(SOLVED) Need help with PC Build (Or upgrade, Not sure)

[MineBloxCoderYT]

Hi, My name is MineBloxCoderYT (No YouTube Channel, Dont look) and I am thinking about building, or upgrading, a pc to be my dream pc. my dream pc has the following things in it.

• 3 GHz or bigger processor
• 8 GB or more RAM
• 2 GB GPU
• Must have optical drive
• At least 500 GB HDD or SDD

I prefer to build a custom pc, but i have a budget of 100 to 200 dollars, so thats kinda off the table, but I would still like to do that. I need help with two things.

1 I need to know, if i do build a custom pc, a few things,

• What Is the best socket type
• Best things to do for a tight budget
• What the most expensive pc part's are. going from most expensive to least expensive.

2nd thing i need to know, if i instead upgrade a pc, like a dell optiplex, what the best pc to upgrade is to build. I am again building my dream pc, with a budget of 100 - 200 dollars. I would greatly apreciate your help. Thanks

 

-MineBloxCoderYT

[Bombastinator]

Well with a budget that low is gonna have to be old used parts, with as much stuff as you have right now to start with.  What do you currently have to work with?

[Fasauceome]

45 minutes ago, MineBloxCoderYT said:

I prefer to build a custom pc, but i have a budget of 100 to 200 dollars

Big ouch, 200 dollars won't get you a PC worth gaming on and it certainly blocks you from a reasonable upgrade path. 

 

The very best course of action is patience, wait to save up like $350 and you can get a decent motherboard for a Ryzen CPU and it'll give you an upgrade path straight through 4th gen ryzen which releases next year (of course you can upgrade to second or third gen if you're budget minded). Really now is not the time to buy if your spending power is limited to $200.

 

Here's the cheapest PC I can recommend for you:

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Athlon 3000G 3.5 GHz Dual-Core Processor	$49.99 @ B&H
Motherboard	ASRock B450M/AC Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard	$74.99 @ Newegg
Memory	GeIL EVO POTENZA 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory	$33.99 @ Newegg
Storage	ADATA SU635 240 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive	$26.99 @ Amazon
Case	Rosewill FBM-X1 MicroATX Mini Tower Case	$26.99 @ Amazon
Power Supply	Corsair CX (2017) 450 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply	$53.98 @ Newegg
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$266.93
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-12-18 21:55 EST-0500

 

And it falls a bit short of your "dream PC" criteria

[MineBloxCoderYT]

Fasauceeome its not going to be a gaming pc in general, but i am a beginner so, i am looking at parts on ebay or amazon.

Bombastinator i am a beginner and dont have parts yet. sorry if its a inconvenience. Again, i am open to upgrading a pc, such as a dell optiplex. so if the budget isnt good, im good to upgrade, just want to replace things in a pc for better use

[Herman Mcpootis]

6 minutes ago, MineBloxCoderYT said:

Fasauceeome its not going to be a gaming pc in general, but i am a beginner so, i am looking at parts on ebay or amazon.

Bombastinator i am a beginner and dont have parts yet. sorry if its a inconvenience. Again, i am open to upgrading a pc, such as a dell optiplex. so if the budget isnt good, im good to upgrade, just want to replace things in a pc for better use

at $100-200, get a used LGA 1366 workstation off ebay and pair it with an RX 480/580.

[Bombastinator]

14 minutes ago, MineBloxCoderYT said:

Fasauceeome its not going to be a gaming pc in general, but i am a beginner so, i am looking at parts on ebay or amazon.

Bombastinator i am a beginner and dont have parts yet. sorry if its a inconvenience. Again, i am open to upgrading a pc, such as a dell optiplex. so if the budget isnt good, im good to upgrade, just want to replace things in a pc for better use

Don’t need to game!  That makes it much easier!  This can definitely be done then.  What is it you do want to do?

[MineBloxCoderYT]

Bombastinator I do plan on games such as roblox or minecraft but other than that nothing much other than i do have a thing for virtualbox and make virtual machines with it on my laptop, so i would want to upgrade to a pc. Thanks Everyone, youve really helped a lot. last thing i need is what are the most expensive parts (besides GPU) in a pc? like, in order for most expensive to least? Once i have that info i will get to work looking. I have been looking at parts for two months until someone recommended i look for help here, so thanks.

[trevb0t]

13 hours ago, MineBloxCoderYT said:

Hi, My name is MineBloxCoderYT (No YouTube Channel, Dont look) and I am thinking about building, or upgrading, a pc to be my dream pc. my dream pc has the following things in it.

• 3 GHz or bigger processor
• 8 GB or more RAM
• 2 GB GPU
• Must have optical drive
• At least 500 GB HDD or SDD

I prefer to build a custom pc, but i have a budget of 100 to 200 dollars, so thats kinda off the table, but I would still like to do that. I need help with two things.

1 I need to know, if i do build a custom pc, a few things,

• What Is the best socket type
• Best things to do for a tight budget
• What the most expensive pc part's are. going from most expensive to least expensive.

2nd thing i need to know, if i instead upgrade a pc, like a dell optiplex, what the best pc to upgrade is to build. I am again building my dream pc, with a budget of 100 - 200 dollars. I would greatly apreciate your help. Thanks

 

-MineBloxCoderYT

You're in luck. Your requirements are pretty reasonable!

I would look for a used PC with either an older i5 or something like an A10-7700K. Used Athlon builds are practically a giveaway in the modern age. I wouldn't necessarily build around anything lesser than an A10.

Add something like a used R7 260X, R9 270X, GTX 750/Ti and you'll have a fine gaming pc for med settings 1080p and it will do very well at high settings 720p/900p.

[MineBloxCoderYT]

Thanks, but again, not a gaming pc other than roblox or minecraft and using virtualbox, no gaming.

[Bombastinator]

21 minutes ago, MineBloxCoderYT said:

Bombastinator I do plan on games such as roblox or minecraft but other than that nothing much other than i do have a thing for virtualbox and make virtual machines with it on my laptop, so i would want to upgrade to a pc. Thanks Everyone, youve really helped a lot. last thing i need is what are the most expensive parts (besides GPU) in a pc? like, in order for most expensive to least? Once i have that info i will get to work looking. I have been looking at parts for two months until someone recommended i look for help here, so thanks.

The order generally goes gpu, cpu, motherboard.  The PSU while not that expensive, is really important though.  They age, and they can go bad, and if they go bad they can fry not just themselves but other parts of your system when they go.  In your case PSU might go highest on the list.

 There isn’t so much a particularly reliable brand name or useful feature, because makers will frequently rebrand products from other makers or suddenly switch internals without changing the model name, and features while they may exist may not actually be implemented in a useful way.  Used PSUs are often a crapshoot at best.

[trevb0t]

8 minutes ago, MineBloxCoderYT said:

Thanks, but again, not a gaming pc other than roblox or minecraft and using virtualbox, no gaming.

I mean... It translates to your desires either way. It's a 3.4ghz CPU, a 2GB GPU, and the rest you can expect reasonably out of a used build.

[boggy77]

have you considered a second hand laptop?

[Herman Mcpootis]

56 minutes ago, MineBloxCoderYT said:

Thanks, but again, not a gaming pc other than roblox or minecraft and using virtualbox, no gaming.

Old LGA 1366 workstation + cheap Xeon 6-core CPU might work for VMs, maybe some extra ram when you save up enough.

[MineBloxCoderYT]

thank's everyone. im going to stop replying for a little while, while i look at computer parts. thanks again.

Herman Mcpootis thanks, i will look into that. what is the least expensive socket type on the market? that will help.

[Bombastinator]

16 minutes ago, MineBloxCoderYT said:

thank's everyone. im going to stop replying for a little while, while i look at computer parts. thanks again.

Herman Mcpootis thanks, i will look into that. what is the least expensive socket type on the market? that will help.

Depends on the market.  It’s all supply and demand and that can vary by area.  It depends on what people are trying to get rid of where.  Recently obsoleted stuff at first drops drastically in price, and then starts to rise again as supply is used up.  Server grade stuff was a great value for a while but that to a degree dried up.  It may be happening again though because AMD came out with some new server chips that have people excited so there may be some xenon stuff around.  It’s a day by day and area by area thing.

[MineBloxCoderYT]

soooooo what? I live in oregon and use ebay and amazon. what's cheaper on the market.

 

P.S. Sorry if im being rude.

[MineBloxCoderYT]

Also what is the best amount of money to spend on a psu? like, what range?

[Bombastinator]

8 minutes ago, MineBloxCoderYT said:

soooooo what? I live in oregon and use ebay and amazon. what's cheaper on the market.

 

P.S. Sorry if im being rude.

Nope.  Location was important.  Knowing it’s the General US market is handy.  It might have been Egypt or the Philippines or something.

[MineBloxCoderYT]

is lga better? i dont know what the amd cpu socket type is, all i know is that, like lga, they both have a lot.

[Bombastinator]

43 minutes ago, MineBloxCoderYT said:

is lga better? i dont know what the amd cpu socket type is, all i know is that, like lga, they both have a lot.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_grid_array
 

lga just means it’s intel rather than AMD, and to a lesser extent, which part of the cpu has pins on it.  For your purposes it means very close to nothing.  The numbers may refer to the numbers of pins, but for purposes of home users they are basically just model names.

[MineBloxCoderYT]

what is the best minimum price for buying a PSU? and what are the 5 best brands to get.

[trevb0t]

34 minutes ago, MineBloxCoderYT said:

what is the best minimum price for buying a PSU? and what are the 5 best brands to get.

US pricing is fairly high right now, unfortunately.

Most available brands have good and bad units. 

You can reference the PSU Tier List our friendly fellas have put together to reference pricing through your desired retailers. 

[MineBloxCoderYT]

Im working on my rough draft of my pc. im going to use these parts, and im finding these parts on amazon and ebay. these are the parts.

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Phenom II X2 B59 3.4 GHz Dual-Core OEM/Tray Processor	$39.01 @ Amazon
CPU Cooler	ARCTIC Alpine 64 GT 25.6 CFM CPU Cooler	$9.50 @ Amazon
Motherboard	Asus M5A78L-M PLUS/USB3 Micro ATX AM3+ Motherboard	$68.99 @ SuperBiiz
Memory	Patriot Signature 8 GB (1 x 8 GB) DDR3-1600 Memory	$24.99 @ Amazon
Storage	Seagate Barracuda 500 GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$17.95 @ Amazon
Video Card	EVGA GeForce GT 730 2 GB Video Card	$30.71 @ Amazon
Case	Rosewill FBM-X1 MicroATX Mini Tower Case	$26.99 @ Amazon
Power Supply	Raidmax Cobra 500 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply	$43.98 @ Amazon
Optical Drive	Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer	$19.89 @ Amazon
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$282.01
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-12-20 18:41 EST-0500

 

and i got those parts for cheaper, and by got, i mean i found. so these are the parts lowered in price.

CPU: https://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-Phenom-II-X2-B59-3-4GHz-Socket-AM3-Dual-Core-HDXB59WFK2DGM-Processor/293372311729

CPU Cooler: https://www.ebay.com/itm/ARCTIC-Alpine-64-GT-Processor-Cooler/332165238757?hash=item4d56974

Motherboard: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Asus-M5A78L-M-LX3-PLUS-760G-780L-Socket-AM3-DDR3-16G-Desktop-Motherboard/183941009740

Memory: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Patriot-Signature-PSD34G1333K-8GB-4x2GB-1333MHz-CL9-DDR3-RAM/123843741973

Storage: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Seagate-Barracuda-ST500DM002-500GB-SATA-III-6-0Gb-s-Desktop-Drive/183642311554

Video Card: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00L5GZ8GE/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?smid=ALGI22DCR8EFU&psc=1

Case: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B072F29JP4/ref=ox_sc_act_title_3?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1

Power Supply: https://www.amazon.com/Raidmax-ATX-Power-Supply-RX-500AF-B/dp/B00HK74EPS/ref=sr_1_2?crid=V451UDY4O51F&keywords=raidmax+atx+500+power+supply+rx-500af b&qid=1576884138&s=electronics&sprefix=Raidmax+ATX+500%2Celectronics%2C257&sr=1-2#

Optical Drive: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Asus-DRW-24B1ST-Internal-DVD-Writer-DRW-24B1ST-BLK-B-AS/254253013990

Let me know if theres something wrong with this.

[Bombastinator]

Maybe look at the LTT Christmas build video.  They had a cpu they really liked in that price range.  Might have come with a fan so total cost would be the same maybe.  Iirc they were overclocking it though.  Iirc it was an apu.  I don’t know how performance compared to the 730 you got there.  The apu would use system memory so there would potentially be more of it.  It was also all new parts so no used parts weirdness.  Cost about the same.

[seagate_surfer]

On 12/19/2019 at 2:02 PM, MineBloxCoderYT said:

what is the best minimum price for buying a PSU? and what are the 5 best brands to get.

Some of the best known brands and manufacturing power supply units are:
EVGA
Corsair.
SeaSonic
Master Cooler
Antec.
NZXT
XFX
Thermal outlet

 

You still will need to make a lot of reading thou, once you find one that calls your attention dig deep into the reading and research of such a unit because you may have picked up a bad one. Your build is a challenge!!