Perpetual Bargain Budget Box.

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Made in Hurry

Made in Hurry

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  • #41
    Anonymous Chicken said:
    Oh, thats interesting they are HQ'ed in England. They sell those pcspecialist.co.uk boxes ... might be a connection there.

    I scored a IdeaPad Gaming from their outlet stock in the fall, it was a 16" 1920x1200 model with i5-12450H RTX3060, absolutely superior to anything else up to double the price. Then even if you paid that doubled price, you had twice as many pixels to push, so you needed an even beefier GPU.
    Click to expand...
    I added a stick of RAM to it making it 20GB and listed it online for sale, i think i am going to spend time doing this, finding these bargains and try to make some coins off them, but this one is the first test :) If it doesn't work, well it doesn't :)

    Another question for the absolute bargain bin boxes. What Low-profile graphics cards would be a decent (and cheap) choice if one happened to come across these office fleets for cheap?
     
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    mpat

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  • #42
    Anonymous Chicken said:
    They used to have office computers. My i5-4570 box came from them, it was a strangely good deal. But it seems the office machines dried up.
    Click to expand...
    Everyone with more than a handful of computers leases them from Dell or HP or someone like that, and they’re returned at the end of the lease. Desktops probably all go to some central depot for wiping and either resale or recycling. Laptops have a better chance of staying in the country they were used, because the keyboards are different.
     
    Made in Hurry

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  • #43
    I am looking to put together a desktop for soon to be teenager as a decent entry level computer. The family is dirt poor, so they asked me, and i am asking you. Burget is $2-300. Yeah, i know. I haven't promised that i can or want to deliver, but i want to try to help.

    The use case for the system in question:
    - 60-70% office, /general purpose, some programming (beginner-level+ i think at the moment, but i guess this will develop fast)
    -e-sports gaming for the remainder of time. Fortnite, Rocket League and such.

    I really want to ask you. Does anyone here have any experience with the X99 kits from AliExpress etc? I am not familiar with any E-series Xeon's, version v3 or v4 at all, so here i am green. You can get these combos for well under $100 with 16GB memory, cpu and motherboard, and these are usually 12-16 core CPU's with HT. I understand that V4 are DDR4 correctly?

    On the GPU side i am going to have to spend time looking. My spare 1050TI with 2GB won't cut it i imagine?

    Realistically i would have bought a used Dell, but they are unobtanium at such a budget, and import-tax kills eBay/Amazon etc. I am looking for a used case over here and i already have an SSD.
     
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  • #44
    Your 1050Ti seems like a decent shout for the mentioned use-case. Do you need to find a screen?

    An older mega-multicore CPU is not a good fit for this, I don't think. Not enough single threaded speed and too high idle power, plus nothing they will do will benefit from all that horsepower.

    Some sort of ~5yo six core motherboard / CPU / memory bundle from someone upgrading to the new hotness would be my suggestion...
     
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  • #45
    steelghost said:
    Your 1050Ti seems like a decent shout for the mentioned use-case. Do you need to find a screen?

    An older mega-multicore CPU is not a good fit for this, I don't think. Not enough single threaded speed and too high idle power, plus nothing they will do will benefit from all that horsepower.

    Some sort of ~5yo six core motherboard / CPU / memory bundle from someone upgrading to the new hotness would be my suggestion...
    Click to expand...
    I can find a screen at a thrift store here for about $30 which is in good condition, usually older business 1080P from HP etc, so i am covered on that end at least., but I won't be buying anything until i have made a final promise to deliver, if i can and when the system is in my hands.

    I will modify my searches a little and see if i can find anything of what you suggest and see if anything interesting comes up. Prices on both new and used are highly inflated. This searching part i do enjoy so :)
     
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  • #47
    If you don't have enough used parts to assemble a system, maybe check to see if there are any PC recyclers within driving distance? Used is probably going to be your best bet, here.

    If they can give up on the gaming aspect, a mini-PC would probably be pretty good, but you'd probably want to buy a barebones unit and put a good SSD in. The SSDs that come in populated units are pretty garbage, and since they probably can't afford backups, a quality SSD could really matter.

    I think they're going up now, but I recently bought a 512G SK Hynix P31 Gold for about $50. Those are really good units. PCIe3 only, but that's fine. They're still plenty quick and should be quite reliable, as they're TLC drives, rather than QLC.

    You can get mini-PCs that can do some gaming if you get an AMD unit, but those are typically quite a bit more, probably out of budget range.

    edit: even the cheapest ones can usually run strategy-type games okay, but Fortnite is probably not going to run well.
     
    Made in Hurry

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  • #48
    I am looking around, and i have promised that i will try to find something that fits their budget, but with no promise of delivery if i can't. I have the 1050Ti as a spare, so i am thinking that finding an office computer would be the best choice, and they can always add another card later when they have the budget for it. School, study and such is the most important aspect so far.

    I was close though, i did find an IdeaCentre 3 with a 12400 in it for less than $300 but i simply was not fast enough waiting for a confirmation from these people, so my tactic is to simply pay attention to the open-box deals and snag something when they do more such mistakes. I should have just bought it and figured out the rest later, even reselling it online for a profit.

    Motherboard and CPU combos from upgraders are usually running close to the budget limit, and sometimes quite a bit higher for 8th gen and upwards. Ryzen is impossible due to popularity, but i could have solved it if the 1800X was approved for Windows 11.
    Patience is king, i guess.
     
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  • #49
    An update to this thread. I started to do a lot of research for this family, but they ended up buying something on their own. I believe it is a Pentium system of some kind they were talked into buying, and i am kind of glad they did, at least i won't have to be tech support :)

    My next project is going to be a garage PC eventually, the spare i5-2600 system is having issues, probably with the power-supply so i am going to put together the cheapest i can find (or buy) system during spring.
     
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    whm2074

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  • #50
    IceStorm said:
    Off-lease devices will be the order of the day if gaming's not a requirement. Comes with a Windows license, can usually be had for $150-$350, which leaves plenty of room for a monitor. Won't be able to game well, if at all.

    If you're ok with inexpensive Windows licenses, or MAS, then the next step up is something from a NUC-like maker, like Beelink. I just picked up a 5800U/32GB/1TB for $299 (price is now back up to $399). Can't add a dGPU, but has a passable integrated option.

    If you want a full system, sure, you can do it, but you're getting a RX 580 2048SP:

    PCPartPicker Part List

    CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5500 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor ($99.00 @ B&H)
    Motherboard: MSI A520M-A PRO Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($69.99 @ B&H)
    Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($30.99 @ Amazon)
    Storage: TEAMGROUP MP33 512 GB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($35.99 @ Amazon)
    Case: CiT Dark Star ATX Mid Tower Case ($36.11 @ Amazon)
    Power Supply: Asus TUF Gaming B 450 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($47.99 @ Newegg)
    Monitor: ASRock CL25FF 24.5" 1920 x 1080 100 Hz Monitor ($75.98 @ Newegg)
    Custom: Peladn RX 580 2048SP ($88.00)
    Total: $484.05
    Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
    Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-01-14 13:02 EST-0500
    Click to expand...
    No OS.However I surprised that you can get these specs at that price.
     
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  • #51
    I thought i would update this thread since i have thought to replace my garage PC as mentioned which will be overkill if they actually do ship it.

    I seem to have confused my garage PC many times in this forum with it being an i5-2600, but it's a vanilla i5-2400 running Linux Mint, but with integrated graphics and no cheap LP graphics cards to be found, i am retiring it as even browsing can be sluggish using Firefox on Mint.

    I was looking at older Ryzen's online for a while, and while the CPU's can be cheap, the motherboards are not, no matter the chipsets which seems to me that it's still a popular platform even if we talk B450 or A520 on the used market. The lowest priced ones have been $70 on a good day.

    I think i just scored a brand new Lenovo Ideacentre 3 with an i5-12400 with 8GB and a 512SSD for $198 shipped, but i have also encountered that they found their mistake and not shipped something before so fingers crossed. I am also retiring a ChromeBox before winter comes as i am moving away from Google in addition to Microsoft so it will replace that Chromebox later.

    It's on order, and i got confirmation so in 4 days i should have it, which means that i will probably not buy any more hardware for many years. I will stick that 1050TI in it if the PSU can handle it and i might have 16GB of memory in a box i can also use.
     
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    fitten

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  • #52
    Made in Hurry said:
    I thought i would update this thread since i have thought to replace my garage PC as mentioned which will be overkill if they actually do ship it.
    Click to expand...
    I built a Linux box last Christmas with an i3-12100 with 32GB memory, a 1TB SSD, and a 1050 that I had in the closet and it is really fast (I have benchmarks posted in the Kraken thread for Kraken and GeekBench). It only has four cores but for single threaded stuff especially and even for multithreaded stuff it beats my 10700K machine and it's just generally fast. I don't run stuff on it that needs lots of cores, though... just a typical user type machine. I had thought about getting a 12400 when I put it together but I was going for as cheap as I could get for CPU + motherboard with 32GB. I've been very happy with it. That 12400 should be really nice.
     
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  • #53
    It is way overkill of it's intended usage, mostly browsing, reading and writing and music in the background, but for that price i just ordered it without even looking at the specifications.
    It's from a chain store and they have an outlet section that fluctuates wildly in terms of pricing, just last week it was $400, but i noticed that they are really clearing that section out now, so if they don't ship this one, they had a few laptops that would fit the bill also.

    There seems to be a few versions of it, and it is not clear which one i am getting, the one with the 180W PSU or the 260W one as they wrote both specs in the description, i do hope the latter, but i do not expect much quality though. There were some variations on WiFi and the type of SSD as well, which was also not clear, but i think that is why the price was low as someone had no idea what they were doing.
     
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    senan79

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  • #58
    I have the version of that with 10th gen Intel. There seems to be big jump in processor TDP bertween 10th and 12th gen Intel. I think if you have the 12th gen i5, you will get the 260W version. I believe the 180W is for i3 and lower versions.

    Based on the pictures here[PDF], there is no space between the the expansion slots and the psu. In my system with 180W psu, the graphics card expansion was at the lower slot. So I could only use low profile, single slot GPUs. Radeon RX 6400 worked OK. It is probably the highest you may be able to go. All other low profile single slot GPUs are workstation cards with absurdly high price.
     
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  • #59
    senan79 said:
    I have the version of that with 10th gen Intel. There seems to be big jump in processor TDP bertween 10th and 12th gen Intel. I think if you have the 12th gen i5, you will get the 260W version. I believe the 180W is for i3 and lower versions.

    Based on the pictures here[PDF], there is no space between the the expansion slots and the psu. In my system with 180W psu, the graphics card expansion was at the lower slot. So I could only use low profile, single slot GPUs. Radeon RX 6400 worked OK. It is probably the highest you may be able to go. All other low profile single slot GPUs are workstation cards with absurdly high price.
    Click to expand...
    The Intel Arc A380 is available in a low profile setup along with the Arc A310 at around $130-160 here, although i do not know yet if the former needs extra juice or if it is enough with the slot itself, i have not researched it yet as i just ordered the system in a hurry (name checks out). I am not in a hurry though to add graphics to it until i will bring it inside for winter. (non-isolated garage).

    The system has yet to be shipped, so i am not sure i will even receive it as i think they are going to understand their mistake and cancel it. It happened with a laptop i ordered before Christmas.
     
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  • #61
    It took a while to receive it, mail forgot to notify me as it has been waiting since the 18th as a summer-intern handled the mail and i wasn't alone in the queue, but typing from it now.

    I installed Ubuntu on it at the moment, but i will use this system at first to test different distributions.
    I upgraded the memory to 16GB, but no LP graphics is possible, the motherboard has no expansions, just the traces and no slots, but i cannot complain still. It is dead quiet so that was kind of what i hoped with this small form factor.
     
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  • #62
    Made in Hurry said:
    It took a while to receive it, mail forgot to notify me as it has been waiting since the 18th as a summer-intern handled the mail and i wasn't alone in the queue, but typing from it now.

    I installed Ubuntu on it at the moment, but i will use this system at first to test different distributions.
    I upgraded the memory to 16GB, but no LP graphics is possible, the motherboard has no expansions, just the traces and no slots, but i cannot complain still. It is dead quiet so that was kind of what i hoped with this small form factor.
    Click to expand...

    What specs did you end up getting? CPU, etc.
     
    Made in Hurry

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  • #63
    fitten said:
    What specs did you end up getting? CPU, etc.
    Click to expand...
    It came with the i5-12400, 8GB of DDR4-3200 and 512GB NVme. It has internal Wifi, gigabit lan and a 260W PSU. UHD-730 graphics.

    I replaced the memory with a couple of 8GB Vengeance sticks, only 3000Mhz but the timings are better compared to the single-sided stick it came with. It's a quick little bugger for sure. I have yet to hear the fans.
     
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  • #64
    Made in Hurry said:
    It came with the i5-12400, 8GB of DDR4-3200 and 512GB NVme. It has internal Wifi, gigabit lan and a 260W PSU. UHD-730 graphics.

    I replaced the memory with a couple of 8GB Vengeance sticks, only 3000Mhz but the timings are better compared to the single-sided stick it came with. It's a quick little bugger for sure. I have yet to hear the fans.
    Click to expand...

    That should work out to be a nice little machine.
     
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