Scrapyard before twas cool

[NeverNotExhausted]

Yo, So after LMG's Scrapyard wars I thought I would share my scrapyard build. I've been doing second hand buying/selling for some time now and this rig is something I put together about 2 months ago in it's initial form with an A4-3400 and 4gb of ram, but since has been upgraded a decent amount and is starting to look like a decent enough rig. It's basically an ever evolving build and the next thing I'll be looking at is upgrading the cooling so I can get abit more out of the CPU than I can currently on the stock cooler.

 

First off I got the Motherboard and HDD in a package that included 4gb of ripjaws ram, an a4-3400 and a coolermaster htpc case and psu for $150 of Gumtree, The case doesn't support any PCI expansion cards so that got sold with the 150 watt PSU for $15, the 4gb of ram got sold for so that takes my tally to $85 for an Asus Deluxe mobo and a 2tb WD Green drive.

 

Next up I got a Enthoo Evolv with 5 bitfenix spectre pro blue LED fans for $50 on Gumtree again, taking my tally to $135, I've got the fans setup as 2 front intakes, 2 top exhaust and 1 rear exhaust.

 

The PSU was another gumtree item and it's a Silverstone Strider 600 watt, fully modular unit for $50, i've fully sleeved it in blue, black and silver paracord that I had lying around, so that takes my tally to $185,

 

The best buy I got in my opinion was on Gumtree again and was 2 EVGA 560ti Superclocked cards and 8gb of Corsair XMS3 ram at 2000Mhz for $180! I'm using the ram and one of the cards, I really wish I could use both the cards but having an ITX motherboard that's out of the option. So I sold one of the cards for $100 which means I've effectively paid $80 for 8 gigs of pretty fast ram and a pretty capable graphics card. This takes me up to $265

 

The final part of the build was to replace the old dual core with something more capable, So I went looking around for the fastest FM1 socket chip and found myself an Athlon x4 651k on ebay that I managed to get for $20 shipped! It's still on it's way here but should be here via post sometime next week. But that takes me up to $285 for a whole quad core gaming rig in a pretty current case and with pretty decent specs. It already games better than my xbone with the dual core in there, so it will be a beast when I get the quad

 

Anyways guys, I hope this inspires some of you to go scouring through Gumtree, Craigslist and Ebay for parts because you can get some honestly brilliant buys there. I'm already hitting up a new rig to put together for my lounge. I've got some pics below of the rig in all it's glory, I know they aren't great quality as I'm still learning how to take decent pics with my new camera and the basics of Adobe Lightroom, but enjoy!

 

 

[georgespamme]

Pretty cool, dude!  I like the big writing on the side of the GPU.  And the snowboard

While there certainly are good reasons for buying components new, I'm getting more and more into recycling older stuff.  This build is almost to par with something I built for over double the cost with all new parts!  Granted, it was my first build and I was pretty clueless, but still.

[NeverNotExhausted]

Pretty cool, dude!  I like the big writing on the side of the GPU.  And the snowboard

While there certainly are good reasons for buying components new, I'm getting more and more into recycling older stuff.  This build is almost to par with something I built for over double the cost with all new parts!

 

Thanks mate

 

I wasn't sure if I would take the stickers off the card or not because yellow and blue are on opposite sides of the colour spectrum, but it turned out kinda cool

 

The snowboard also kinda costs 3 times more than the PC, and the bindings are about twice as expensive. You can see where my priorities are

[seabass9990]

Thanks mate

 

I wasn't sure if I would take the stickers off the card or not because yellow and blue are on opposite sides of the colour spectrum, but it turned out kinda cool

 

The snowboard also kinda costs 3 times more than the PC, and the bindings are about twice as expensive. You can see where my priorities are

You are a very   man, cool rig though. I will probably do the same to get a graphics card and case

[NeverNotExhausted]

You are a very   man, cool rig though. I will probably do the same to get a graphics card and case

 

Yeah emoticon overkill, but plain text doesn't convey emotion nearly enough

[Norman_the_Owl]

Thought your graphics card said 580 ti and was really confused

[NeverNotExhausted]

Thought your graphics card said 580 ti and was really confused

 

Sorry, I'm still trying work up my photography skills, On my girlfriends Cannon 5d Mk3 it's crystal clear, but I've only got a Pentax for myself so it takes abit more skill to balance lighting and blur.

 

I'm looking at upgrading the GPU, I've got two 7850's lying about that I'm tempted to swap into the build. But I'm quite sick at the moment and couldn't be bothered with the hassle of opening it up and swaping the GPU physically and then the drivers and all that jazz. I'm struggling to even walk to the front of my apartment complex to check the mail.

 

I've been eyeing off a 660ti that I might upgrade to, But I'm hoping to pick up a 7950/70 (R9 280 or 280x because they are essentially the same thing) then I'll have something I can play with pretty high settings and all that  

[NeverNotExhausted]

So abit of a minor update. But both of the 560ti's are now gone, The guy who was going to buy the 4gb of ripjaws memory and one of the 560ti's flaked out on me. But another gent ened up buying both 560ti's and the Ripjaws for $200 off me.

 

So that takes my tally to $235 for a quad core chip, 8gb of ram, 2tb of storage and a pretty nice case and PSU. I then cherrypicked a Palit 660ti reference card from my piles of second hand bits that I resell, That one cost me $150, so I'm up to $385 but overall I've got a fairly competent gaming rig. I'll be working towards getting an SSD and a AIO cooler for the CPU so I can bump up them clocks abit. Because the CPU socket is so close to the graphics card I can't get any of my air coolers on there which is a bummer. The fans are also going to be swapped out today for the stock Phanteks 140mm rear and 200mm front fans, hopefully this will make the rig abit quieter and not look so tacky with the blue LED's everywhere.

 

Because I've been trying to stick within a $400AUD budget and keep this rig separated from my other resale rigs I'm probably going to go about squeezing an SSD and AIO in the budget my selling the 660ti off for a profit and picking up another midrange card and repeat the process a few times until I have a decent GPU and enough profit in the budget to purchase the new kit. But that will obviously be down the line.

 

But this is it for now. The picture below is just taken on a phone so sorry for the poor quality. But I think the black GPU is a nice update and makes the interior look abit more stealthy and hopefully it looks a heck of a lot nicer once it gets some less tacky fans and lighting

 

 

[NeverNotExhausted]

Okay, So I disliked the blue LED's that came with the case, So I've swapped them out for the stock fans that came with the case, It's a much less showy aesthetic in my opinion.

 

I've also sold my 660ti for $200 and the fella has agreed to pick it up sometime in the weekend. To replace it I've scored two 7870's for $180! So my total goes down to $365 for a complete rig and I've still got a spare card to get rid of.

 

With any luck I will sell the 5 Spectre Pro's for a total of $50 and the spare 7870 for $150 so that will take me down to $165 for a working gaming rig. Then that leaves me with $235 to score myself a nice SSD and an AIO cooler! Imagine that! a Quad core rig, running an SSD boot drive, 2tb of storage, A 7870 which I could probably still manage to sell of and upgrade back to a 660ti/760 and a freaking AIO to cool it with.

 

Of course alot of this is still hypothetical. But it's all starting to shape up nicely and I think goes a ways to promote how doing abit of heckling and scoring some good deals can give you a pretty freaking epic build for next to no coin at all!

 

Anyway, here's the latest config that I'm running, The 660ti is still in there for the time being and I've still got to clean up the glue from where I was trying to mount an LED strip that I later realized didn't work. It honestly looks abit bland now, but It'll dress up nicely with a few new parts like the AIO slapped in there

 

[NeverNotExhausted]

I've found an Intel 330 series 120gb SSD for $70, if (and this is a big if) I can get rid of these fans and my spare 7870 and this guy still has it I'll snap that up and that will take my total up to $235. All still very hypothetical though

[NeverNotExhausted]

And progress has been made!

 

So the bad part is that my buyer of my 660ti flaked out and didn't go through with the sale. The good part is that I found new parts!

 

So I sourced a Silverstone AR01 120mm CPU cooler for a grand total of $20, and the seller threw in a Phenom x2 AM2+ rig with a burnt out mobo for free, so now I've got a 500gb HDD, a 450w PSU, a CPU, some DDR2 ram and a case to sell off!

 

I also managed to sell my Spectre pro fans for $50, so my grand total right now is $355 all in for the rig and it's starting to even look like a proper rig. Time to get some overclocking done on the 651k and see what can be squeezed from her and how it will perform in comparison to the stock CPU frequency

 

I'm also looking at maybe selling the whole rig in it's current state but with the 500gb HDD and picking up a 3570k or something similar on gumtree as a whole system upgrade and work my way up on that platform similar to what's been done on this rig. I am quite liking this rig right now though

[cammerv8]

I love this types of work logs. The is kinda what I've been doing. Get a part her and there and moving up, I started with a celeron D single core 775 and a 8600gs now I'm with a g3258 and a 280x

[NeverNotExhausted]

I love this types of work logs. The is kinda what I've been doing. Get a part her and there and moving up, I started with a celeron D single core 775 and a 8600gs now I'm with a g3258 and a 280x

 

Cheers mate I'll be sticking with this second hand buying/selling game as it makes the process of making a PC alot more fun and interesting. So many people on Gumtree flake out though.

 

My plan for this rig is to have an i5/i7 that's Haswell in it by mid year and a nice mid/high tier GPU and then keep this as a second rig and then start again with a fresh rig so I'll have a nice HTPC and gaming rig. Here's to wishing I guess haha

[NeverNotExhausted]

Okay, So abit more of an update. I've not changed any of the parts as of yet, though I've done a couple of benchmarks in Bioshock infinite and Tomb Raider 2013 and both games in the Ultra Preset 1920x1080 run a constant 60fps easy.

 

Tomb Raider 2013 had Vsync enabled hence the 60fps max and average, though Bioshock Infinite smashed 60fps and kept running with it. Please disregard the minfps value in Bioshock infinite as it takes that value from the black screen between scenes in the benchmark, Though the 169fps max and 90 odd average are pretty epic

 

I've also been running BF4 with custom settings that are a mix of High and Ultra textures and details, 4xAA and it sits on 60fps constantly, I've yet to have it fall under 60fps making for some ultra smooth gameplay. I'll be upping some of the settings and seeing how they get along later

 

But I think this goes to show you can make a pretty darn good setup for bugger all cash