Best thing you've bought for under $150

[Sauron]

Just now, Coaxialgamer said:

Only one catch : It's an ES processor .

Still, that's a crazy deal.

[Coaxialgamer]

3 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Still, that's a crazy deal.

And i have two. 

 

Motherboards are lga 2011-1 ( not lga 2011), and i have yet to find one for less than 400$ though. 

[MaxV2000]

A SSD for 75,- euro, from sandisk, my pc boots in like 8 seconds

[Praesi]

Logitech G9x. ~80€.

[harrynowl]

Probably my 3570K. One of the better ones in the world.

 

Fastest on phase in the world. Hopefully repeat the same on LN2.

[kelvindeschutter]

my 240GB crusial ssd or if it my be 10 bucks above it is my old trusty 4TB seagate external hhd

[annoyingmoments]

Can not decide between my Intel 535 SSD for my games for around 84 EUR or my recent purchase of the IKEA Fixa Cable management set for 4,90 EUR.

I choose the IKEA Fixa set to answer your question.

[CurryCalgs]

$103 canadian for a refurb r7 370 2gb at mem express. 

[kaiju_wars]

Hmm... my mechanical keyboard for $36?

I don't know if they count as PC enthusiast, but a few years back, Turtle Beach was considered some of the best gaming headsets.  So if they count, my Earforce X12s for like $70 when I bought them like three years ago.

[GlassBomb]

First two things that comes to mind is my Ducky Mini V1, which was bought new for somewhere under $150.

 

And then I would have to say the Sennheiser HD650 that I managed to pick up used for $150.

[PurpleScythe]

my graphics card, no contest, it was a gtx 960 reduced to 110 pounds, not the best card but its great value and it looks nice

[RahulR]

22 hours ago, wkdpaul said:

No offense but that's the worst GPU you could have bought for that amount of money.

 

I would classify that as "worst purchase", not "best".

Really? What other GPUs are there? Keep in mined that this is $165 CAD. I'm genuinely curious, since this card runs Tomb Raider 2013 at Ultimate settings at ~30FPS (probably bottlenecked by my CPU)

[FloRolf]

My recent best purchase was probably the i3 2120 for only 15€.

I ordered a 2500k for 60€ today, which I'm hoping performs a lot better in rendering and I might push it a little too. 

 

Also the 6€ tempered glass for my GF's iPhone which would be pretty dead now without it

[Laputacake]

Probably my 2670 for £60 and a 970 FTW+ for £70

[minibois]

1 hour ago, RahulR said:

Really? What other GPUs are there? Keep in mined that this is $165 CAD. I'm genuinely curious, since this card runs Tomb Raider 2013 at Ultimate settings at ~30FPS (probably bottlenecked by my CPU)

GTX 950 and 260X/370 can be had for that money, which perform better. Even a GTX 750 is cheaper than 165 CAD

(source: Canadian PCPartPicker. https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/products/video-card/#sort=a8&page=2)

7 minutes ago, Laputacake said:

Probably my 2670 for £60 and a 970 FTW+ for £70

just.. how?

Especially curious on the GPU

[WkdPaul]

5 hours ago, RahulR said:

Really? What other GPUs are there? Keep in mined that this is $165 CAD. I'm genuinely curious, since this card runs Tomb Raider 2013 at Ultimate settings at ~30FPS (probably bottlenecked by my CPU)

I'm in Montreal, this is the worst brand new GPU you could by for $165 CAD.

 

You could have bought a used GPU, but let's stay with  brand new ones.

 

- GTX 950 (technically it's not $165 because it's a mail-in rebate but I thought I would include it anyway)

 

- GTX 750ti (lot of 750ti can be found for under $165)

 

- R7 360

 

I know these are synthetic benchmarks, but just to show you how badly it performs, here it is compared to a 750ti and an old HD7770 

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=2883&cmp[]=2815&cmp[]=322

 

 

Or compared to an old HD7870 and an R7 360

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=2883&cmp[]=3233&cmp[]=324

 

The GT740 is pretty much on par with the R7 250, so here are more synthetic benchmarks comparison;

 

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-R7-360-vs-AMD-R7-250/3572vsm8217

 

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-750-Ti-vs-AMD-R7-250/2187vsm8217

 

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that was not a good purchase, I personally wouldn't let a friend or family member buy that GPU.

 

 

EDIT;

 

turns out the GT740 is a rebadged GTX 650 ... so just for fun I looked up bench for the GTX 650, and while it's an ok GPU, it's not worth anywhere near $165 CAD!

 

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-650-vs-AMD-HD-7770/3154vsm7710

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-650-vs-AMD-R7-360/3154vs3572

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-650-vs-Nvidia-GTX-750-Ti/3154vs2187

 

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/536?vs=681 (the HD7770 was rebadged to R7 250X)

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1125?vs=1130

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1125?vs=1044 (the R7 260X was rebadged to R7 360)

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1125?vs=1034 (the HD7870 was rebadged to R9 270)

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1034?vs=1080 (proof the R9 270 is a 7870)

 

all the cards I linked would've been better and cheaper, regardless of the amount of VRAM, the amount of VRAM on the GT 740 will barely affect the FPS anyway.

[Bocajo_Bloodfall]

Your Mom. My CPU, it was about £80 FX6300 -- It was amazing to me as it was my first six core cpu and coming from an AMD sempron and Intel Celron G1840T.

[RahulR]

5 hours ago, wkdpaul said:

I'm in Montreal, this is the worst brand new GPU you could by for $165 CAD.

 

You could have bought a used GPU, but let's stay with  brand new ones.

 

- GTX 950 (technically it's not $165 because it's a mail-in rebate but I thought I would include it anyway)

 

- GTX 750ti (lot of 750ti can be found for under $165)

 

- R7 360

 

I know these are synthetic benchmarks, but just to show you how badly it performs, here it is compared to a 750ti and an old HD7770 

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=2883&cmp[]=2815&cmp[]=322

 

 

Or compared to an old HD7870 and an R7 360

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=2883&cmp[]=3233&cmp[]=324

 

The GT740 is pretty much on par with the R7 250, so here are more synthetic benchmarks comparison;

 

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-R7-360-vs-AMD-R7-250/3572vsm8217

 

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-750-Ti-vs-AMD-R7-250/2187vsm8217

 

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that was not a good purchase, I personally wouldn't let a friend or family member buy that GPU.

 

 

EDIT;

 

turns out the GT740 is a rebadged GTX 650 ... so just for fun I looked up bench for the GTX 650, and while it's an ok GPU, it's not worth anywhere near $165 CAD!

 

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-650-vs-AMD-HD-7770/3154vsm7710

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-650-vs-AMD-R7-360/3154vs3572

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-650-vs-Nvidia-GTX-750-Ti/3154vs2187

 

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/536?vs=681 (the HD7770 was rebadged to R7 250X)

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1125?vs=1130

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1125?vs=1044 (the R7 260X was rebadged to R7 360)

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1125?vs=1034 (the HD7870 was rebadged to R9 270)

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1034?vs=1080 (proof the R9 270 is a 7870)

 

all the cards I linked would've been better and cheaper, regardless of the amount of VRAM, the amount of VRAM on the GT 740 will barely affect the FPS anyway.

I know it's not the best in terms of price to performance but we wanted to get a 4GB card. I know more VRAM doesn't mean faster and I know that a SC card isn't automatically better, I'm saying that we wanted a 4GB card so that we didn't have to spend even more on another card once we actually needed 4GBs. Anyway, the R7 250 has 1800MHz DDR3. We overclocked our card to 1333MHz and overclocked the memory to 3000MHz (6000MHz). I understand that there are cards at a similar price that would be faster but they have 2GBs or less. Anyway, when buying I only looked at the specs of each card, not the actual benchmarks. Also the 650 is a bit slower than the 740. By the way: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/536?vs=681 on the site I switched to the 660 which is ~100MHz slower but had 2GBs and performed way better. I don't know if I'm missing something

[vanished]

1 minute ago, RahulR said:

I know it's not the best in terms of price to performance but we wanted to get a 4GB card. I know more VRAM doesn't mean faster and I know that a SC card isn't automatically better, I'm saying that we wanted a 4GB card so that we didn't have to spend even more on another card once we actually needed 4GBs. Anyway, the R7 250 has 1800MHz DDR3. We overclocked our card to 1333MHz and overclocked the memory to 3000MHz (6000MHz). I understand that there are cards at a similar price that would be faster but they have 2GBs or less. Anyway, when buying I only looked at the specs of each card, not the actual benchmarks. Also the 650 is a bit slower than the 740. By the way: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/536?vs=681 on the site I switched to the 660 which is ~100MHz slower but had 2GBs and performed way better. I don't know if I'm missing something

I still don't understand the 4 GB reasoning though... like why does that card even exist?  Anything intense enough to take up that much memory will be too demanding for it to run well  I have a GTX 660 and 2 GB of VRAM seems to suit it just perfectly.

[RahulR]

1 minute ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

I still don't understand the 4 GB reasoning though... like why does that card even exist?  Anything intense enough to take up that much memory will be too demanding for it to run well  I have a GTX 660 and 2 GB of VRAM seems to suit it just perfectly.

I had GTA V and it was constantly using ~3GBs, ran it at 60FPS on low-medium. Obviously bottlenecked by my G1840, should've gotten a G3258.

[Mark77]

$30 USD for a Supermicro X9SAE-V, a high quality Sandy/Ivy Bridge server motherboard which was, according to the eBay seller, "broken" due to a "BAD BIOS CHECKSUM" error.  Allegedly needed a new ROM chip (which I was prepared to buy if necessary).

 

Bought an Ivy Bridge Celeron chip for $15 (G1610) to go with it for testing.  So basically I was able to assemble an entire Ivy Bridge CPU/mobo combo with server motherboard for under $50.

 

Bought it, pulled the battery for half an hour, and voila, it worked perfectly out of the box after I re-did all the settings.  It was almost like taking candy from a baby. 

 

Was able to buy an almost brand new Dell U2410 24" LCD for $150 (+ tax) a few years back, when they were still $400-$500 at retail.  Yeah older now, but still a great screen for the money and a good compliment to my other U2410. 

 

Hmm.  What else.  My Enlight EN-7237 cases are still going strong.  Bought a few for $60 a piece in the late 1990s for the family and I just throw out their innards and re-stuff them with new parts every so often.  Because most of the parts are solid steel sheet metal, nothing breaks, and the design itself doesn't look too anciently dated.  At some point I might get a couple of them sandblasted and re-painted with automotive paint.   

 

[hex4]

Pack of babybels or the sensual lube for the missus ^^

[BingoFishy]

41 minutes ago, RahulR said:

I had GTA V and it was constantly using ~3GBs, ran it at 60FPS on low-medium. Obviously bottlenecked by my G1840, should've gotten a G3258.

Uhhh... I'm afraid to tell you that your lowly processor isn't going to bottleneck your GPU. You'll probably be fine up to a 370X without bottlenecks with that CPU.

[WkdPaul]

32 minutes ago, RahulR said:

I know it's not the best in terms of price to performance but we wanted to get a 4GB card. I know more VRAM doesn't mean faster and I know that a SC card isn't automatically better, I'm saying that we wanted a 4GB card so that we didn't have to spend even more on another card once we actually needed 4GBs. Anyway, the R7 250 has 1800MHz DDR3. We overclocked our card to 1333MHz and overclocked the memory to 3000MHz (6000MHz). I understand that there are cards at a similar price that would be faster but they have 2GBs or less. Anyway, when buying I only looked at the specs of each card, not the actual benchmarks. Also the 650 is a bit slower than the 740. By the way: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/536?vs=681 on the site I switched to the 660 which is ~100MHz slower but had 2GBs and performed way better. I don't know if I'm missing something

GTA V adjust the graphics settings to fill as much of the VRAM as possible, more VRAM will not give you more FPS.

 

You would have a better experience with a 750ti even if it has only 2GB of VRAM regardless of the overclock you achieved.

 

BTW the GTX 660 is a different beast, it will crush the GT740, it's not just about the GHZ and amount of VRAM, not to be rude but you obviously lack in computer knowledge ... the 660 has a slower core than the 650/740 and has double the performance. You could overclock your GPU all you want but you'll never, ever, ever get double the performance, and that's with any GPU, overclock doesn't scale perfectly, ie: +10% overclock ≠ +10% performance.

 

Again, sorry for all these "bad news", I'm not writing this to troll, but the performance to price ratio of that 740 is very low.

[RahulR]

22 minutes ago, wkdpaul said:

GTA V adjust the graphics settings to fill as much of the VRAM as possible, more VRAM will not give you more FPS.

 

You would have a better experience with a 750ti even if it has only 2GB of VRAM regardless of the overclock you achieved.

 

BTW the GTX 660 is a different beast, it will crush the GT740, it's not just about the GHZ and amount of VRAM, not to be rude but you obviously lack in computer knowledge ... the 660 has a slower core than the 650/740 and has double the performance. You could overclock your GPU all you want but you'll never, ever, ever get double the performance, and that's with any GPU, overclock doesn't scale perfectly, ie: +10% overclock ≠ +10% performance.

 

Again, sorry for all these "bad news", I'm not writing this to troll, but the performance to price ratio of that 740 is very low.

I know the 660 is probably faster, and I know that %10 overclock doesn't mean +%10 performance. I said that when buying the card we looked at just the specs and not the benchmarks and that we wanted a 4GB card. I still don't think it's "the worst card" for price to performance. Either way, it's a pretty decent card that keeps up with most games I play.