Cheap Gaming Computer

[unzippy]

No to all three?

[Mito Man]

Well I tried to upgrade my ancient Alienware X51 and failed. It’s got a tiny case and a non upgradeable 330 watt external power brick. Looking online some people had fitted an Nvidia 1060 founders edition successfully but that’s no longer available so I bought an EVGA 1060 as it’s the next most compact, however it’s overclocked and combined with the very old i7 processor must use just enough to kill the PC I did anticipate this and order it direct from Amazon so I wouldn’t feel too bad about returning it...
Picture to show the tight packaging with the card not installed.

I reckon it would have throttled back from all the heat if it ever ran long enough anyway.

Guess I’ll have to get a new system and I can get a proper case this time round as I’m not frequently having to travel with my PC any longer.

[Richard]

That’s the problem with Alienware, inside there’s loads of propriety Dell stuff. Weird Mother Boards, weird PSUs etc

[Mito Man]

Yeah, that and the fact they cost over 100% more than the value of the components inside of them means I won’t bother with another. They used to be reasonably priced once you found the obligatory discount code.
Overclockers don’t seem much better... Will look at smaller PC building firms to see what they’re like.

[tim]

Try Chillblast

I bought a monster spec PC from them about 6 years ago that's still going well.

[Richard]

Now probably is a pretty good time to buy

RAM prices are getting better

People aren’t buying GPUs for mining AND there’s the new RTX cards out, meaning the 10** series are a bit cheaper as well

[Mito Man]

Must. Resist. Urge. To turn PC case into a disco ball. Must also think with my head, it’s easy to keep adding the next option as it’s only £40 more and end up with £silly.

[integrale_evo]

I stuck a zotac 1060 6gb mini in my step sons, originally chosen as I was going to stuff it into the old dell as a temporary measure until I had build a whole system.

No issues with temps even overclocked. As long as there's some sort of flow into the case it'll be fine.

The 10 series are about as efficient for the power as you can get, amd equivalents seem to chew a lot more. 1050ti is about the quickest you'll get without needing its own power supply.

I recently stuck my own system into a new case and surprised how far something as simple as a case has moved on in the ten years or so since I built the last one. Separate areas for power supply, cable runs, hidden drives etc means a really nice clean interior.

If you're not worried about ultimate power and upgrade ability then you could use an itx motherboard and smaller case instead of having to go to an atx mid tower.

[Mito Man]

The mid sized towers are a reasonable size so I’m fine with that, and I can’t really see what the more expensive cases offer aside from more LEDs and transformers styling - I’d prefer something simple.

[integrale_evo]

I bought this

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre ... 3062158315

Dust filters on the front and base, takes 2x140mm front fans, 1 120mm rear fan, will take a 240mm radiator in front or on top. Top has swappable solid or mesh tops if you want to stick fans or a radiator in. Sides and front have sound deadening.

I really didn't want a glass side panel or something which looks like an alien or child's toy.

It does the job fine, and I wanted something which will take a DVD drive as I still like to own physical media.

[integrale_evo]

The innards.

Pretty pleased with it. Would look cleaner without a DVD drive, and I've got the hard drive on a suspended isolated mount rather than hidden away in a caddy under the shroud at the bottom.

Only lights are the logo on the graphics card which glows white.

Tempted to change the cooler to one of the larger arctic coolers which will turn the fan off at idle, and wish I'd got a bigger graphics card which would do the same.

As it is it's still miles quieter than my PS3 super slim or Xbox 360. During the day you can walk into the room and not know it's on unless you see the power led.

Obviously makes a bit of noise under load with everything spinning away, but is a nice smooth airflow whoosh.

[Richard]

I can’t see any RGB...

[Mito Man]

Well I’ve ordered a PC from “Punch”. No never heard of them either but they’ve got good reviews and worked out quite a bit cheaper than the other builders.

[integrale_evo]

A lot of the time it really doesn't matter. It's pretty hard to put a computer together wrong.

Quite often you're better off going for someone smaller who just bolts off the shelf components together rather than some of the bigger players who might use a bespoke form factor or power supply making future changes or upgrades a nightmare.

At worst it might need a few bios tweaks and have a load of bloatware pre installed. Easy enough to bung a fresh windows install on.

[Mito Man]

It's all off the shelf components and I've asked for a load of fans to be put in a rather small 'mid' size case as I want to upgrade to a 2080 once they're more reasonably priced in a few years. Luckily I don't have to think about the logistics of fitting it all together

[RobYob]

Packing components into a small case, water cooling is what you want both for CPU and GPU IMHO.

I fitted a small AIO CPU cooling system (from OCUK) to my mini ITX case and it' great, very quiet (apart from the odd gurgle on startup) and temps are fine for everything I do.

My GPU could really do with water cooling as well but it's not common enough yet to be as cheap as CPU units.

[Mito Man]

Here’s the breakdown
Case: Phanteks Eclipse P300 Black Tempered Glass ATX Case
CPU: Intel Core i7-9700K 3.6Ghz 8 Core CPU, 8 Thread, 4.9GHz Turbo
Motherboard: MSI Z390-A Pro ATX Motherboard with USB Type-C
Graphics Card: NVidia GeForce GTX 1070 8GB GPU
Memory: 16GB DDR4 3000MHz ADATA XPG Flame Memory (2x8GB)
Primary Storage Drive: 512GB ADATA SX8200 PRO M.2 NVMe (3500MB/R, 2300MB/W)
Secondary Storage Drive: Seagate FireCuda 1TB SSHD 3.5″ Hybrid Hard Drive
CPU Cooling: Cooler Master MasterLiquid Lite 240 Processor Liquid Cooler
PSU: Corsair VS650 650 Watt 80 Plus® ATX Black PSU
WiFi: Gigabyte CNVi Wireless 802.11AC 1733Mbps Dual Band Wi-Fi / Bluetooth 5
Additional PCIe Card: 2 x USB 3.0 PCI slot bracket
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64 Bit
Additional Chassis Cooling Fans: 2 x Akasa Vegas R7 120mm RGB LED Cooling Fans

Pretty much midrange everything.

[integrale_evo]

I had considered water cooling but discounted it for a few reasons. Mainly because it's not something I've ever used before and was unsure of how much noise they make. By design there will be more moving parts as they need a pump plus fans. Plus issues mounting thick radiators, the top is the logical place, but I'd rather keep the top closed to stop dust ingress when not in use and keep it quieter when in use. Stick it in the front and you pre warm the air for everything else.

Do aios have enough heat capacity to cool by convection alone at idle, just running the pump?

[RobYob]

I had considered water cooling but discounted it for a few reasons. Mainly because it's not something I've ever used before and was unsure of how much noise they make. By design there will be more moving parts as they need a pump plus fans. Plus issues mounting thick radiators, the top is the logical place, but I'd rather keep the top closed to stop dust ingress when not in use and keep it quieter when in use. Stick it in the front and you pre warm the air for everything else.

Do aios have enough heat capacity to cool by convection alone at idle, just running the pump?

I mounted the radiator for mine on the rear, although in Xsection my case is nearly square so I had some more leeway to the side of the Mobo than an ordinary case might have. So the Radiator is getting "hot" exhaust air from all the other components but as the GPU has its own exhaust that's not significant. It's very quiet, pump and fan are barely ticking over, I notice the fans on my GPU far more.

[Mito Man]

Well I got my computer a few days ago and a 4k Asus monitor.
I had problems connecting via DisplayPort - just got a no signal message and after some searching it seems it’s a common Asus problem which requires unplugging it from the wall for a few minutes. Odd.

I have no complaints about the PC though, it’s been put together well and looks neat and tidy. I used a small builder which meant they have to order parts in so it took a bit longer, but on the plus side I got a few free upgrades as they couldn’t get some of my items quickly enough.


You could say it looks fan-tastic


But once in place it looks like a boring PC which is what I was going for. Plus this case fits in my desk by 1cm.


One final thing I did was buy a RJ45 crimp tool and change the Ethernet cable from cat5 to cat5e hoping to get true gigabit internet but it didn’t make much difference .

Good enough for Pornhub.

Finally the only thing I can hear are the graphics cards fans, otherwise it’s silent. Not that silence matters much here - I live above 6 restaurants between a train station and heliport under the Heathrow flightpath beside a busy road