Biggest bang for buck you've had?

[Psittac]

When I built my first rig back in 04ish I was on a tight budget.  I built a second from current generation AMD platform and squeezed SO MUCH out of that thing it was unreal.  Athlon XP-m 2800+ barton core, Mushkin non-B5, Abit AN-7 and ATI 960pro AIW.  I managed to push 222x14 cas2 with insane clock's out of that little 4 pixel pipeline gpu.  At that time I managed numbers that absolutely no one else had with that platform.  Granted I spent 24/7 tweaking testing and stressing for about 2 years, but no one could touch me.  There was the AMD Athlon64, B5 memory and DFI lan-party when I started and I was proud AF of my little rig.

 

Anyone else been able to squeeze admirable result's out of a budget build?

[emosun]

I'm not sure it's possible to squeeze more out of a system than it's capable of. Sure you can endlessly tweak it , but it'll never do more than it can.

that being said I once ran crysis on a dual pentium 3 , did pretty well considering

[LienusLateTips]

$40 phone game controller (not including shipping) for $5 with free shipping lol

 

"budget build" because i'm so poor i can't afford to fix me pc

[dizmo]

• 4690k
• 240mm AIO
• MSI Z97 mITX motherboard
• Entho Evolv ITX case
• 240GB SSD
• 2TB HDD
• GTX 970
• Thermaltake TR2 PSU
• Dell U2412M monitor
• Razer Deathadder mouse
• Razer Chroma mechanical keyboard
• Logitech 2.1 surround sound system

$600 US. I'd say it was pretty solid bang for the buck.

[LienusLateTips]

Just now, dizmo said:

• Thermaltake TR2 PSU

ew

[Psittac]

I had more than a 30% OC on each component from what I can remember. cpu and gpu at least.  Considering the cpu was 133 fsb stock and well under 2.0ghz I'd say a 2.8ghz cpu clock was respectable.

[Clockwork_princess]

20 minute bang for one buck.

 

 

i got a g502 for $12 

[dizmo]

Just now, JDE said:

ew

For $600, I didn't really care

Never gave me any trouble anyway.

[Psittac]

Just now, dizmo said:

For $600, I didn't really care

Never gave me any trouble anyway.

I'm pretty sure my rig was around $600, can't remember if that included gpu or not.  Did have a Lian-li case though

[SeraphicWings]

Yesterday I bought an i7 7700K for just about $15 more than regular store i7 7700 price

[Psittac]

9 minutes ago, emosun said:

I'm not sure it's possible to squeeze more out of a system than it's capable of. Sure you can endlessly tweak it , but it'll never do more than it can.

that being said I once ran crysis on a dual pentium 3 , did pretty well considering

I had one moment on the forum of the day, where I posted three screen shots.  The first was stock settings with a stock desktop.  The second was of comparable settings to the highest results of a similar platform, the third was my max clocks with a background of a sexy A$$ batch on the desktop.  My benchmarks backed it up and I could pull results way further than I should have been able to.

 

a dual cpu rig, very very nice good sir.  I say good day and good well to you.

[Bananasplit_00]

I7 2600 + motherboard + 4GB of RAM + cooler for €50 lol

[emosun]

2 minutes ago, Psittac said:

My benchmarks backed it up and I could pull results way further than I should have been able to.

uh huh , it did exactly what it was capable of. same as an old server playing crysis , it did what it was capable of doing.

[Psittac]

2 minutes ago, emosun said:

uh huh , it did exactly what it was capable of. same as an old server playing crysis , it did what it was capable of doing.

I did well over what it was specced to do.  Server equipment is designed to run at spec and do it every time for a long time. Budget OC gear can run way over spec and do it some of the time.

[emosun]

7 minutes ago, Psittac said:

I did well over what it was specced to do. 

but not over what it was capable of doing

A minivan can be "specced" to a 100mph top speed. If i shoot the thing full of nitrous and drive it down a 45 degree slope at 150 then its "capable" of 150.

the thing is , the machine was always capable of whatever you did with it. you can overclock and tweak the heck out of it over years on end but had you known all of your settings and tweaks on day one , then the machine could have done it day one as well. which means you did what the machine was capable of.

[ImNotThere]

bought a 980ti for £180, pretty good bargain imo

[ElZamo92]

I bought a refurbished Corsair H80i for $40usd back in 2014 and it still works like a charm. It keeps my overclocked Ryzen 7 1700 at the low to mid 50s while gaming. 

[Plank]

Buying several new 980 Ti‘s (from a store—> full warranty)

for 249€ each. Selling 10 of them for 350-390€ each and getting myself a 980 ti „for free“ plus having more money  so yeah a free 980 ti was the best I‘ve had so far even tho it could‘ve been a 1080 ti for free, but I am running 1080p@144hz so no need for it

[IKnight]

My €20 Xeon X5650. It beats a lot of modern CPUs that are 5x the price. 

[dcgreen2k]

An EVGA 750 Ti on ebay for $50.

[Princess Luna]

Sold my used GTX TITAN X Maxwell(bough second hand back in the day for $500) for $480, replaced for a 1 month used only, all brand new alike EVGA GTX 1080 Ti for $580, last month, great great smooth upgrade on my GPU.

[Drak3]

3" 12ga slug. At a buck a shell at the time, and a good pump action going for $200, it's a damn good bang for the buck.

 

 

Oh, you meant PC hardware? I got my 950 Pro for about 50% listed price.

[Salacious B Crum]

Got my $100 server board for $49 new I'll take it!

[AshleyAshes]

i7 4930k, $250 CAD, at the time when it was new. :3

 

Someone let me borrow their Intel Retail Edge account to buy it.

[Shreyas1]

Everything that you get for free is infinite bang for your buck