandma, so I decided I wanted to do some upgrades to my PC. I hit amazon and got the following:

-Asus Strix GTX950 2Gb for like 90 bucks used

-Asus P8B75m- LE mobo for like $60 used

-120Gb PNY SSD, I'd never used a PC with an SSD before and I was totally blown away, I got it for like $20.

At first the new Mobo would just sit in it's box because I was still staying with my dad, and most of my extra PC parts were in another state with my mom. My stock intel cooler wasn't compatible with it. When I got back to my mom's after summer, I put it in with a really old stock CPU cooler that kind of fit, I tied it to the mobo with some old shoelace. I also put in an i5-3470 I'd gotten for free, but hadn't originally used because in the beginning I didn't understand chipsets and just assumed it'd work with my first mobo. Fortunately I held onto it, because at first I thought the CPU was broken. (also funny story, in the same bin I found the 3470 I found a 2nd gen i5 too, would have been nice to see that when I first was looking lol). My mom also got me a Hyper 212 Turbo LED as a late birthday present, so thx. I also found a 900p montor at a thrift store for really cheap, so that was nice to move away from 720p.

(sorry for this pics quality, I didn't take pics with my somewhat decent camera)

(my PC, with my cat in the foreground)

At first I couldn't get my Front panel audio to work (I had my mic sticking out of the front because I didn't have a combined input), so I just flipped the PC around and used the rear I/O. Later I realized why my Front Panel Audio wan't working, and just trailed an old FP audio thing out an open PCI hole so I could have my mic closer to my mouth. It looked like trash but I didn't really mind, I could play games at 40-50 FPS at 900p med/high, so I was happy... for a while...

Current PC

Over a year of upgrading, my PC is finally something I can be proud of. When I got a job I was finally able to fuel this addiction with a steady source of income, instead of just whenever I could help with snow or whatever. It started when I got the best CPU I can have in my current mobo for Christmas (again, thx mom). She got me an i7 3770 for like 100 bucks used on ebay. I decided to go to a 500Gb Intel 545s SSD on sale for around $50 because my 120Gb one was filling up quickly, and a B-Stock 550 watt EVGA B3 fully modular PSU. And now that I had a better PSU and CPU, I figured I'd upgrade my GPU too, so I got a used mining RX580 4Gb on ebay, which was dead so instead I got a Gigabyte RX580 Gaming 8Gb for like 200. Around the same time I also found a 1080p Samsung monitor sitting in a corner, and was told I could have it for free. And then I decided it was also time to move beyond this garbage OEM HP case to something nicer and also MATX like my mobo, so I got a Thermaltake Core V21 mostly because it'd fit my cooler. And a few weeks ago I was wanting to get a bigger hard drive than this 500Gb one I found cleaning a closet, and instead got a 1Tb Intel 860QVO SSD for $120.

The result:

Current specs:

Core i7 3770

Asus P8B75M-LE Mobo

Gigabyte RX580 Gaming 8G

Still the 16Gb of DDR3 So-DIMMS

500Gb Intel 545s SSD

1Tb Samsung 860QVO SSD

EVGA B3 550watt PSU

still the TPLINK 2.4Ghz PCI wireless card, because I don't have ethernet in my room.

Thermaltake Core V21 case

some NZXT Airflow 140mm case fan

CM Hyper 212 Turbo LED (red)

I'm really happy to finally have a PC capable of high 1080p gaming, and (some) VR if I ever get a headset. I have the best PC out of anyone I know (although I don't know that many people), and am pleased with how it looks. Overall I'd say this isn't the most efficient or price effective way to build a PC at all, but it's been a great learning experience to go through so many different things, and being in situations I'd likely have never been in had I just bought everything normally and called it good.

For the future, I'm planning on moving to Ryzen once Zen 2 comes out, and the obvious GPU upgrade once every maybe year, but for now I'm good.

dgsddfgdfhgs · March 22, 2019

8 minutes ago, Adorable Cat said:

Current specs:

Core i7 3770

Asus P8B75M-LE Mobo

Gigabyte RX580 Gaming 8G

Still the 16Gb of DDR3 So-DIMMS

500Gb Intel 545s SSD

1Tb Samsung 860QVO SSD

EVGA B3 550watt PSU

still the TPLINK 2.4Ghz PCI wireless card, because I don't have ethernet in my room.

Thermaltake Core V21 case

some NZXT Airflow 140mm case fan

CM Hyper 212 Turbo LED (red)

from 1st potato long upgrade path, you have multiple upgrades, what will you do with old parts?

what if you use total upgrade cost to build a new pc?

Adorable Cat · March 22, 2019

3 minutes ago, dgsddfgdfhgs said:

from 1st potato long upgrade path, you have multiple upgrades, what will you do with old parts?

what if you use total upgrade cost to build a new pc?

So far I've put the old mobo, cpu, psu, and hard drive onto a little wood "test bench" I made, and I use it to host minecraft servers with some discord friends and mess around with. My old 120gb ssd I put in an office desktop for my Robotics team. I'm considering using some of the parts to help my sister get a pc, but she doesn't have much room for one and doesn't use her laptop that often anyway.

If I took the total I spent on upgrades I could probably have a better system, but that would have meant I'd have to have had all of that money at once, so I'd have had to go without a computer for almost a year after originally breaking my laptop. And the learning experience through all this is not something I'd give up, too.