New to PC

[Preused Rig]

Budget (including currency): $200 USD

Country: United States

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: light gaming older titles such as: Battlefield Bad Company 2, Skyrim, Saints Row 2 and 3, and Borderlands 1 GOTY and 2.

Other details  I am returning to pc for the first time in 12 years. Everything I have currently is handed down. I will be repurposing a Dell Optiplex 990 Minitower to include the OEM motherboard, gpu, psu, i5 2400 cpu, and ram. I am on tight budget. The only thing that is upgraded is the ram at 16 gigs. The monitor that is being used is a Sanyo tv running on VGA. So far I have $0 usd in this. Any suggestions? 

 

If I posted in the wrong area please let me know or delete. Thank you in advance 

 

[RONOTHAN##]

6 minutes ago, Preused Rig said:

I will be repurposing a Dell Optiplex 990 Minitower

Just do double check, this is the one that can take full size GPUs, correct? Dell's naming scheme is all over the place, so I just want to make sure before assuming anything. 

 

 

Anyway, assuming it is, the first thing I would upgrade is the GPU and the CPU. The CPU is easy, just find an i7 2600 on eBay for cheap and call it a day, those extra 4 threads are really useful nowadays and it's only about $20-25. The GPU is a little tricky, since a lot of worthwhile GPUs require external power and would therefore require a PSU upgrade (this era of Optiplex should take standard ATX PSUs, so this shouldn't be a problem, but double check before purchasing one), so it becomes whether it's cheaper to do that or to get one of the cards that can run off the PCIe slot. If you want to do the PCIe slot method, your options are limited to either a GTX 1650 (about $70-80 on eBay) or an RTX 3050 6G (~$170 on eBay). Meanwhile, if you do the PSU upgrade method, you can get something like a 5700 XT for ~$120, spend ~$60 on a decent PSU like the MSI A650BE and end up with significantly better performance. Doing that with the CPU upgrade, you'll be right at about the $200 budget. If you have any money left over, I'd recommend getting a CPU cooler upgrade of some sort as that should help prevent some thermal throttling in the Dell. Also, browse local listings instead of just relying on eBay, they usually cost a bit less and so you can get something a fair bit better, I'm just using eBay since it's usually easier to refer to if you don't know exactly where you live and the buyer protection is good to have for some people. 

[Preused Rig]

6 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Just do double check, this is the one that can take full size GPUs, correct? Dell's naming scheme is all over the place, so I just want to make sure before assuming anything. 

 

 

Anyway, assuming it is, the first thing I would upgrade is the GPU and the CPU. The CPU is easy, just find an i7 2600 on eBay for cheap and call it a day, those extra 4 threads are really useful nowadays and it's only about $20-25. The GPU is a little tricky, since a lot of worthwhile GPUs require external power and would therefore require a PSU upgrade (this era of Optiplex should take standard ATX PSUs, so this shouldn't be a problem, but double check before purchasing one), so it becomes whether it's cheaper to do that or to get one of the cards that can run off the PCIe slot. If you want to do the PCIe slot method, your options are limited to either a GTX 1650 (about $70-80 on eBay) or an RTX 3050 6G (~$170 on eBay). Meanwhile, if you do the PSU upgrade method, you can get something like a 5700 XT for ~$120, spend ~$60 on a decent PSU like the MSI A650BE and end up with significantly better performance. Doing that with the CPU upgrade, you'll be right at about the $200 budget. If you have any money left over, I'd recommend getting a CPU cooler upgrade of some sort as that should help prevent some thermal throttling in the Dell. Also, browse local listings instead of just relying on eBay, they usually cost a bit less and so you can get something a fair bit better, I'm just using eBay since it's usually easier to refer to if you don't know exactly where you live and the buyer protection is good to have for some people. 

Thank you. Yes that tower is able to take a full size gpu from my understanding. I've browsed Craigslist and Facebook market place and where I live for a 1050ti the going price around $120. I've been told to stay away from things such as a 570 so I'm kinda leery of anything. I'll definitely look at eBay. I completely forgot they existed.

[RONOTHAN##]

2 hours ago, Preused Rig said:

I've browsed Craigslist and Facebook market place and where I live for a 1050ti the going price around $120.

Yeah, that's just insane, that card should only really be worth ~$60. You'll probably be better off sticking with eBay unless you can manage to talk one of these guys down a fair bit. 

 

2 hours ago, Preused Rig said:

I've been told to stay away from things such as a 570 so I'm kinda leery of anything.

This advice is somewhat outdated. There was a period of time when AMD drivers were quite bad, and it wasn't a bad idea to avoid them. However, since around 2020, AMD revamped their drivers and fixed most of the bugs, to the point where my experience with them has them be about as stable as Nvidias if you're only gaming. I wouldn't avoid them nowadays, especially if you can manage to pick up one of their higher end cards for much less than the equivalent Nvidia offerings. 

[Preused Rig]

Thank you for your advice. If I find a 1650 for a reasonable price, how far could I push the system? My plan is to buy piece by piece until the OEM motherboard can't support anymore upgrades then upgrade my board and case. Tbh, the only "newer" games that I'm currently interested in is High on Life and BeamNG.drive, but as I've said previously I haven't been into pc gaming for a while now. I have no idea what games are in development right now and what games are out. The last time I signed into Steam was 2015. I'm open for any and all suggestions.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

3 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

spend ~$60 on a decent PSU like the MSI A650BE

overpriced for a throwaway 650w bronze

 

just checked pcpp and theres the segotep gn 650w at 50$ and yes 12v rail checks out as its about the same as the rated wattage (54a = 648w) albiet nonmodular like any new psu at this pricerange

 

a better option would be a used rm850x or equivalent at ~50$ which will be fine for even a 3090 where that segotep will fall right off for 3080/3090 presumably 4080 4090 aswell (transients, sheer power draw) but 6950xt is probably fine if the cpu isnt a power hungry chip albiet may need undervolting, but the new option is valid aswell if used doesnt exist or takes too much effort

 

5 minutes ago, Preused Rig said:

Thank you for your advice. If I find a 1650 for a reasonable price, how far could I push the system? My plan is to buy piece by piece until the OEM motherboard can't support anymore upgrades then upgrade my board and case. Tbh, the only "newer" games that I'm currently interested in is High on Life and BeamNG.drive, but as I've said previously I haven't been into pc gaming for a while now. I have no idea what games are in development right now and what games are out. The last time I signed into Steam was 2015. I'm open for any and all suggestions.

yea i think youll want to ditch that optiplex and buy into used ryzen or look at used 2011-3 workstations with a 1650/1660v3 which can be overclocked via throttlestop and psus about as powerful as that aformentioned 650w segotep or any other throwaway 650w unit (<3080/4080, 6950xt*)

 

beam is very cpu heavy afaik not to mention ram heavy and those workstations take dirt cheap ecc ddr4

[jacdhalina]

saints row 2 and 3??? man of culture for sure