BakaTheIdiot
Viscount of Spaghetti Code
Didn't really know where to put this, or how to prefix it, if I'm being entirely honest. Apologies to the mods in advance!
Obviously 2020 was rough, 2021 was arguably worse, and 2022 isn't shaping up to be much better, so I decided on a hobby project to pass the time and ignore my pending doom: building a computer for as little money as possible. Not just because I thought it would be fun, but also because computers are expensive, and I didn't want to commit to anything that cost more than 400$ - after all, I'm a broke college student.
You might be wondering: how did it go? Not as bad as you might think actually! I'll put the specs at the bottom in a second. Storytime!
At least on my campus, there's this little joint called "University Surplus and Salvage." For the uninitiated, "surplus" usually means that the establishment, be it the military, police, or in this case a school, bought too much of something and now they can't do anything with it. That alone was kind of cool, given that everything is up for grabs at a serious markdown, but the kicker that finally drew me to that place was this: there were computers there for 50 dollars. 50 dollars! A whole self contained computer! That almost sounds too good to be true, right?
Well... kinda. There's a couple of asterisks with that excitement, the most important of which is that these computers have been gutted for parts, namely storage, RAM, and graphics cards, so what remains usually isn't very much; you get the bare minimum to turn it on, and it's usually a Dell so YMMV. That's a bit of a deal breaker for some, but you still get quite a bit of computer for 50 bucks, or in my case 40 since I got it on sale: you get a full desktop CPU, usually Intel although I did spot a Ryzen 3, some kind of placeholder graphics card (more on that in a minute), a single stick of RAM (although I did see a couple with two), a fully connected motherboard and power supply, plus a free power cable for said power supply - y'know, so you can turn it on.
My CPU alone, if you buy it refurbished/new, runs anywhere from 90 bucks to over 200 dollars. So yeah, for 40 bucks, a very solid deal - IF you're willing to put in some labor.
These were my starting specs, for any fellow nerds:
1. an Intel Core i5-4570 (4 core, 4 thread, boosts up to 3.6ish GHz) w/ a generic CPU cooler
2. a Dell OEM Radeon HD 8570 (780 MHz shader, 900MHz memory, 50ish Watt TDP, 1GB DDR3)
3. an unnamed 255W power supply
4. No onboard WiFi (why??)
5. No storage
6. 4GB of DDR3-1600 RAM (single channel)
7. Some generic Dell office Motherboard
8. a Dell Optiplex 9020 SFF tower case
I got to work by first getting a SATA III to USB cable, a 250GB SSD, and a 500GB HDD, and put windows 10 on the SSD for the boot drive. I now know that this is a terrible, terrible way to do this, because afterwards I had to spend 15 minutes removing all of the setup files so that I would stop getting the "setup" boot option and just go straight to windows. But, I was getting somewhere! The computer at least turned on now.
Next, I had to deal with the WiFi problem. I couldn't run an ethernet cable over 30 feet to my basement, so I just used a cheap workaround and bought a PCIe x1 WiFi card on Amazon. It worked solidly OK, although there are better options. But hey, I could install drivers. I'll take it.
With that out of the way, I now had a computer that could do basic things - albeit not very well. So I got 2 sticks of RAM, both of which being 4GB, and gave my rig a significantly more boisterous 12 GB. It technically has 4 DIMM slots, so I could get another stick, but that kind of defeats the purpose of it being "as cheap as humanly possible."
Now we were getting somewhere. The PC was quick to boot, responsive, and could accomplish basic tasks - but I wasn't done. I got Steam, Epic Store, MSI Afterburner, and Furmark all installed. I was going to push this little PC that could to its limits.
I overclocked the HD 8570 to pump out even more power, straining its incredibly whiny fan and my own sanity, getting it from 780/900 MHz clock speeds for shader and memory respectively, to 1000/1000 MHz.
The gains were instant... sort of. It went form a piece of junk to a gold-plated piece of junk. But hey, I got 8 more FPS in Fortnite (~35 average to like ~43, 720p low).
By now I had spent a little over 170 bucks (to include a monitor, keyboard, and some stereo speakers) on the whole thing, and let me be perfectly clear: if you're not trying to do anything fancy, and just watch YouTube, you can stop here. It is perfectly serviceable, and can handle a couple of demanding titles at 720p, 30ish FPS.
But if, like me, you want a no-compromises low-end rig, then you have to find a better GPU - which I did.
The Dell Radeon card I had is a tough little scrapper, and can be overclocked within an inch of its life. I'll give credit where credit is due. With that in mind, even for lighter applications like YouTube, 1 gig of really slow VRAM still isn't very much, no matter how much love you give the shader clock. If you want to do any kind of competitive gaming on it, like CS:GO, Fortnite, Apex Legends, etc., you're gonna need more horsepower (sadly).
Now, it's technically not a card designed for games: it's a part of the Nvidia Quadro series, but at least based on what I could find, it's perfectly serviceable for 720p medium, or even 1080p low at 60+ fps, which is a massive jump in performance.
The card in question is an Nvidia T400: 1450ish MHz boost clock, 5000 MHz memory clock, 30W TDP, 3x MiniDP output, 2GB GDDR6 VRAM, and a REALLY quiet fan, on paper this thing honestly seems really serviceable - and it is. This is the card I went with, and while it's not optimized for games and it can't be overclocked (I'm positive there's a way, but I can't find it), when it's on sale you can get it for about 15 to 40 bucks cheaper than a GT 1030, which performs pretty closely. On top of that, this card is much newer, meaning good drivers will probably be around for a lot longer.
Now don't let the Nvidia sticker fool you: this thing has DLSS, but don't use it. It absolute tanks performance, at least in my experience, and that could stem from a lack of optimization. Additionally, while it's technically an RTX card, it doesn't actually have many (or any) Ray Tracing cores. So... yeah. It's a budget card, it will do budget things. For the price though, you get a respectable amount of performance!
The previous GPU got about 22 FPS on average in a 480p stress test on Furmark, and that's the absolute best I could get it to do, with a major overclock. The T400 got 61 FPS on the same conditions. 61 FPS! That's almost triple! Even with some MXAA enabled, I still got leaps and bounds more performance. It doesn't matter that it's not optimized: this card is an evolutionary step forward from an HD 8570. Additionally, the fan is significantly more quiet, which usually doesn't bug me, but the first time I spooled it up I had to double check and make sure it was actually running because of how quiet it was. Very cool!
And for what it's worth, an HD 8570 runs anywhere from 80 to 90 bucks on Amazon. Seriously, don't buy it. Mine was free and even I have a hard time recommending it.
Now we're here, at the finish line. I have a low spec workstation rig, capable of pumping out some impressive numbers for even some more demanding AAA titles, a modest amount of storage (you can easily get more for not much more money), at a price that's hard to scoff at. Speaking of, what was the cost of all those late nights, labor, and possibly ruined spinal disks from hauling?
If you round up, it's about 330$.
And the final specs, for those who didn't keep track!
1. an Intel Core i5-4570 (4 core, 4 thread, boosts up to 3.6ish GHz) w/ a generic CPU cooler
2. an Nvidia Quadro T400 (1450 MHz shader, 5000 MHz memory, 2GB GDDR6, 30W TDP)
3. an unnamed 255W power supply
4. an Atheros PCIe x1 WiFi card (forgot the model number)
5a. 250GB PNY 2.5" SATA SSD
5b. 500GB Toshiba 2.5" SATA Hard Drive
6. 12GB of DDR3-1600MHz RAM (8GB Dual channel, 4GB Single Channel)
7. Some generic Dell office Motherboard
8. a Dell Optiplex 9020 SFF tower case
Is it a good value? I certainly think so.
Is it worth the effort? Oh god no. Just buy a cheap laptop or a PS4/XBONE. This is significantly more work than you need to put in.
Is it fun? Absolutely. It was a great way for me to learn the very basics, and it proves that even under dire circumstances, if you take some time and do some research, you can pretty much cobble together a PC from money you have laying around [of course, assuming you have money laying around, R.I.P Wallet :')]
Thanks for taking time to read my little blog/rant/how-not-to, I kinda just wanted to talk about it because I'm proud of how far this little PC came, and now it's finally complete. I'm not planning any more upgrades, and if I do decide to do some more PC stuff, I'm gonna make my life so much easier and just start from scratch, instead of this weird rinky-dink Frankenstein's monster. If you've done something like this in the past, how did it go for you? What kind of performance did you get? I'll be looking at the comments. Have a good day everybody!
And if anybody asks, yes, I can link the parts I bought!
Obviously 2020 was rough, 2021 was arguably worse, and 2022 isn't shaping up to be much better, so I decided on a hobby project to pass the time and ignore my pending doom: building a computer for as little money as possible. Not just because I thought it would be fun, but also because computers are expensive, and I didn't want to commit to anything that cost more than 400$ - after all, I'm a broke college student.
You might be wondering: how did it go? Not as bad as you might think actually! I'll put the specs at the bottom in a second. Storytime!
At least on my campus, there's this little joint called "University Surplus and Salvage." For the uninitiated, "surplus" usually means that the establishment, be it the military, police, or in this case a school, bought too much of something and now they can't do anything with it. That alone was kind of cool, given that everything is up for grabs at a serious markdown, but the kicker that finally drew me to that place was this: there were computers there for 50 dollars. 50 dollars! A whole self contained computer! That almost sounds too good to be true, right?
Well... kinda. There's a couple of asterisks with that excitement, the most important of which is that these computers have been gutted for parts, namely storage, RAM, and graphics cards, so what remains usually isn't very much; you get the bare minimum to turn it on, and it's usually a Dell so YMMV. That's a bit of a deal breaker for some, but you still get quite a bit of computer for 50 bucks, or in my case 40 since I got it on sale: you get a full desktop CPU, usually Intel although I did spot a Ryzen 3, some kind of placeholder graphics card (more on that in a minute), a single stick of RAM (although I did see a couple with two), a fully connected motherboard and power supply, plus a free power cable for said power supply - y'know, so you can turn it on.
My CPU alone, if you buy it refurbished/new, runs anywhere from 90 bucks to over 200 dollars. So yeah, for 40 bucks, a very solid deal - IF you're willing to put in some labor.
These were my starting specs, for any fellow nerds:
1. an Intel Core i5-4570 (4 core, 4 thread, boosts up to 3.6ish GHz) w/ a generic CPU cooler
2. a Dell OEM Radeon HD 8570 (780 MHz shader, 900MHz memory, 50ish Watt TDP, 1GB DDR3)
3. an unnamed 255W power supply
4. No onboard WiFi (why??)
5. No storage
6. 4GB of DDR3-1600 RAM (single channel)
7. Some generic Dell office Motherboard
8. a Dell Optiplex 9020 SFF tower case
I got to work by first getting a SATA III to USB cable, a 250GB SSD, and a 500GB HDD, and put windows 10 on the SSD for the boot drive. I now know that this is a terrible, terrible way to do this, because afterwards I had to spend 15 minutes removing all of the setup files so that I would stop getting the "setup" boot option and just go straight to windows. But, I was getting somewhere! The computer at least turned on now.
Next, I had to deal with the WiFi problem. I couldn't run an ethernet cable over 30 feet to my basement, so I just used a cheap workaround and bought a PCIe x1 WiFi card on Amazon. It worked solidly OK, although there are better options. But hey, I could install drivers. I'll take it.
With that out of the way, I now had a computer that could do basic things - albeit not very well. So I got 2 sticks of RAM, both of which being 4GB, and gave my rig a significantly more boisterous 12 GB. It technically has 4 DIMM slots, so I could get another stick, but that kind of defeats the purpose of it being "as cheap as humanly possible."
Now we were getting somewhere. The PC was quick to boot, responsive, and could accomplish basic tasks - but I wasn't done. I got Steam, Epic Store, MSI Afterburner, and Furmark all installed. I was going to push this little PC that could to its limits.
I overclocked the HD 8570 to pump out even more power, straining its incredibly whiny fan and my own sanity, getting it from 780/900 MHz clock speeds for shader and memory respectively, to 1000/1000 MHz.
The gains were instant... sort of. It went form a piece of junk to a gold-plated piece of junk. But hey, I got 8 more FPS in Fortnite (~35 average to like ~43, 720p low).
By now I had spent a little over 170 bucks (to include a monitor, keyboard, and some stereo speakers) on the whole thing, and let me be perfectly clear: if you're not trying to do anything fancy, and just watch YouTube, you can stop here. It is perfectly serviceable, and can handle a couple of demanding titles at 720p, 30ish FPS.
But if, like me, you want a no-compromises low-end rig, then you have to find a better GPU - which I did.
The Dell Radeon card I had is a tough little scrapper, and can be overclocked within an inch of its life. I'll give credit where credit is due. With that in mind, even for lighter applications like YouTube, 1 gig of really slow VRAM still isn't very much, no matter how much love you give the shader clock. If you want to do any kind of competitive gaming on it, like CS:GO, Fortnite, Apex Legends, etc., you're gonna need more horsepower (sadly).
Now, it's technically not a card designed for games: it's a part of the Nvidia Quadro series, but at least based on what I could find, it's perfectly serviceable for 720p medium, or even 1080p low at 60+ fps, which is a massive jump in performance.
The card in question is an Nvidia T400: 1450ish MHz boost clock, 5000 MHz memory clock, 30W TDP, 3x MiniDP output, 2GB GDDR6 VRAM, and a REALLY quiet fan, on paper this thing honestly seems really serviceable - and it is. This is the card I went with, and while it's not optimized for games and it can't be overclocked (I'm positive there's a way, but I can't find it), when it's on sale you can get it for about 15 to 40 bucks cheaper than a GT 1030, which performs pretty closely. On top of that, this card is much newer, meaning good drivers will probably be around for a lot longer.
Now don't let the Nvidia sticker fool you: this thing has DLSS, but don't use it. It absolute tanks performance, at least in my experience, and that could stem from a lack of optimization. Additionally, while it's technically an RTX card, it doesn't actually have many (or any) Ray Tracing cores. So... yeah. It's a budget card, it will do budget things. For the price though, you get a respectable amount of performance!
The previous GPU got about 22 FPS on average in a 480p stress test on Furmark, and that's the absolute best I could get it to do, with a major overclock. The T400 got 61 FPS on the same conditions. 61 FPS! That's almost triple! Even with some MXAA enabled, I still got leaps and bounds more performance. It doesn't matter that it's not optimized: this card is an evolutionary step forward from an HD 8570. Additionally, the fan is significantly more quiet, which usually doesn't bug me, but the first time I spooled it up I had to double check and make sure it was actually running because of how quiet it was. Very cool!
And for what it's worth, an HD 8570 runs anywhere from 80 to 90 bucks on Amazon. Seriously, don't buy it. Mine was free and even I have a hard time recommending it.
Now we're here, at the finish line. I have a low spec workstation rig, capable of pumping out some impressive numbers for even some more demanding AAA titles, a modest amount of storage (you can easily get more for not much more money), at a price that's hard to scoff at. Speaking of, what was the cost of all those late nights, labor, and possibly ruined spinal disks from hauling?
If you round up, it's about 330$.
And the final specs, for those who didn't keep track!
1. an Intel Core i5-4570 (4 core, 4 thread, boosts up to 3.6ish GHz) w/ a generic CPU cooler
2. an Nvidia Quadro T400 (1450 MHz shader, 5000 MHz memory, 2GB GDDR6, 30W TDP)
3. an unnamed 255W power supply
4. an Atheros PCIe x1 WiFi card (forgot the model number)
5a. 250GB PNY 2.5" SATA SSD
5b. 500GB Toshiba 2.5" SATA Hard Drive
6. 12GB of DDR3-1600MHz RAM (8GB Dual channel, 4GB Single Channel)
7. Some generic Dell office Motherboard
8. a Dell Optiplex 9020 SFF tower case
Is it a good value? I certainly think so.
Is it worth the effort? Oh god no. Just buy a cheap laptop or a PS4/XBONE. This is significantly more work than you need to put in.
Is it fun? Absolutely. It was a great way for me to learn the very basics, and it proves that even under dire circumstances, if you take some time and do some research, you can pretty much cobble together a PC from money you have laying around [of course, assuming you have money laying around, R.I.P Wallet :')]
Thanks for taking time to read my little blog/rant/how-not-to, I kinda just wanted to talk about it because I'm proud of how far this little PC came, and now it's finally complete. I'm not planning any more upgrades, and if I do decide to do some more PC stuff, I'm gonna make my life so much easier and just start from scratch, instead of this weird rinky-dink Frankenstein's monster. If you've done something like this in the past, how did it go for you? What kind of performance did you get? I'll be looking at the comments. Have a good day everybody!
And if anybody asks, yes, I can link the parts I bought!
