Vanessa- The $150 Skylake Rig

[RGProductions]

Vanessa- The $150 Skylake Rig

Contents

Intro

Parts

Part Pics and Descriptions

Choosing the case

Modding the case

Rationale

Building the PC
Upgrade Path
Pictures

Final thoughts

 

Intro

Hello all and welcome to my first build log! The goal of this PC was to have a cheap alternative to a core 2 quad for some light office work and watching videos. You will find I chose these parts to provide a sensible upgrade path and so I could put in various components as needed. Enjoy!

 

Parts

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Pentium G4400 3.3GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($56.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H110M-A Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($53.88 @ OutletPC) 
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory  ($23.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 320GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($17.80 @ Amazon) 
Other: Delta 400w ($0.00)
Other: some random free old case ($0.00)
Total: $152.66
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-08-26 22:20 EDT-0400{P

 

Part Pics and Descriptions

I chose this hard drive because it was the cheapest SATA drive at the time.

I chose this ram because it was the same price as the super cheap green PCB stuff.

The reason I chose this motherboard was easy. It was the cheapest board that would accept all the stuff.

I chose this CPU because it was just about $50, provided a reasonable upgrade path, and had 2 strong cores, what my workload likes.

For the power supply it was either this 400 watt delta unit or a 288 watt bestec unit... Yeah.

 

Choosing the case

When I was choosing the case, I was spoiled for choice! After getting my options down to only 2 I had to choose.

The larger asus one had a standard power button while the smaller dell did not. I thought long and hard here and decided to go for the Dell because of it's smaller size and overall better condition.

 

Modding the Case

Not much modding needed to be done, however the power button needed to be sorted.

The Brown and blue wires are the power button, so that is all we care about, not LEDs. I ended up just pulling the remaining wires out and making sure there is no short circuiting

So here is the finished block. We have basically a normal power switch, but with some extra block around it.

Here it is plugged into motherboard

Rationale

My decisions for parts may seem odd, putting Skylake in a rig with a $150 budget, but there are plenty of reasons to go Skylake for this rig. Firstly, the upgrade path. The upgrade path was probably the biggest reason I did this, as if my workload ever increases from basic document writing and video watching I could easily pop in an i5 and a graphics card. The only other choices in this budget would be AM1 and FM2, both of witch have no upgrade path. I chose the remaining parts other than the CPU because they were the cheapest parts I could muster up that supported the CPU, while doing what I want. The reason why I went with the 400 watt Delta unit was because I got it for free and it works, so nothing beats free. I went with the case as a placeholder until I get a proper case.

 

Building the PC

Overall this build went well. I only cut my hand once, which is pretty good for this kind of case. The IO shield was a bit tough but it fit. The mods I did worked well too!

 

 Upgrade path

Upgrades were one of the biggest reasons why I chose these parts. I will first upgrade the case then the power supply, then the build will only get upgrades when my workload increases.

 

PC Pictures

 

Final Thoughts

Thank you for reading this build log. I hope to see you again in many future build logs, but for now, goodbye.

[RGProductions]

UPDATE 9/3/2016

The HDD is dead. Failing to spin up. Will keep you posted

UPDATE 10/20/2016. 

Received payment for dead HDD, now using a 500GB western digital laptop hard drive. Got it for free, now the total is $130 for the build.

[RGProductions]

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[RGProductions]

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[RGProductions]

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[RGProductions]

Just now, Cosmopath said:

Great pictures and great build. Well done man

Thank you. This build was super budget, and I am glad it worked.

[Bananasplit_00]

hey awesome build  nice case! way better then what the LAN PC has  not the most exiting build ever but cool that you could do skylake for $150  also run firestrike benchmark if you have time, LAN PC got 4184, i want to compare. not that i think there will be any competing between Q6600 and GTX 660 SLI VS Skylake intergrated graphics tho lol  

[RGProductions]

On 8/31/2016 at 1:01 PM, Bananasplit_00 said:

hey awesome build  nice case! way better then what the LAN PC has  not the most exiting build ever but cool that you could do skylake for $150  also run firestrike benchmark if you have time, LAN PC got 4184, i want to compare. not that i think there will be any competing between Q6600 and GTX 660 SLI VS Skylake intergrated graphics tho lol  

yeah, as soon as I install windows that is definitly what i'll do. May score some more really cheap pc parts in the future that may make it beat you in firestrike

[RGProductions]

On 8/31/2016 at 1:01 PM, Bananasplit_00 said:

hey awesome build  nice case! way better then what the LAN PC has  not the most exiting build ever but cool that you could do skylake for $150  also run firestrike benchmark if you have time, LAN PC got 4184, i want to compare. not that i think there will be any competing between Q6600 and GTX 660 SLI VS Skylake intergrated graphics tho lol  

So between forum issues and Hardware issues, the benchmarks will come in a few weeks.

[Bananasplit_00]

17 hours ago, RGProductions said:

So between forum issues and Hardware issues, the benchmarks will come in a few weeks.

sortof the same story here, forums have been screwy and i cant get SLI to work  

[RGProductions]

On 9/6/2016 at 0:50 PM, Bananasplit_00 said:

sortof the same story here, forums have been screwy and i cant get SLI to work  

Well. I got 270 in cenebench and failed firestike. Yeah, It's time for an upgrade

[Bananasplit_00]

10 hours ago, RGProductions said:

Well. I got 270 in cenebench and failed firestike. Yeah, It's time for an upgrade

i am litteraly using the LAN PC for random testing and i have put it away for now, its probably getting an I3 530 instead of the Q6600 tho and a single 660 because SLI is just a pain

[RGProductions]

On 9/15/2016 at 2:12 AM, Bananasplit_00 said:

i am litteraly using the LAN PC for random testing and i have put it away for now, its probably getting an I3 530 instead of the Q6600 tho and a single 660 because SLI is just a pain

How much did the LAN PC come out to total?

[Bananasplit_00]

10 hours ago, RGProductions said:

How much did the LAN PC come out to total?

4000ish in firestrike, no idea cinebench, wouldent start last time i tried lol

[RGProductions]

9 hours ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

4000ish in firestrike, no idea cinebench, wouldent start last time i tried lol

I meant price LOL

[Bananasplit_00]

13 hours ago, RGProductions said:

I meant price LOL

oh lol, well $267.6, so $110 more then this PC lol, and the total is rising now that im going to replace the Q6600 with an I3 if i can get it working lol, but that should be cheaper then the current if you look at the price of the parts seeing as im removing one 660 because SLI didnt work for me basically at all anyway and i got more preformance with a single card then both lol

[RGProductions]

9 hours ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

oh lol, well $267.6, so $110 more then this PC lol, and the total is rising now that im going to replace the Q6600 with an I3 if i can get it working lol, but that should be cheaper then the current if you look at the price of the parts seeing as im removing one 660 because SLI didnt work for me basically at all anyway and i got more preformance with a single card then both lol

sell the other 660. And remove all old parts from the total, got big plans for the next few months

[Bananasplit_00]

1 minute ago, RGProductions said:

sell the other 660. And remove all old parts from the total, got big plans for the next few months

not going to sell one of the 660s  need it for EVEN MORE COMPUTERS  one for the LAN PC 2.0 or whatever with the I3 and one for the Q6600 which is probably going to be dads new machine seeing as he is on a windows XP pentium 4 thing from 2005ish lol but i need to get some RAM first then il come back to you but its looking like $30 for 4GB or DDR3 1366MHz  

[RGProductions]

Upgrades coming soon. gonna be a whole new build basically