Predicament

[DaKittenMitten]

So heres my predicament:

Im trying to build a gaming pc for my buddy for as little as possible so he can play with me and all of our friends.  By a working some magic I got my hands on some hardware but I need to finish off the build.  I have a random plethera of parts I have no idea where to go from here.

CPU: I have an i7-4790 and an i7-920

Motherboard: 1150 motherboard (came with 4790) is broken, wokring lga 1366 mobo, working hp fm2b, working gigabyte am3+ mobo

GPU: Gtx 660

500 Gb HDD

Cpu cooler: cryorig h7

psu: Antec Earthwatts 750w

Memory: 4x 4gb ddr3 sticks (2 of them are from a different brand so idk)

Case: Random assortment of old office cases that'll be fine.

 

I only had to pay for the 660 and h7, the rest was old hardware that a got my hands on.

Would it be more cost effective to get a new motherboard for the 4790, or get a cpu for the fm2b/ am3+ boards.  Or should I just use the 920.

Also, is it worth upgrading the gpu, hdd, or anything else?

Keep in mind that I'm playing cheap rn because my friend is skeptical paying a lot for a pc, coming from PS4, and if he likes it we can always upgrade.

 

 

[LIGISTX]

7 minutes ago, DaKittenMitten said:

So heres my predicament:

Im trying to build a gaming pc for my buddy for as little as possible so he can play with me and all of our friends.  By a working some magic I got my hands on some hardware but I need to finish off the build.  I have a random plethera of parts I have no idea where to go from here.

CPU: I have an i7-4790 and an i7-920

Motherboard: 1150 motherboard (came with 4790) is broken, wokring lga 1366 mobo, working hp fm2b

GPU: Gtx 660

500 Gb HDD

Cpu cooler: cryorig h7

psu: Antec Earthwatts 750w

Memory: 4x 4gb ddr3 sticks (2 of them are from a different brand so idk)

Case: Random assortment of old office cases that'll be fine.

 

I only had to pay for the 660 and h7, the rest was old hardware that a got my hands on.

Would it be more cost effective to get a new motherboard for the 4790, or get a cpu for the fm2b board.  Or should I just use the 920.

Also, is it worth upgrading the gpu, hdd, or anything else?

Keep in mind that I'm playing cheap rn because my friend is skeptical paying a lot for a pc, coming from PS4, and if he likes it we can always upgrade.

 

 

The 920 will not be very fast by modern standards.... but neither is a GTX 660... So, with such a low end GPU, I don't think the 920 would be a horrible choice. If you can overclock it a bit, that would help a lot. I still have mine, and back in the day it did 3.82 GHz. So, if you can get it up to ~3.4 GHz, that wouldn't be half bad. It wouldn't be half good, but its free! And you already have DDR3, you would need DDR4 for the 4790.

[DaKittenMitten]

1 minute ago, LIGISTX said:

The 920 will not be very fast by modern standards.... but neither is a GTX 660... So, with such a low end GPU, I don't think the 920 would be a horrible choice. If you can overclock it a bit, that would help a lot. I still have mine, and back in the day it did 3.82 GHz. So, if you can get it up to ~3.4 GHz, that wouldn't be half bad. It wouldn't be half good, but its free! And you already have DDR3, you would need DDR4 for the 4790.

I was just testing out the system on the 920 and it something is clearly wrong with the mobo.  None of the usb slots are working, but the ethernet is, and theres no video output.  Any ideas?

[LIGISTX]

2 minutes ago, DaKittenMitten said:

I was just testing out the system on the 920 and it something is clearly wrong with the mobo.  None of the usb slots are working, but the ethernet is, and theres no video output.  Any ideas?

Oh man, no clue. Reseat the CPU and cross your fingers? Reset CMOS and cross them again? lol

[DaKittenMitten]

9 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

Oh man, no clue. Reseat the CPU and cross your fingers? Reset CMOS and cross them again? lol

Thanks for the help I'll try it out tmrw and let you know how it goes.

 

[dizmo]

Get a board for the 4790. It wouldn't be new, since it's an old platform, but their boards are super cheap on ebay. Then spend around $80 on an RX 580 and you've got a pretty good system. I'd also shell out $40 an SSD. 

 

39 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

The 920 will not be very fast by modern standards.... but neither is a GTX 660... So, with such a low end GPU, I don't think the 920 would be a horrible choice. If you can overclock it a bit, that would help a lot. I still have mine, and back in the day it did 3.82 GHz. So, if you can get it up to ~3.4 GHz, that wouldn't be half bad. It wouldn't be half good, but its free! And you already have DDR3, you would need DDR4 for the 4790.

The 4000 series doesn't use DDR4. 

[LIGISTX]

7 hours ago, dizmo said:

Get a board for the 4790. It wouldn't be new, since it's an old platform, but their boards are super cheap on ebay. Then spend around $80 on an RX 580 and you've got a pretty good system. I'd also shell out $40 an SSD. 

 

The 4000 series doesn't use DDR4. 

Oh, your right. Forgot the 4000’s were still ddr3. Good call.

 

The 4790 would be a lot better, and assuming you can find a cheap used board which shouldn’t be too hard, these points are totally valid. An SSD makes everything infinitely better (beside FPS, lol). 

[DaKittenMitten]

Thank you everyone for your help!  I got the system running with the 920 and I think im gonna get an SSD then give it as is.  If he likes it and wants an upgrade we can always do that.