Super Low Budget PC for Niece: 90% Complete

[Necromonger]

Story: I have a niece, she is my only niece, who has grown pretty attached to me and my girlfriend. Her dad left her when she was 3yo... So I had to step into her life and guide her. When I joined PC gaming in 2013, she would always come to my room (I lived with her, my mom and sister at the time) to chill with me and my girlfriend. I'd let her play on my TV while I played on my PC. Very early on she developed a liking to gaming. At first, she would get on my Xbox 360 with my girlfriend, but later on she would ask me to play on my laptop (she wanted to play PC games with me). No, that laptop wasn't my gaming PC. 

 

I ended up moving out with my girlfriend around 2014 and since then, we've baby sat her and tutored her after school. In early 2016 I bought an Asus Laptop. In late 2016, I upgraded my old PC, built my girlfriend her PC, and in early 2017, I built a separate streaming PC. Why am I bringing all this up? At my house we had 4 gaming PCs. Whenever she'd finish her HW and tutoring, we'd let her hop on Steam and play. She picked up mouse and keyboard pretty fast and never wanted to leave when her mom would come to pick her up. During this past year, I held LAN parties with family and friends, up to 7-8 would participate with their laptops or on my laptop/Stream PC, and we'd play Minecraft or some other game for days! It was a blast and my niece loved them!

 

For over a year, I wanted to do something, but something at a budget to get her started. I asked around on Reddit, here, and other gaming forums on the best approach to building her a decent gaming PC. My result was: Dell Optiplex ($100) + MSI GTX 1050 OC ($139.99)! I looked over Craigslist for a while looking for a decently priced Dell or OEM desktop. I found one last week and then decided on the GPU, again I asked Reddit and other forums and my best result for price/performance was the GTX 1050. Today her GPU arrived, so I assembled her PC and set it up with all her accounts at her house, she was freaking ecstatic!!! She couldn't wait to get on. She was jumping and fidgeting like a glitched out NPC! After 3 hours of updating and setting up, she had her very own gaming PC.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Niece's PC: Dell Optiplex 390MT(Modded)

i5 2320

MSI GTX 1050 2GB OC

8GB RAM

2TB HDD

Stock PSU

 

My PC:

i5 4670K

Zotac GTX 1080 Amp Ed

24GB RAM

1.4TB SSD + 2TB HDD

750W 80+ Gold EVGA PSU

 

GF PC:

i5 4460

Zotac GTX 1070 Amp Ed

8GB RAM

750GB SSD + 1TB HDD

750W 80+ Gold EVGA PSU

 

Streaming PC: Dell Optiplex 9010 (Modded)

i7 3770

Zotac GTX 1050ti Mini

8GB RAM

525GB SSD + 300GB HDD

300W 80+ PSU

 

Asus Laptop:

i7 6500u

Nvidia GTX 950m

8GB RAM

1TB HDD

 

I said her PC is 90% complete, because she is rocking a Dell membrane keyboard and mouse (both wired). My plan for her PC, later though, is to get her a nice Chinese mechanical keyboard and some custom keycaps, plus an RGB mouse, but that will have to wait. I want to make her keyboard special, with Minecraft inspired keycaps (either thematically colored, molded, or custom engraved) and a Minecraft stenciled mousepad. So, what does the LTT community think?

[sjb655]

she's lucky to have someone like you, keep it up!!

[Guest]

dude give your GF some RAM out of your system lmao

[Necromonger]

5 hours ago, NovaMan01 said:

dude give your GF some RAM out of your system lmao

LMAO! I tried a while ago, but because her RAM kit is blue (Her PC theme is black and blue) mine is black and red, she didn't want one stick because it didn't fit her color scheme.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Necromonger said:

LMAO! I tried a while ago, but because her RAM kit is blue (Her PC theme is black and blue) mine is black and red, she didn't want one stick because it didn't fit her color scheme.

maybe the black one? also depends on her use of her pc lmao

[Necromonger]

6 hours ago, NovaMan01 said:

maybe the black one? also depends on her use of her pc lmao

I think she is fine with what she uses it for. She even streams sometimes and has yet to run into problems with those 8GB.

 

Me on the other hand, do a lot of Autocad, Solidworks, Matlab, and Python scripts for school which do eat up some RAM. 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Necromonger said:

I think she is fine with what she uses it for. She even streams sometimes and has yet to run into problems with those 8GB.

 

Me on the other hand, do a lot of Autocad, Solidworks, Matlab, and Python scripts for school which do eat up some RAM. 

oh nice. What do you use Python for?

[This kid builds pc]

This is great man. I had a similar situation where my dad wasn't there and my uncle (works in IT) got me interested in cars and computers and is basically my father figure. I hope your niece likes the PC.

[Necromonger]

19 hours ago, NovaMan01 said:

oh nice. What do you use Python for?

For computational stuff, purely math. I use it a ton for classes like Probability & Statistics (Stoichiometry), other math classes (Linear Algebra and another class whose name I forgot). We also use Matlab, depending on your preference, some professors prefer Python though, over Matlab.

3 hours ago, This kid builds pc said:

This is great man. I had a similar situation where my dad wasn't there and my uncle (works in IT) got me interested in cars and computers and is basically my father figure. I hope your niece likes the PC.

Thanks dude and yeah, she is pretty stoked about having her own PC. I didn't know at the time of purchase, but her PC had a DVD drive, and she also had a catalog of movies her mom bought her. Their DVD player broke a year ago, but now she can watch her collection again, on her own Monitor without bothering her mom. Then on top of that we can now play Steam games while she is home! As I said in my original post, she always wanted to stay over to continue playing with me and my girlfriend, but now she literally has us right on her fingertips. 

 

I just need to finish adding the final touches. She really wants a mechanical keyboard and RGB mouse, plus she needs a headset with mic to voice chat over Discord with me and my girlfriend.

 

I've found...

 

Leobog K23: Mechanical Keyboard (Chinese Red Switches) $15

HCman RGB Mouse: $14

[This kid builds pc]

1 hour ago, Necromonger said:

For computational stuff, purely math. I use it a ton for classes like Probability & Statistics (Stoichiometry), other math classes (Linear Algebra and another class whose name I forgot). We also use Matlab, depending on your preference, some professors prefer Python though, over Matlab.

Thanks dude and yeah, she is pretty stoked about having her own PC. I didn't know at the time of purchase, but her PC had a DVD drive, and she also had a catalog of movies her mom bought her. Their DVD player broke a year ago, but now she can watch her collection again, on her own Monitor without bothering her mom. Then on top of that we can now play Steam games while she is home! As I said in my original post, she always wanted to stay over to continue playing with me and my girlfriend, but now she literally has us right on her fingertips. 

 

I just need to finish adding the final touches. She really wants a mechanical keyboard and RGB mouse, plus she needs a headset with mic to voice chat over Discord with me and my girlfriend.

 

I've found...

 

Leobog K23: Mechanical Keyboard (Chinese Red Switches) $15

HCman RGB Mouse: $14

lol when I was younger my uncle would always have a whole like book thing of dvds that he would put torrented movies on. Chinese mechanical keyboards are pretty good (i have one) and I've tried out multiple other name brand ones and nothing else was really worth it at the price.