Help me build a budget programming PC.

Alerionhun · July 21, 2021

Budget (including currency): as cheap as possible. i have a budget around 600$.

Country: Hungary

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: No gaming at all, only for IT related works such as programming (C++,Java,HTML,Unity), Packet Tracer, Virtual Box (I need to run 1, or occasionally 2 at the same time for school related homework.)

Other details: I have a 4GB 1050 Ti 128bit from my previous PC. Also a Gigabyte 120GB SSD, and an Nbase 500W PSU. Soo the things i need are a Motherboard, memory, a CPU, and a case.

I would highly appreciate if u could help me out with this. Thanks in advance!

Chris Pratt · July 21, 2021

I'd try to at least get a 3700X. That's going to still eat up a good portion of your budget. It's about $300 US, but you really need 8 core/16 thread minimum for any sort of decent programming rig, especially if you're going to be virtualizing as well. 32GB of RAM would be ideal, but not sure if you can quite pull that off. Don't cheap out on the clockspeed, though. 3600MHz is going to matter. Grab basically any decent quality board with okay VRMs. You don't want to cheap out too much there, though. Case, I'd probably go with a Phanteks 400a, because it's cheap, but still decent with good airflow. If you could stretch the budget to at least $700, you'll probably have an easier time here. There's only so many compromises that are reasonable to make when you still need it to perform.

Youn · July 21, 2021

Based on what you said and what you would use it for, I would probably go with:

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor ($269.99 @ B&H)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B550 GAMING X ATX AM4 Motherboard ($129.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-4000 CL18 Memory ($119.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Gigabyte 120 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (Purchased For $0.00)
Video Card: Zotac GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4 GB MINI Video Card ($0.00)
Case: Cougar MX330-G ATX Mid Tower Case ($49.98 @ B&H)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit
Custom: NBase 500w power supply, non-modular (Purchased)
Custom: Stock AMD cooler ($0.00)
Total: $569.95
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-07-21 08:54 EDT-0400

This leaves you room for Tax and maybe shipping.

My first upgrade from there for a programming machine would be a 1 TB NVME drive. And possibly another pack of the memory modules to bring you to 32GB of memory. Generally speaking when you program your going to want speed, memory and storage. The rest of it doesn't particularly matter. Your graphics card is probably perfectly fine for many years of just programming.