Need help with building a cheap low teir gaming rig.

[intelisfornoobs]

I want to build a low to mid teir gaming system for my friend.

He has a ps4 and a horrible laptop that can hardly run windows 10. I thought with some work I could make him a system by December 25th.

 

A friend gave me an old Lenovo ThinkCentre with these parts:

Intel Core i5-2400 (3.1 ghz base, 4 cores)

Some random Lenovo LGA 1155 Motherboard

 

I think a i5-3570K overclocked to 4 ghz with any cheap amd graphics card that can pump over 90 fps medium to high settings 1080p on Apex will be an ok system.

 

An ebay listing for a $35 i5-3570K is up. 

 

Would like some feedback, thanks!

[Derrk]

whats your budget?

[Otto_iii]

For used GPUs RX480(80$ish) or R9 Nano(100$) are your friends, alternatively for Nvidea the 970(80-90ish$) will be your friend, if you had 200+ to spend on used GPU and a good PSU then a used Vega are apparently really fun to tweak, usually undervolting core and overclock the HBM VRAM being the beez knees with any of AMD GPUs with older power hungry architecture, but gifted with HBM VRAM.  If that sorta tweaking sounds fun but 200$ is too much then that is why i mentioned R9 Nano.  Problem with cards that use HBM(2) is they were often very popular for mining, which by itself isn't the worst, but likely means they could come with vbios setup for mining and even if you can install correct vbious sometimes they'll just konk out after the fact.  With any of these cards get atleast a decent 80+ Bronze 450W power supply, usually can find them 45$.

Can you overclock with motherboard that came with thinkcentre?  I wouldn't imagine not with most OEM sourced boards, not sure what board came with it though.  If you want to use that motherboard and it can't overclock i'd highly recommend a 3770 over a 3570k, the extra threads help alot for reducing stuttering in modern games that often look for more then 4 threads. 

Actually, i used to have a 3570 (none K, 3.8ghz iirc, paired with 1050ti i regret purchasing instead of rx570) and honestly i'd just go with a 3770 even if you can't overclock it because the stuttering can be a real problem, especially with games that use newer graphics engines (DX12 in particular.), no point in pushing high frames in a FPS if quickly looking around side to side causes huge, intermittent, frame-rate dips. 

[intelisfornoobs]

21 hours ago, Derrk said:

whats your budget?

I am willing to sell the i5-2400 and a 1tb 7200 rpm drive to make a buck but otherwise about $170 - 180

Plus I have 8gb of quad channel memory and motherboard already.

[intelisfornoobs]

21 minutes ago, Otto_iii said:

For used GPUs RX480(80$ish) or R9 Nano(100$) are your friends, alternatively for Nvidea the 970(80-90ish$) will be your friend, if you had 200+ to spend on used GPU and a good PSU then a used Vega are apparently really fun to tweak, usually undervolting core and overclock the HBM VRAM being the beez knees with any of AMD GPUs with older power hungry architecture, but gifted with HBM VRAM.  If that sorta tweaking sounds fun but 200$ is too much then that is why i mentioned R9 Nano.  Problem with cards that use HBM(2) is they were often very popular for mining, which by itself isn't the worst, but likely means they could come with vbios setup for mining and even if you can install correct vbious sometimes they'll just konk out after the fact.  With any of these cards get atleast a decent 80+ Bronze 450W power supply, usually can find them 45$.

Can you overclock with motherboard that came with thinkcentre?  I wouldn't imagine not with most OEM sourced boards, not sure what board came with it though.  If you want to use that motherboard and it can't overclock i'd highly recommend a 3770 over a 3570k, the extra threads help alot for reducing stuttering in modern games that often look for more then 4 threads. 

Actually, i used to have a 3570 (none K, 3.8ghz iirc, paired with 1050ti i regret purchasing instead of rx570) and honestly i'd just go with a 3770 even if you can't overclock it because the stuttering can be a real problem, especially with games that use newer graphics engines (DX12 in particular.), no point in pushing high frames in a FPS if quickly looking around side to side causes huge, intermittent, frame-rate dips. 

Thanks for the help! Will go for the i7-3770 and an RX480.

[intelisfornoobs]

What about a bios update? Will I even be able to find it online?

[Otto_iii]

Don't know what board it is, and might take digging, but i'd be surprised if its not around.  board makers take that sort of thing fairly seriously so you can usually still find BIOSes for fairly ancient hardware 

[asand1]

I7 2600 would be a safer bet on an OEM board that came with Sandy bridge. There may be no bios for ivy bridge.

[intelisfornoobs]

Here are some graphics card listings I've found:

AMD XFX Radeon R9 390 8GB

Asus AMD Radeon R9 270 OC

XFX Radeon R9 290X

SAPPHIRE R9 NANO GRAPHIC VIDEO CARD 4GB HBM SMALL CARD

 

Sapphire Radeon Nitro Rx 480 4GB Gaming Series GDDR5 HDMI DVI Used

SAPPHIRE Nitro+ AMD RX480 RX 480 4GB Graphics Card Radeon 580 *FAST SHIPPING*

 

Please provide feedback, thanks!

 

 

[intelisfornoobs]

15 hours ago, asand1 said:

I7 2600 would be a safer bet on an OEM board that came with Sandy bridge. There may be no bios for ivy bridge.

I'll secure a GPU first then deal with a cpu. Might be tricky to identify the board and find a bios update for ivy bridge since windows does an assfuck of a job identifying detailed component info.

[Whiro]

18 minutes ago, intelisfornoobs said:

I'll secure a GPU first then deal with a cpu. Might be tricky to identify the board and find a bios update for ivy bridge since windows does an assfuck of a job identifying detailed component info.

Take a pic of mobo, if there is any model no, I can do some research about it

[intelisfornoobs]

19 hours ago, Whiro said:

Take a pic of mobo, if there is any model no, I can do some research about it

Will do

[intelisfornoobs]

On 12/10/2019 at 1:35 PM, Whiro said:

Take a pic of mobo, if there is any model no, I can do some research about it

Took a while but I did some research and the mobo has an older q chipset that is incompatible with ivy bridge. Will have to get a q77 board then.

[intelisfornoobs]

Quick update:

 

I have the i7-3770, 8gb of quad channel 10600U (240 pin) ram, a Seagate Momentus 5400.6 320GB 2.5 inch drive (for extra sorage) and a very basic cooler. The Lenovo mobo has an older Q series chipset that is not compatible with Ivy Bridge so I need an ssd (240gb) for boot and some essential apps + games, a gpu: R9 290 or RX 470 (leaning towards the R9) a power supply and a case. (The ThinkCentre is a non-standard thin case that would not be able to house any power supply other than the origional one.)

 

Please provide feedback.

 

Possible cheap GPU pickups:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/r9-290-4g-sapphire/324017389540?hash=item4b70f0ffe4:g:aVgAAOSwIzFd-00i

https://www.ebay.com/itm/PowerColor-AMD-R9-290-4GB-Graphics-Card/264569610825?hash=item3d9993e249:g:6O4AAOSwq1ld-FsL

 

Build:

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/intel-is-for-noobs/saved/FLXXvK

[Whiro]

2 hours ago, intelisfornoobs said:

Possible cheap GPU pickups:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/r9-290-4g-sapphire/324017389540?hash=item4b70f0ffe4:g:aVgAAOSwIzFd-00i

Save your ears mate and skip this card. Blower style cards are loud and overheating most of the time what means they thermal throttle.

As of the rest of the build looks good, if you can stretch your budget tiny tiny bit get Corsair CX series power supply, they are better quality. 

[intelisfornoobs]

I had these parts in the beginning that I pulled from an old Lenovo prebuilt:

i5-2400

4 x 2gb sticks of 1333mhz ddr3

1tb 7200 rpm drive

q67 motherboard

 

eBay

I sold the i5 for $12.50

Purchased a Refurbished i7-3770 for $69.98

Purchased a q77 mobo for $38.87

 

Local Computer Distributor

I traded the ddr3 and $8 for 2 x 4gb sticks of 1600mhz ddr3

I traded the 1tb drive for a 500gb 7200rpm drive and $15 off a Samsung 850 Evo 120gb [used]

I bought a EVGA 500w 80+ Bronze Power supply for $50

No-one would buy the q67 mobo and I had no use for it so I gave it to the dude at the store where I traded and purchased the items above.

 

The motherboard arrives today so I'll be able to have a system out of the case.

For the gpu, I'll go for an R9 290 instead of a rx 470 or 480.

I found this listing. I sold a monitor for $80 so once I get the money for it, I can buy the gpu. I already have $60 for the case so yeah.

 

Here is the R9 listing:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/r9-290-4g-sapphire/324025606968

 

Please provide feedback

 

P.S.

 

@Whiro

Oof. I didn't know. I already bought the power supply and that store has a no return policy so no can do.

Also, I will get another 8gb of ram once the whole thing is assembled. 

 

 

[Whiro]

16 minutes ago, intelisfornoobs said:

Purchased a Refurbished i7-3770

Tyat is very decent cpu so good choice 

17 minutes ago, intelisfornoobs said:

Samsung 850 Evo 120gb [used]

I usually not recommend buying second hand ssds , you never know what ppl was doing with them and how long it’ll last but still it’s not too bad so ok  

 

18 minutes ago, intelisfornoobs said:

Here is the R9 listing:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/r9-290-4g-sapphire/324025606968

Well like I mentioned before , blower style cards are usually running hot and loud but still good choice  

 

19 minutes ago, intelisfornoobs said:

Also, I will get another 8gb of ram once the whole thing is assembled. 

Another 8gb of ram will put you in the sweet spot , 16gb is good amount to have, some games using more than 8gb specially if you have some programs running in the background 

[intelisfornoobs]

1 hour ago, Whiro said:

Tyat is very decent cpu so good choice 

I usually not recommend buying second hand ssds , you never know what ppl was doing with them and how long it’ll last but still it’s not too bad so ok  

 

Well like I mentioned before , blower style cards are usually running hot and loud but still good choice  

 

Another 8gb of ram will put you in the sweet spot , 16gb is good amount to have, some games using more than 8gb specially if you have some programs running in the background 

Cool. The motherboard just arrived and I'm starting to put it all together. I'll keep you updated.

[intelisfornoobs]

4 hours ago, Whiro said:

Tyat is very decent cpu so good choice 

I usually not recommend buying second hand ssds , you never know what ppl was doing with them and how long it’ll last but still it’s not too bad so ok  

 

Well like I mentioned before , blower style cards are usually running hot and loud but still good choice  

 

Another 8gb of ram will put you in the sweet spot , 16gb is good amount to have, some games using more than 8gb specially if you have some programs running in the background 

Ok... Problem.

I didn't think going with a motherboard pulled from an OptiPlex would pose any problems...

 

I'm an idiot. It isn't a standard board in that it uses different connectors for fans power buttons and all that jazz. I won't be able to connect sh*t. Returning it will be such a hassle that I might just buy a standard one to get this over with. Also, the cooler won't mount. 

+1x CPU Cooler

+1x Motherboard

+1 Case

I was hoping on getting the whole system (minus the graphics card done by the end of the day. Nevermind

[asand1]

Hate to say I told you so, but an i7 2600 would have negated all this bullshit. Why post on forums just to ignore advice from folks that have already walked this road?

[intelisfornoobs]

8 hours ago, asand1 said:

Hate to say I told you so, but an i7 2600 would have negated all this bullshit. Why post on forums just to ignore advice from folks that have already walked this road?

Ooff. I just really wanted that extra performance bump

 

But I have an update:

My friend has a case that he wants to give me and he just dropped off a Radeon HD 6750 for a duel monitor array

[intelisfornoobs]

8 hours ago, asand1 said:

Hate to say I told you so, but an i7 2600 would have negated all this bullshit. Why post on forums just to ignore advice from folks that have already walked this road?

But I would have still needed a new case because any power supply that isn't the original would not fit in the slim case design. That means I would have still needed a case and now I would have been back at the same place:

A board with non standard pins.

[intelisfornoobs]

What should I do, yolo it and just use a dell case to minimize the risk of connectors that won't work, get a new board, cooler and case, or get a case and cooler then spend hours trying to remove plastic shrouds around pins to save money?

[Whiro]

1 hour ago, intelisfornoobs said:

What should I do, yolo it and just use a dell case to minimize the risk of connectors that won't work, get a new board, cooler and case, or get a case and cooler then spend hours trying to remove plastic shrouds around pins to save money?

Plastic around which pins we talking about in here?? 

[asand1]

What model Optiplex? There are adapters for the 24 pin and front panel.