What components are safe to cheap out on?

[Thaldor]

34 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

We have very different ideas about what a "limited budget" means.

 

I was thinking where you cheap out when spending around $600 or so for the whole PC. You've listed a single component that would be more than that.

 

It's all relative, but once you get north of $1,200 for the build, I think in most situations, cutting corners stops making sense. You can go from a Ryzen 7 7700 to a Ryzen 5 7600 and not lose much performance with an RTX 4070. That saves you over $100, and that one change alone would easily afford you a solid case and a dual-tower CPU cooler as an increase in budget for those components over what you were spending before.

You probably know the word "example"?

 

I can go for example, why would you pay around 20€ more for Asus RX 6500XT TUF Gaming OC than Sapphire RX 6500 XT PULSE? The Asus probably has one more blinking light but is that really worth 20€? If you're going for dGPU, it's pretty much stupid to go for the i3 14100 and not save the 20€ again and go for the 14100F. We can do that same in the RTX 4090 and i9/Ryzen 9 range and save quite significant sums without really changing anything, i9 14900KS is just 100MHz faster in max boost than the over 100€ cheaper 14900K, Gigabyte RTX 4090 Windforce V2 is over 200€ cheaper than Gaming OC and all you loose is 15MHz of boost clock and get a different plastic shroud.

Doing the research and knowing what you need and what you don't will save you few coins here and there even without really changing the product and that applies to any price ranges. In every price range there is also straight out stupidity in pricing which you can shave off without really loosing anything else than the status of being stupid sheep.

Sometimes spending that 20€ more and getting the iGPU may save you a lot of time and money, like if you're buying used dGPU and aren't 100% sure it works and you don't have troubleshooting gear. But that is decision to be made by knowing what you have and what you need. Like if you're getting dGPU, iGPU is 90% waste of money, the amount of DOA hardware is rather low and "maybe I need it in the future"-mentality is often for vain.

[YoungBlade]

11 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

You probably know the word "example"?

 

I can go for example, why would you pay around 20€ more for Asus RX 6500XT TUF Gaming OC than Sapphire RX 6500 XT PULSE? The Asus probably has one more blinking light but is that really worth 20€? If you're going for dGPU, it's pretty much stupid to go for the i3 14100 and not save the 20€ again and go for the 14100F. We can do that same in the RTX 4090 and i9/Ryzen 9 range and save quite significant sums without really changing anything, i9 14900KS is just 100MHz faster in max boost than the over 100€ cheaper 14900K, Gigabyte RTX 4090 Windforce V2 is over 200€ cheaper than Gaming OC and all you loose is 15MHz of boost clock and get a different plastic shroud.

Doing the research and knowing what you need and what you don't will save you few coins here and there even without really changing the product and that applies to any price ranges. In every price range there is also straight out stupidity in pricing which you can shave off without really loosing anything else than the status of being stupid sheep.

Sometimes spending that 20€ more and getting the iGPU may save you a lot of time and money, like if you're buying used dGPU and aren't 100% sure it works and you don't have troubleshooting gear. But that is decision to be made by knowing what you have and what you need. Like if you're getting dGPU, iGPU is 90% waste of money, the amount of DOA hardware is rather low and "maybe I need it in the future"-mentality is often for vain.

Not sure what you're looking for, but here's an example of how I would part out a sub $600 build:

 

PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/3NrjkJ

CPU: Intel Core i3-12100F 3.3 GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($94.98 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock B660M Pro RS Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard  ($94.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Silicon Power XPOWER Turbine 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  ($53.95 @ Amazon)
Storage: Silicon Power A60 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  ($59.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: ASRock Challenger D Radeon RX 6600 8 GB Video Card  ($189.99 @ Newegg)
Case: DIYPC F2 MicroATX Mini Tower Case  ($39.95 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Apevia Prestige 600 W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply  ($51.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $585.84
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-04-12 15:13 EDT-0400

 

Frankly, I wouldn't recommend anyone buy a 6500XT for any reason. A used RX 580 will perform about the same in situations where 4GB of VRAM is sufficient, have twice the VRAM for situations where it isn't, and will cost half the price. I'd squeeze and bend the budget to get up to the RX 6600 if at all possible. That, or go with something like a used RX 5700(XT).

 

At the lowest end of the budget range, $20 or euro or pounds can make a huge difference. It means being able to go from a Celeron to an i3. Or 16GB of RAM to 32GB. So it's at the lower end that I think finding places to cut corners is most viable.

 

Also, just in general, I never recommend spending more for a different model of graphics card unless you know that the cheaper model sucks. All you're paying for is the cooler and paint job/RGB. Which is why in the example, I just put in one of the two RX 6600 cards that cost $190 - I ignored everything more expensive, because at the end of the day, the GPU itself is the same.

[Needfuldoer]

Case - Fashions come and go, but the ATX standard hasn't dramatically changed all that much since the 90s. Basically any case you can get your hands on will work.

 

Cooling - Sure, big fancy AIO coolers are nice to have, but they're expensive. Stock heatsinks and cheap coolers may be noisy and have sub-optimal performance, but you're not going to destroy anything if you use a stock cooler. Besides, some older designs like the 212 Evo have held up very well, and you can find used examples for much less than new.

 

Storage - I've bought plenty of used SSDs and shucked a bunch of external hard drives. You can usually save a good chunk of money compared to new, and in the case of SSDs you can sometimes get slower enterprise-grade drives with tens of petabytes of write endurance for the price of a cheap new SATA SSD. They're not the fastest, but they're usually fine. The risk is low as long as you have backups of the data you care about that follow the 3-2-1 rule. (Note: this is very "do as I say not as I do" advice.)

[atxcyclist]

I’ll run a cheaper case and a cheaper cooler to cut a budget, because except for limited circumstances that contributes very little or none to a loss in performance. I’ve run $40 cases for years without issue, and even low-cost processor coolers have gotten really compelling unless you’re on a higher-TDP chip. 
 

The PSU is something I will only ever buy a reputable brand/model of, GPU-binning is a thing so I won’t go with a funky brand there even for a deal. Processor you get what you pay for, and while I won’t buy crazy expensive boards I do have a few brands I predominantly go with; ASRock, MSI, and Gigabyte.

[wasab]

you dont need a case, use a cardboard 

[emothxughts]

I cheap out on GPU AIBs, I bought my RTX 4060 Ti 16GB (yeah, haters gonna hate, I got my uses) from Colorful brand instead of better known in the West brands like ASUS, Gigabyte etc, it was the cheapest one I could find, and it's working crash free and cool. YMMV on whether the warranty's worth it...

[kaiju_wars]

I used to always try to do budget builds as, "skimp on everything you can to get the best GPU you can." But nowadays I look at budget builds a little differently.  

I tend to put a little bit more money into the PSU and motherboard.  PSU is obvious.  Mobo because even if you plan on only getting say, a Core i5 12400F, or a Ryzen 5 8500G right now, getting a better board now should (in theory) last you a couple generations that it can handle a much better CPU down the line.

 

Like I'm slowly acquiring the parts for my mom's new PC.  I got her the 12400F (first new Intel build for me in years), and I paired it with an ASRock Z690 board.  She can't OC the i5... but the board does have support for the Core i9 14900KS... not that she needs a nuclear reactor for a PC, but my point is there. (It's the same reason I went with my Gigabyte board, it's not a high end board, but it's a respectable midrange board).

 

[starsmine]

wow the ammount of trash teir b650 mobos that have launched over the last year is painful 

[Mark Kaine]

ram, motherboards,  to an extent, ssds, to an extent...

 

do *not* cheap out on psu, cpu, and to an extent gpu (midrange is okay tho)

 

also cheap ass aircooler is fine in most cases...

[Mark Kaine]

7 hours ago, starsmine said:

wow the ammount of trash teir b650 mobos that have launched over the last year is painful 

i had a 60 bucks "b350m"... honestly aside from some bugs (that eventually got fixed) pretty solid board... 130w ryzen 3600 (yes) no problem whatsoever 

[starsmine]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

i had a 60 bucks "b350m"... honestly aside from some bugs (that eventually got fixed) pretty solid board... 130w ryzen 3600 (yes) no problem whatsoever 

Yea and that's how I usually view what a 60 dollar motherboard can do, but a lot of these are struggling at even 130W, most of these are 120 dollar or more boards, and ADVERTISE compatibility with the 7950x

One of the big selling points of AM5 is that you can upgrade to Zen5 or Zen5x3d Later on, so sure these may be able to handle 100W.... at 106C with a r5 7600 non x today, but what happens when you want the r7 8700x3d?  Or when Zen 6 launches pick up a used r9 7950? You bought a 130 dollar motherboard with the promise that would work with minimal issues. But apparently with these boards, I guess the answer will be a surprise no.

Like you are not even buying A650 here. 
How are these OK to launch?

These prices are not at the point where I would expect issues like this.

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, starsmine said:

Yea and that's how I usually view what a 60 dollar motherboard can do, but a lot of these are struggling at even 130W, most of these are 120 dollar or more boards, and ADVERTISE compatibility with the 7950x

One of the big selling points of AM5 is that you can upgrade to Zen5 or Zen5x3d Later on, so sure these may be able to handle 100W.... at 106C with a r5 7600 non x today, but what happens when you want the r7 8700x3d?  Or when Zen 6 launches pick up a used r9 7950? You bought a 130 dollar motherboard with the promise that would work with minimal issues. But apparently with these boards, I guess the answer will be a surprise no.

Like you are not even buying A650 here. 
How are these OK to launch?

These prices are not at the point where I would expect issues like this.

yeah it was a msi mortar and apparently despite not being great overall (dont expect wifi etc at this price point)  it had apparently decent vrms... could even run a 5800x3d with a bios update no issues whatsoever, which is phenomenal if you think about it (i only eventually upgraded-to another mortar lol - because I wanted wifi on board...)

 

so yeah, you gotta either luck out or do extensive research but usually there are budget versions that do essentially the same as much more expensive options  (most people don't need a $300+ motherboard etc, a mx500 sata ssd is fine, no need for an expensive "pro" nvme, etc) 

[Somerandomtechyboi]

I cant really describe how id cheap out on stuff nor priorities but you just have to see for yourself

 

Spoiler

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/GRwRXk

Prices converted to pcpp

 

Ram is 4x4 (1 stick is roughly 3.14$) run at 4200-4600

Psu is an equivalent placeholder (nonmodular, 12v = 58.3a, advertised 700w rating, but ignore the 80+ rating)

Cooler is also a placeholder (snowman t6 with 6 heatpipes)

New parts are the cpu cooler and ssd everything else is used

Used ryzen cpus are overpriced here hence the new 5500, otherwise id have bought a used 5600x instead since its basically risk free to buy used cpus

 

Basically its a build based on a 5500 and a 6700xt for around the 400$ mark when you consider a case which is ~30$ for a decent one with 3-4 fans or <400$ if caseless or used case (3$ for a cheapo office pc case) so essentially an unintentional ps5 killer as it matches used ps5 pricing (also ~400$) and beats new ps5 pricing (~450$) whilst outspeccing it slightly

 

 

"Safety" while cheaping out is not black and white as it heavily depends on how you cheap out

 

An idiot that decides to buy an unbranded black china box psu is obviously not cheaping out safely cause that psu is likely gonna fail catastrophically especially with a gpu, but someone that buys a reputable used psu like an rm(x) or equivalent is getting a much more futureproof and higher quality unit compared to buying new whilst only paying the same price as some crappy lowend new unit if not less and because its a reputable brand its basically risk free

 

im the 3rd type that does my research (usually consisting of trial by fire) so im not shackled to reputable brands whilst still being next to risk free hence the psu choice in the build above, 15$ but still a solid unit since 12v = 58.3a = psu advertised rating of 700w (699.6w but thats just a very nice margin of error), reviews on the listing also look pretty good, and looking for customer reports or reviews elsewhere online didnt yeild any real complaints or reports of issues like random death or catastrophic failiure, also backed up by experience as ive bought 3 used units under 20$ following my rule of only 1 12v rail and said rail cannot exceed 100w below psu advertised rating (ex if psu is rated for 700w but 12v rail is rated below 600w its a trash unit that shouldnt be bought, same goes for any multirail unit regardless of combined 12v rail rating) and ive had no issues with em so far, yes all my psus are worse than the psu above as the best one is my dsa ii 550w with a 504w (42a) 12v rail and the worst is my 13yo dazumba 450w with a 360w (30a) 12v rail

 

 

Psu is the only major thing to watch out for when cheaping out cause if you dont do it properly youll probably end up with a trash unit that youll have to upgrade the moment you decide to swap gpu but overpay a crapton for said trash unit, so a shitty 500w bronze for 60$ instead of a used 850w rm(x) or equivalent for 60$ or less

 

or at worst youll end up with a china black box that will actually explode without a doubt, component death is unlikely as i did have a china black box explode on me but the rest of my build was completely fine, just that im pretty sure youd want a working pc instead of having to wait days for a new psu to arrive and youd probably want to avoid the small chance of other hardware getting killed by a psu that decided to catastrophically fail and explode

 

But doing it properly by buying a reputable used psu or really doing your reasearch like i did will be next to risk free and you save a decent chunk of cash and/or get a really good psu thatll last you awhile for cheap

 

Im just gonna cover psus in detail here as this is the only real grey zone when it comes to cheaping out with not much info or proper testing and its not very clear whats safe and whats not at a glance aside from buying a reputable brand (even this isnt guaranteed to be safe or good) atleast from a normies prespective as you have to do trial by fire testing like me or you have to be an electrician and open the things up for yourself to determine if theyre any good or not

 

 

Everything else is pretty much just common sense but ill make some short explanations

 

Mobo = vrms are good enough, all the i/o and features you need, if am5 or not dead platform get a board thatll last awhile (ex b650m hdv or up), if am4/1700 or dead platform get a board thats just good enough i/o and vrms wise at the cheapest price possible

 

Cooler = can be brought over for new cpus so something cheap but good like the phantom spirit would be best so you dont have to buy a new cooler when you cpu upgrade, otherwise stock cooler or cheapest possible half decent cooler be it ziptie mounted 775 copper core or really good value china cooler

 

Fans + case  = get a case with more included fans, otherwise just get a cheap used office case and run without sidepanel, cases are personal preference but cheaper = better and for low budget builds cheapest thing possible is best

 

Storage = for games speed doesnt matter even the cheapest m.2 will do fine, more of a value thing where if a dram gen3/4 isnt that much more you might aswell, branding doesnt really matter for the most part as the components (controller, dram, nand, etc.) Come from the same few manufacturers (ex hynix micron phison silicon motion etc.) And theyd be bankrupt if they made faulty garbage and didnt recall, just get whatever capacity you need but avoid <500gb and >4tb as theyre garbage value wise

 

Ram = get as much as you need, getting extra is fine but not strictly neccesary as for ddr4 you can just drop in another kit with a slight risk of incompatibility or xmp not working if you are using xmp sticks and not bare pcb oem sticks where you can specify ic and rank config with just the part number. though for ddr5 32gb kit is minimum due to 8gb sticks being 1rx16 and crippling ram performance, also prefer non 4 stick + hynix rams (>6000/low cl bin xmp or tforce/klevv/hynix 5600c46 jedec) if you wanna keep your rams for future cpus and not have to replace them early because of garbage samsung/microns that wont go past 7000, price diff is usually not that much so you might aswell get rams that you dont have to replace because theyre too slow and not because you need more capacity

 

Cpu + gpu and by extension the platform aswell = its a matter of balance but prefer a strong cpu if you arent sacrificing much gpu performance so you wont have to upgrade the cpu as early, so ddr4 12600kf + new 7900gre or ddr5 7800x3d + used 6800xt/3080 prefer the latter as you arent losing much gpu performance but you are getting a far superior cpu alongside a platform where you can drop in a new cpu without board or ram swap. On the opposite side ddr5 7600(x) + used 5700xt vs ddr4 12600kf + used 6800xt then prefer the latter as you arent sacrificing much cpu performance but you are getting a much better gpu, yes theres also the platform to consider but even then kinda useless if the gpu is really holding the thing back