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Help with parts selection

Rurouni121
By Rurouni121
in New Builds and Planning
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Go to solution Solved by asdasdasdasdasdasd,

ok... well, it's not really possible to upgrade a laptop beyond adding an ssd (usually)

Personally, I would look on Ebay for an Optiplex office pc with a decent Intel processor (i5 6th gen or above) and add a low power graphics card to that..

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what do you currently have? 

 

If you are looking to build something new then you can't really get much better value than a used Optiplex or other office pc and putting a cheap graphics card in it

 

What does your current PC boot from? If it's a hard drive then maybe you could get an SSD as they are way faster

 

Do you want to upgrade what you have or get something new?

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2 minutes ago, asdasdasdasdasdasd said:

what do you currently have? 

 

If you are looking to build something new then you can't really get much better value than a used Optiplex or other office pc and putting a cheap graphics card in it

 

What does your current PC boot from? If it's a hard drive then maybe you could get an SSD as they are way faster

 

Do you want to upgrade what you have or get something new?

Really anything that would improve my gaming experience and i'm already booting from a ssd

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32 minutes ago, Rurouni121 said:

 150 CAD$

 Canada 

 Gaming/web browsing

 

I'm a teen with 150$ CAD currently I'm using a GTX 660M and a i7 3630qm I'm looking for any parts/options I have to get better hardware 

 

sorry if this isn't the right place post

 

Only option thats worthwhile is just go call up schools, businesses, e-waste recycling facilities and other some such and just ask.

80+ ratings certify electrical efficiency. Not quality.

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ok... well, it's not really possible to upgrade a laptop beyond adding an ssd (usually)

Personally, I would look on Ebay for an Optiplex office pc with a decent Intel processor (i5 6th gen or above) and add a low power graphics card to that..

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6 minutes ago, asdasdasdasdasdasd said:

ok... well, it's not really possible to upgrade a laptop beyond adding an ssd (usually)

Personally, I would look on Ebay for an Optiplex office pc with a decent Intel processor (i5 6th gen or above) and add a low power graphics card to that..

Thank you very much 🙂

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This https://www.ebay.ca/itm/167994403785 seems like a decent deal to me, although I am in the UK so I don't know what typical pricing is like in Canada.

It doesn't come with a graphics card so you'll have to buy one as well.

 

You could make an offer on this listing and try to sell your laptop for some extra budget.

If you bought this for around C 110 or 120 and sold your laptop for around C 50 then you'd have C 90 of your budget left for a graphics card. (The performance wouldn't be too good without one.)

 

 

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So what most people do on a very tight budget is indeed to buy a sort of OptiPlex with a intel CPU and put in a low powered GPU.

What you want to look out for are GPU's like some GTX 1050 Ti's, 1650's or Radeon RX 6400 that does not need external GPU power and will run of the 75 watts the motherboard PCIE slot is able to provide.  Most OptiPlex use proprietary power supplies and connectors so upgrading the power supply can be a bit difficult.

Upgrading the RAM in an OptiPlex is quite straight forwards as most only come with 8GB.

 

150 CAD is a really tight budget but if you look around you might be able to scramble something together that is better than what you currently have but its going to be difficult.

You might even be able to find some people giving away older Optiplex machines with Intel 6th gen CPU's in them.

 

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1 hour ago, Hinjima said:

GPU's like some GTX 1050 Ti's, 1650's or Radeon RX 6400 

 

I think an rx 6400 is out of the budget here, but this is the general idea. Buy a used graphics card from Ebay (edit: that uses <75w power) and you should be good 🙂 

you can use this website to compare the performance of GPUs:

https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/compare/

(Look at the G3D mark rating for how good a GPU is) 

and it tells you other things about the GPU, like how much power it uses

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8 minutes ago, asdasdasdasdasdasd said:

I think an rx 6400 is out of the budget here, but this is the general idea. Buy a used graphics card from Ebay and you should be good 🙂 

you can use this website to compare the performance of GPUs:

https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/compare/

(Look at the G3D mark rating for how good a GPU is) 

and it tells you other things about the GPU, like how much power it uses

Its not as easy as to just buy a used GPU on Ebay with an OptiPlex as they dont usually have cables for 6 or 8 pin GPU power connector.
It has to be a GPU that can run of the 75w PCIE slot power as changing the PSU in an OptiPlex is difficult. They dont use standard connectors on most motherboards in OptiPlex machines.

The Dell OptiPlex 5040 MT in the link above only has a 240w PSU without any extra cables.  Only an extra 8pin SATA

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