Almost Entirely Built my GF’s Bedroom Setup Using Secondhand hardware.

[caffeine]

I am quite fortunate when it comes to finding deals on aging hardware. I live in the geographical nutsack of Silicon Valley and our Goodwills are overflowing with e-waste. Really great finds. I also live in a college town, so students leave things on the streets you wouldn’t imagine. I actually rescued a Secret Labs desk chair from the street and gave it away some time ago. 
 

On this same street I found two PC cases. One was an AM4 board with a Ryzen 5 1600 CPU. The other was an i5 7500, 16GB of DDR4, and a 1070 8GB. Out of these two I got one whole working PC. Gave it a newer NZXT case with a panel, grabbed 32GB of Corsair memory with RGB lighting from eBay, and found a 1TB Crucial m.2 SSD on sale. As my Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is what I play games on, this PC sat aside for many months. I tried to give it away and no one in my circle even wanted it. 
 

Me and my partner have been together for a year and in that time she’s become quite the gamer. She loves her Switch and after watching me play Death Stranding, she wanted to play it too. So I gave her the cobbled together PC and hooked it up to the 27 inch Amazon Fire TV she had, and presto you’ve got a goth gamer GF. 
 

However, is this really how I want to treat a lady? I’m a gentleman after all. Sure, my first computer was cobbled together junk, but deep down I know that’s not the way to bring someone into the fold. It’s a frustrating world to be plunged into and if you aren’t diagnostically inclined, it’s a steep learning curve. So as my GF played Cult of The Lamb and Death Stranding, I devised a plan. 
 

The perfect budget bedroom gaming setup… with a little bit of scrapyard wars flavor. 
 

I started by finding a $180 Ryzen 7 5700x3d on Facebook marketplace. The seller owns a PC repair and supply business in Vietnam and takes components back to the states for a little pocket money. Buy low, sell high. This retail arbitrage works out in my favor too. 
 

Corsair XTM70 Thermal Paste - $20

 

LG OLED C1 48” - $450 - Less than 2k hours on the display and not a single bit of burn in. The owners upgraded on Black Friday and I got my GF the exact same display I use for games and media. 

 

Wall Mount for TV - $60 - Best Buy Essentials full motion mount isn’t the best for setup, but it works great as a hunk of metal to hold up hundreds of dollars of pixels. 

 

My partner plays games sitting on a bed or couch, so you need a really good lap/couch setup. Thankfully my local PC hardware store was running some deals. Razer Orochi - $30, Slim Wireless Keyboard - $30 - The keybord’s design mimics a MacBook style, which is good as my GF uses one as her daily driver. 

 

I’m really a fan of the Lapdesk Titan - $40 - It’s a rigid surface with comfortable cushioning. Also it has an integrated mousepad with wrist support. 

 

Corsair RM850e PSU -$110 - The Thermaltake 450w PSU I pulled from an aging PC wasn't exactly a horse I’d bet on. So instead I got a new modular 80 Plus Gold power supply that will save her some cents on the electric bill and also support…

 

RTX 2080Ti Founders Edition - Free - Okay so I actually bought two of these from an Nvidia employee with an NVLink bridge for $425. I then sold one of these cards for $360 bucks on eBay. The NVLink I sold for $125. Minus shipping costs and eBay’s cut and I broke even. The RTX 2080 Ti FE going in my GF’s PC didn’t cost me a dime. She can experience great 1440p 120hz gaming in HDR, 4K 60 gaming, or even ray tracing if she wants. 

So here’s the final setup

Ryzen 7 5700x3d
16x2 of RGB Corsair DDR4 RAM

MSI AM4 mATX motherboard

1TB M.2 Gen 3 SSD for Games

500GB SATA SSD for OS

RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition

Coolermaster CPU cooler with 120mm RGB Fan

3 Case Fans

RGB light strips with NZXT controller

NZXT 8150 White Case

also a Xbox Series controller I nabbed for $15 that’s like new. 

 

An OLED LG display, and a PC she can grow into, for less than a grand. I would have spent more on a new console and a new display. Instead, she is able to enjoy the setup, play games cheaper, and enjoy PC gaming on a setup that rivals budget builds with new hardware. 
 

I could have waited until Christmas, but I’m so bad at wrapping paper I just decided to spend the evening mounting a TV and rebuilding a PC instead.