A $260 build?

[NLTech]

I have wanted for a while to get a PC like this : http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Optiplex-790-Desktop-Computer-PC-Intel-i5-Quad-3-1GHz-8GB-1TB-Win-7-WiFi-/182762003814?hash=item2a8d76dd66:g:mqkAAOSwfa9Zus0j

But didn't know what to look up for the correct GPU size, though recently I had experience with a SFF PC that I repaired and delved into it. 

So, with that and a GT 1030? Would it perform well? Apparently it has a 2nd gen I5.

[Vx0x]

Msi has got a low profile gtx 1050 if that fits your budget?

[Jurrunio]

It can match a 1050 or 1050ti. Just make sure they are low profile / half height variants.

[kelvinhall05]

Get a GT 1030, plenty powerful for these days.

[TheV_Machine]

if you cant find a low profile card just cut a gap in the case an put a normal sized card into it. be sure to tape off the edges of the gap with non conductive tape and also be sure that the mobo of this pc has a pcie slot. its common these days but there are still some pcs out there with no pcie connector. would most likely look like shit but it can play almost every game on 1080p and for that i wouldnt mind a gpu sticking out of my case

[NLTech]

Just now, TheV_Machine said:

if you cant find a low profile card just cut a gap in the case an put a normal sized card into it. be sure to tape off the edges of the gap with non conductive tape and also be sure that the mobo of this pc has a pcie slot. its common these days but there are still some pcs out there with no pcie connector. would most likely look like shit but it can play almost every game on 1080p and for that i wouldnt mind a gpu sticking out of my case

I know of a low profile 1050 and 1030, just asking thoughts. also yea there are PCIE

[TheV_Machine]

1 minute ago, NLTech said:

I know of a low profile 1050 and 1030, just asking thoughts. also yea there are PCIE

than youre good to go have fun with your pc

[Zephyroth]

Well if you can't get the graphic card you want in this case, buy a cheap second hand case in where the graphic card will fit.Look in the classified i'm sure you will find something descent for a fistfull of pennys

[mariushm]

Gt1030 is almost never a good deal, it has a really horrible price vs performance ratio

Go for a GT 1050 or a RX 550 , you're much better off with something like that.

 

Note that you may be able to build a similar computer with brand new components

 

60$ : AMD Athlon X4 950 Bristol Ridge Quad-Core 3.5 GHz Socket AM4 65W (faster than i5 2400 in that ebay pc and includes heatsink/cooler)  (no integrated graphics)

OR

70$ : AMD A8-9600 Bristol Ridge Quad-Core 3.1 GHz Socket AM4 65W (includes integrated graphics card that's maybe a bit weaker than a GT 1030, but usable)

 

50$ : ASRock A320M-HDV AM4 AMD Promontory A320 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 HDMI Micro ATX

68$ : Patriot Viper Elite 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4 2400MHz DRAM (Desktop Memory) CL16

50$ : WD Blue 1TB Desktop Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB

25$ : Rosewill - Micro ATX Mini Tower Computer Case with Dual Fans - FBM-01

20$ : (sale , 56% off) EVGA BV Series 100-BV-0450-K1 450W ATX12V / EPS12V 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply

 

So 273-283$ for a brand new pc.

 

You get a decent cpu with or without decent integrated graphics. You'll be able to sell it and upgrade to something better in the future.

The motherboard is cheap but the downside is that it will not allow you to overclock the processors (you'd have spend maybe 15-20$ more for a motherboard with a B350 chipset to do overclocking) but at least you'll be able in the future to upgrade to more powerful processors, I'd say any 65w TDP rated cpu (Ryzen 5 1600 , Ryzen 7 1700 for example) would work perfectly fine.

The eBay pc would probably not allow you to upgrade the processor and it's probably on an outdated socket already.

Anyway, the cpu is faster or at least as fast as the old i5 2400 and it's not like you'd be able to overclock that one.

 

You also get a brand new 1 TB drive with 2 years warranty - you can't know how that old used hard drive was abused or not, or how many years was it operating... hard drives don't have a finite life.

You also get a case that allows you to install full height graphics cards which would be cheaper than half height cards, and you may also get the opportunity to buy previous generation used graphics cards at cheaper price compared to new GT 1030 cards that are weak.

That eBay pc will also have a custom power supply that's probably only 280-300w or something like that, while even the one I linked to is reasonably powerful and can do the advertised 450 watts , so you'd have no problems for example using  more power hungry graphics cards from a year or so ago (which may be cheap to buy used)

[TheV_Machine]

7 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Gt1030 is almost never a good deal, it has a really horrible price vs performance ratio

Go for a GT 1050 or a RX 550 , you're much better off with something like that.

 

Note that you may be able to build a similar computer with brand new components

 

60$ : AMD Athlon X4 950 Bristol Ridge Quad-Core 3.5 GHz Socket AM4 65W (faster than i5 2400 in that ebay pc and includes heatsink/cooler)  (no integrated graphics)

OR

70$ : AMD A8-9600 Bristol Ridge Quad-Core 3.1 GHz Socket AM4 65W (includes integrated graphics card that's maybe a bit weaker than a GT 1030, but usable)

 

50$ : ASRock A320M-HDV AM4 AMD Promontory A320 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 HDMI Micro ATX

68$ : Patriot Viper Elite 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4 2400MHz DRAM (Desktop Memory) CL16

50$ : WD Blue 1TB Desktop Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB

25$ : Rosewill - Micro ATX Mini Tower Computer Case with Dual Fans - FBM-01

20$ : (sale , 56% off) EVGA BV Series 100-BV-0450-K1 450W ATX12V / EPS12V 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply

 

So 273-283$ for a brand new pc.

 

You get a decent cpu with or without decent integrated graphics. You'll be able to sell it and upgrade to something better in the future.

The motherboard is cheap but the downside is that it will not allow you to overclock the processors (you'd have spend maybe 15-20$ more for a motherboard with a B350 chipset to do overclocking) but at least you'll be able in the future to upgrade to more powerful processors, I'd say any 65w TDP rated cpu (Ryzen 5 1600 , Ryzen 7 1700 for example) would work perfectly fine.

The eBay pc would probably not allow you to upgrade the processor and it's probably on an outdated socket already.

Anyway, the cpu is faster or at least as fast as the old i5 2400 and it's not like you'd be able to overclock that one.

 

You also get a brand new 1 TB drive with 2 years warranty - you can't know how that old used hard drive was abused or not, or how many years was it operating... hard drives don't have a finite life.

You also get a case that allows you to install full height graphics cards which would be cheaper than half height cards, and you may also get the opportunity to buy previous generation used graphics cards at cheaper price compared to new GT 1030 cards that are weak.

That eBay pc will also have a custom power supply that's probably only 280-300w or something like that, while even the one I linked to is reasonably powerful and can do the advertised 450 watts , so you'd have no problems for example using  more power hungry graphics cards from a year or so ago (which may be cheap to buy used)

hold on, you really dont want to use the bristol ridge apus, if you want you use apus, wait for the ryzen apu lineup aka raven ridge but please dont go for bristol ridge, its the same old amd apu crap just for the am4 platform

[NLTech]

2 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Gt1030 is almost never a good deal, it has a really horrible price vs performance ratio

Go for a GT 1050 or a RX 550 , you're much better off with something like that.

 

Note that you may be able to build a similar computer with brand new components

 

60$ : AMD Athlon X4 950 Bristol Ridge Quad-Core 3.5 GHz Socket AM4 65W (faster than i5 2400 in that ebay pc and includes heatsink/cooler)  (no integrated graphics)

OR

70$ : AMD A8-9600 Bristol Ridge Quad-Core 3.1 GHz Socket AM4 65W (includes integrated graphics card that's maybe a bit weaker than a GT 1030, but usable)

 

50$ : ASRock A320M-HDV AM4 AMD Promontory A320 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 HDMI Micro ATX

68$ : Patriot Viper Elite 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4 2400MHz DRAM (Desktop Memory) CL16

50$ : WD Blue 1TB Desktop Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB

25$ : Rosewill - Micro ATX Mini Tower Computer Case with Dual Fans - FBM-01

20$ : (sale , 56% off) EVGA BV Series 100-BV-0450-K1 450W ATX12V / EPS12V 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply

 

So 273-283$ for a brand new pc.

 

You get a decent cpu with or without decent integrated graphics. You'll be able to sell it and upgrade to something better in the future.

The motherboard is cheap but the downside is that it will not allow you to overclock the processors (you'd have spend maybe 15-20$ more for a motherboard with a B350 chipset to do overclocking) but at least you'll be able in the future to upgrade to more powerful processors, I'd say any 65w TDP rated cpu (Ryzen 5 1600 , Ryzen 7 1700 for example) would work perfectly fine.

The eBay pc would probably not allow you to upgrade the processor and it's probably on an outdated socket already.

Anyway, the cpu is faster or at least as fast as the old i5 2400 and it's not like you'd be able to overclock that one.

 

You also get a brand new 1 TB drive with 2 years warranty - you can't know how that old used hard drive was abused or not, or how many years was it operating... hard drives don't have a finite life.

You also get a case that allows you to install full height graphics cards which would be cheaper than half height cards, and you may also get the opportunity to buy previous generation used graphics cards at cheaper price compared to new GT 1030 cards that are weak.

That eBay pc will also have a custom power supply that's probably only 280-300w or something like that, while even the one I linked to is reasonably powerful and can do the advertised 450 watts , so you'd have no problems for example using  more power hungry graphics cards from a year or so ago (which may be cheap to buy used)

I actually did put together a $173 build including Windows 10 and I put it on PCPP Forums and got hate for it. 

The parts for it were 

I5 2500S

8 GB RAM

GT 730 4 GB

500 GB HDD with Windows 10 (only $30!)

Maybe its because it was the GT 730 but still.

And I did do research on Price To Performance and made a rating system for cards. 

I basically calculate their GFLOPS/TFLOPS and then divide that by their exact price. The TFLOPS do vary by hundreds of gflops on some cards so on all of them except for the AMD ones I included boost speed TFLOPS and base speed. 

TFlops_Comparisons.txt

Untitled 1.ods

[JoostinOnline]

27 minutes ago, kelvinhall05 said:

Get a GT 1030, plenty powerful for these days.

Eww no.  Even a GTX 750 is better than that.

[NLTech]

1 minute ago, JoostinOnline said:

Eww no.  Even a GTX 750 is better than that.

Actualy the GT 1030 outperforms the GTX 750 TI in some cases but in most the 750 TI outperforms it, the 750 cant compete against the 1030.

[NLTech]

Just now, NLTech said:

Actualy the GT 1030 outperforms the GTX 750 TI in some cases but in most the 750 TI outperforms it, the 750 cant compete against the 1030.

And im talking about the 750 when I say it cant compete, not the 750 TI

[JoostinOnline]

3 minutes ago, NLTech said:

Actualy the GT 1030 outperforms the GTX 750 TI in some cases but in most the 750 TI outperforms it, the 750 cant compete against the 1030.

Actually the 750 beats the 1030.   The GT 1030 is just a display adapter.  It's an absolutely horrible deal.  It should cost around $50.

2 minutes ago, NLTech said:

And im talking about the 750 when I say it cant compete, not the 750 TI

So am I.  The 750 Ti crushes it.

[NLTech]

4 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

Actually the 750 beats the 1030.   The GT 1030 is just a display adapter.  It's an absolutely horrible deal.  It should cost around $50.

 

 

[mariushm]

1 minute ago, TheV_Machine said:

hold on, you really dont want to use the bristol ridge apus, if you want you use apus, wait for the ryzen apu lineup aka raven ridge but please dont go for bristol ridge, its the same old amd apu crap just for the am4 platform

I'm aware that the processors are NOT based on Ryzen and Zen architecture, but rather the older Bristol Ridge platform. But, they're CHEAP at 60-70$ - the cheapest Ryzen 1200 is 100$+ - and have integrated graphics better than what's integrated in that i5 2400 processor. It's certainly decent enough to play some games at 720p.

It will still be months until we get the Ryzen like processors with integrated graphics.

 

The 60$ suggestion is basically with the idea in mind that he'd get now a computer just as fast or faster than that ebay pc, yet he'll still be able to upgrade to 6 or 8 core processors in the future  (for example, if he puts that cpu on eBay for 30-40$, i'm sure he'll sell it within a week, yeah he'll lose 20-30$ but he has a working pc now)

 

4 minutes ago, NLTech said:

I actually did put together a $173 build including Windows 10 and I put it on PCPP Forums and got hate for it. 

The parts for it were 

I5 2500S

8 GB RAM

GT 730 4 GB

500 GB HDD with Windows 10 (only $30!)

Maybe its because it was the GT 730 but still.

And I did do research on Price To Performance and made a rating system for cards. 

I basically calculate their GFLOPS/TFLOPS and then divide that by their exact price. The TFLOPS do vary by hundreds of gflops on some cards so on all of them except for the AMD ones I included boost speed TFLOPS and base speed. 

TFlops_Comparisons.txt

Untitled 1.ods

 

I never count those Windows 10 licenses in the price. For me they're worthless and from a legal point of view, it's very debatable if they actually have any legality.

 

So yeah... 500 GB for 30$ is not a great value.  Mechanical drives in general have a finite life, they generally don't last more than 5-6 years at best unless they're enterprise or datacenter or maybe if they just sat unused on shelves.

 

A used 500 GB drive is worthless to me, because the majority will no longer be within their 2-3 years warranty so if they die I lose my money - i'd rather spend 50$ on a brand new drive and if it dies within 2 years at least I get it a new one as replacement (most of the time). 10-20$ more is worth it.

 

As for the rest, you probably got flack because it was probably a motherboard with DDR3 memory (you can buy ddr3 memory super cheap on eBay, that's why pretty much everything on eBay is sold with 8GB of DDR3, they just shove 4 sticks of 2 GB DDR3 1333Mhz or 1666 Mhz and call it a day, it's maybe 4-5$ a stick if you buy 50-100 pcs) and the GT 730 is truly a bad choice when it comes to price vs performance.

[NLTech]

1 minute ago, mariushm said:

I'm aware that the processors are NOT based on Ryzen and Zen architecture, but rather the older Bristol Ridge platform. But, they're CHEAP at 60-70$ - the cheapest Ryzen 1200 is 100$+ - and have integrated graphics better than what's integrated in that i5 2400 processor. It's certainly decent enough to play some games at 720p.

It will still be months until we get the Ryzen like processors with integrated graphics.

 

The 60$ suggestion is basically with the idea in mind that he'd get now a computer just as fast or faster than that ebay pc, yet he'll still be able to upgrade to 6 or 8 core processors in the future  (for example, if he puts that cpu on eBay for 30-40$, i'm sure he'll sell it within a week, yeah he'll lose 20-30$ but he has a working pc now)

 

 

I never count those Windows 10 licenses in the price. For me they're worthless and from a legal point of view, it's very debatable if they actually have any legality.

 

So yeah... 500 GB for 30$ is not a great value.  Mechanical drives in general have a finite life, they generally don't last more than 5-6 years at best unless they're enterprise or datacenter or maybe if they just sat unused on shelves.

 

A used 500 GB drive is worthless to me, because the majority will no longer be within their 2-3 years warranty so if they die I lose my money - i'd rather spend 50$ on a brand new drive and if it dies within 2 years at least I get it a new one as replacement (most of the time). 10-20$ more is worth it.

 

As for the rest, you probably got flack because it was probably a motherboard with DDR3 memory (you can buy ddr3 memory super cheap on eBay, that's why pretty much everything on eBay is sold with 8GB of DDR3, they just shove 4 sticks of 2 GB DDR3 1333Mhz or 1666 Mhz and call it a day, it's maybe 4-5$ a stick if you buy 50-100 pcs) and the GT 730 is truly a bad choice when it comes to price vs performance.

The 500 GB HDD does have Windows 10 installed on it, makes it worth it to me. 

The RAM was DDR3 about $20 for 8 GB. 

The GT 730 does have good numbers going for it for $10 at 660 GFlops

[JoostinOnline]

10 minutes ago, NLTech said:

 

The results confused me at first, but he's running a regular clocked 750 Ti (they're normally overclocked straight out of the box) and an overclocked 1030.

 

Edit: To be fair, it's difficult to get a good comparison if you aren't using a reference card.  I don't blame him.  I also want to point out that I am NOT recommending a GTX 750.  I'm just saying a 1030 is not a good buy.

[kelvinhall05]

19 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

Eww no.  Even a GTX 750 is better than that.

But it also doesn't require much power (30w TDP IIRC) and is super easy to cool, so it's perfect in his "case" (haha, get it?).

[JoostinOnline]

Just now, kelvinhall05 said:

But it also doesn't require much power (30w TDP IIRC) and is super easy to cool, so it's perfect in his "case" (haha, get it?).

Fair point.  I still don't think a display adapter is a good choice.  If it was at least $20 cheaper I'd say yes, but the 1030 is overpriced.

 

Btw, I can't find the TDP, but the power draw is 30W.

[NLTech]

15 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

Fair point.  I still don't think a display adapter is a good choice.  If it was at least $20 cheaper I'd say yes, but the 1030 is overpriced.

 

Btw, I can't find the TDP, but the power draw is 30W.

The GT 1030 is actually a decent card for gaming. A display adapter is a GT 210.

[JoostinOnline]

2 minutes ago, NLTech said:

The GT 1030 is actually a decent card for gaming. A display adapter is a GT 210.

Whatever you say.

[aisle9]

1 hour ago, mariushm said:

Gt1030 is almost never a good deal, it has a really horrible price vs performance ratio

Go for a GT 1050 or a RX 550 , you're much better off with something like that.

Dude, the 550 costs as damn much as the 1030 and costs almost exactly the same.

 

OP, there are low profile RX 460, GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti cards out there. I have a 1050 Ti in a sleeper slimline LAN box, and it is a thing of beauty, but it's pricey.

 

For e-sports and older stuff, the 1030 or 550 are adequate. If you're going for more intense games or higher refresh rates, a 1050 Ti would be best.