Completely free gaming PC - ongoing project

[SquirrelBo55]

Hello!

New member here so i thought I'd say hi.

Over the last 6 months or so I've slowly but surely been putting together a PC for gaming, with the ultimate goal of being able to play MS flight simulator at decent quality.

I've been doing this by salvaging parts from PCs being scrapped, or given away for free on Facebook groups.

 

Spec wise, it's come a long way.

 

Originally:

AMD Fx8350 processor

8gb 3200ghz DDR3 RAM

1TB hard drive

Nvidia gt710 1gb

500w PSU

 

Now:

Intel i7-4770

32gb 3200mhz ddr3 RAM

240gb SATA ssd for OS

480gb SATA ssd for applications

1tb HDD for storage

Gtx 1070 8gb GPU

500w PSU

 

[Bitter]

Mine with the 1070 to generate more 'free' money if your electric rates are low enough to be profitable. I pay 8 cents USD/KWH so a 1070 would make me about $3 a day USD and cost about 30 cents USD a day to run with system overhead. You can tune the i7 4770 down to around 35W by turning off turbo and underclocking it a little with a good undervolt and tune the 1070 for a bit more efficiency as well to lower your costs somewhat.

[FRD]

I like the LEDs behind the mesh. Old, but nice case.

Surely there's no way you got that GTX 1070 free. Or did you?

The RAM you stated might be incorrect. It should be DDR3, but it can't be 3200mhz. That was too rare and expensive for DDR3 back in the day.

[jetnoodles]

I think you should upgrade the cooler next

[Bitter]

Nah, better power supply. Everyone overlooks the PSU but it's very important.

[SquirrelBo55]

1 hour ago, FRD said:

I like the LEDs behind the mesh. Old, but nice case.

Surely there's no way you got that GTX 1070 free. Or did you?

The RAM you stated might be incorrect. It should be DDR3, but it can't be 3200mhz. That was too rare and expensive for DDR3 back in the day.

 

Apologies, my bad!

The RAM is 1333mhz, not 3200 I've been speccing up pc's at work all week and am used to typing 3200.

 

The 1070 is a freebie, yes. 

Basically I collected enough old cpus, hard drives and other bits and pieces I was able to trade in for store credit at CEX. 

I then ordered a 1070 from the website, but it got lost in shipping. CEX gave me a refund of my store credit, but a couple of days later the card arrived! 

[SquirrelBo55]

1 hour ago, NOV654 said:

I think you should upgrade the cooler next

 

It's certainly on my list, just need to keep an eye out for a decent upgrade for free!

[SquirrelBo55]

57 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Nah, better power supply. Everyone overlooks the PSU but it's very important.

Again, another one on the list

[FRD]

19 minutes ago, SquirrelBo55 said:

 

Apologies, my bad!

The RAM is 1333mhz, not 3200 I've been speccing up pc's at work all week and am used to typing 3200.

 

The 1070 is a freebie, yes. 

Basically I collected enough old cpus, hard drives and other bits and pieces I was able to trade in for store credit at CEX. 

I then ordered a 1070 from the website, but it got lost in shipping. CEX gave me a refund of my store credit, but a couple of days later the card arrived! 

1333mhz is correct indeed. I understand as 3200mhz is the standard these days.

 

That's a nice way to get a 1070 technically for free. I know CEX too. I ever did something similar, just it takes some effort to find things for free or under their buy price. I assume in the UK. I'm not and generally our CEX prices are higher and stock much smaller. These days GPUs at CEX are pretty expensive, even though they already were priced pretty high for secondhand cards.

[SquirrelBo55]

4 minutes ago, FRD said:

1333mhz is correct indeed. I understand as 3200mhz is the standard these days.

 

That's a nice way to get a 1070 technically for free. I know CEX too. I ever did something similar, just it takes some effort to find things for free or under their buy price. I assume in the UK. I'm not and generally our CEX prices are higher and stock much smaller. These days GPUs at CEX are pretty expensive, even though they already were priced pretty high for secondhand cards.

 

I "paid" about $435 USD for the gpu, which is very high! I was specifically saving up store credit to get the card though by trading in the old components. I'm definately happy to have gotten it for free!

[FRD]

1 minute ago, SquirrelBo55 said:

 

I "paid" about $435 USD for the gpu, which is very high! I was specifically saving up store credit to get the card though by trading in the old components. I'm definately happy to have gotten it for free!

I just checked my local CEX site and the price is the same. Very steep price, but still a nice achievement. How long did that take you?

Just now I looked at our prices. 1080 Ti for $800, 1080 $650, 1070 Ti $550, 1070 $435, 1060 $325, 1050 Ti $225. I'm even surprised only the 1080s and 1050s are in stock left.

[SquirrelBo55]

7 minutes ago, FRD said:

I just checked my local CEX site and the price is the same. Very steep price, but still a nice achievement. How long did that take you?

Just now I looked at our prices. 1080 Ti for $800, 1080 $650, 1070 Ti $550, 1070 $435, 1060 $325, 1050 Ti $225. I'm even surprised only the 1080s and 1050s are in stock left.

It took about 4 weeks of salvaging. I passed uo the opptunity to upgrade the cpu and traded in a couple of i5-8400s which helped a lot.

My reasoning was, if I was to upgrade the cpu, I'd need a new motherboard and then new ddr4 ram. 

At the time I was using a Radeon R7 200 series 2gb gpu, which I thought needed the upgrade a bit more urgently than the i7!

[FRD]

2 minutes ago, SquirrelBo55 said:

It took about 4 weeks of salvaging. I passed uo the opptunity to upgrade the cpu and traded in a couple of i5-8400s which helped a lot.

My reasoning was, if I was to upgrade the cpu, I'd need a new motherboard and then new ddr4 ram. 

At the time I was using a Radeon R7 200 series 2gb gpu, which I thought needed the upgrade a bit more urgently than the i7!

That's pretty nice. I ever did something similar, but I collected games instead with a higher trade/buy value and then sold them. It would be a fun project too with PC parts.

Yes, new motherboard and ram is a whole platform change and costs more.

i7 processors from back in the day still do totally fine even these days, as long as they have 4 cores. GPU definitely needed an upgrade if you wanted to play newer games or just smoother gameplay.

[SquirrelBo55]

2 minutes ago, FRD said:

That's pretty nice. I ever did something similar, but I collected games instead with a higher trade/buy value and then sold them. It would be a fun project too with PC parts.

Yes, new motherboard and ram is a whole platform change and costs more.

i7 processors from back in the day still do totally fine even these days, as long as they have 4 cores. GPU definitely needed an upgrade if you wanted to play newer games or just smoother gameplay.

I'm sure I'll get round to upgrading the Cpu at some point. I'll save up components as much as possible until then.

The old Radeon has now gone in my windows xp gaming machine

[FRD]

1 minute ago, SquirrelBo55 said:

I'm sure I'll get round to upgrading the Cpu at some point. I'll save up components as much as possible until then.

The old Radeon has now gone in my windows xp gaming machine

The i7 4770 is still a capable CPU actually. I still use it too on my other PC. Only since last year I've been using Ryzen and I came from an i7 too.

The Radeon is still nice, but a bit behind. It can still do okay for some games though. Was that the one that uses a lot of PSU power or was that just from R9?

[SquirrelBo55]

On 10/9/2021 at 4:59 PM, FRD said:

The i7 4770 is still a capable CPU actually. I still use it too on my other PC. Only since last year I've been using Ryzen and I came from an i7 too.

The Radeon is still nice, but a bit behind. It can still do okay for some games though. Was that the one that uses a lot of PSU power or was that just from R9?

I don't know that the R7 was particularly power hungry. 

To be honest, I haven't looked into it much. It was another freebie that came out of a scrap machine.

[FRD]

18 hours ago, SquirrelBo55 said:

I don't know that the R7 was particularly power hungry. 

To be honest, I haven't looked into it much. It was another freebie that came out of a scrap machine.

It might be the R9 after all, those were considered heaters. The worst one was the R9 Fury.
Never used any of the Rx cards myself, so I can't tell.

[adarw]

how do you find all these "freebies" show me the way....

[SquirrelBo55]

On 10/12/2021 at 2:42 AM, adarw said:

how do you find all these "freebies" show me the way....

I'm a member of loads of local "kindness" groups on facebook, where people give away stuff they don't want. Either working, or spares/repairs.

 

[SquirrelBo55]

So there have been a couple of further free upgrades to my rig since I last posted. 

I was building a pc for a client at work, and the case arrived slightly damaged - something had been dropped on the box in transit and the rear of the case had a dent in the corner and the panels were difficult to remove. I contacted our supplier, who sent out a replacement and told me not to worry about sending the faulty one back as it wasn't worth it cost-wise. So I got a new case with a windowed side panel.

I'm an admin on a Facebook pc group, and another admin very kindly sent me an ID aio cpu cooler to replace the stock cooler I had been running on the 4770.

 

I have now spent some money on the overall setup - 

 

£10 logitech attack 3 joystick

£10 desktop speakers

£4 Gamestation PS3 racing wheel and pedals

£1 height adjustable monitor stand

 

So the total cost so far is £25.

 

Other freebies I've picked up through Facebook are

 

Gaming chair

Desk

22" monitor (60hz, 1080p)

 

My next step I expect will be a CPU upgrade.

I've already collected 16gb of ddr4 RAM which will be needed when my mobo changes, and I've got a 256gb m.2 nvme ssd.

[SquirrelBo55]

I've made a few more upgades to my setup-

 

Case - I managed to get a CoolerMaster Cosmos II for free off of facebook. I absolutely love this case, its so huge and easy to work in.

 

I finally upgraded the 4770 to a Ryzen 9 3900X that I traded some old kit in for. I bought an Asrock A520 board on sale, and found 16gb of ddr4 2400mhz RAM to go with it. I wasn't sure if the CPU would come with a stock cooler when I ordered it from CEX, so I bought a £35 tower cooler which does the job well.

 

One of our clients was throwing away a load of old monitors, including a 24" samsung curved screen. Only 1080p, 60hz but its good enough for what I do for now. My old screen is now a secondary display.

 

I'm an admin on a facebook group and was offered a free Sihoo ergonomic chair to review, and got to keep it afterwards. Really comfortable chair. 

 

I'm pleased with where the setup is now. 

In future, I'll still be looking to upgrade the PSU, either a 750w or 850w unit. I'll also want to up the RAM to 32gb at 3200mhz. After that, I'll look at upgrading the gtx 1070 - I'm tempted to try an Intel A770.