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Want to build budget rig for younger sister

z1ggy

z1ggy

Lifer
Looking to give my 21yo sister a gift this year for her Bday and I want to replace her aging PC. She's got an A10-6700 using on board graphics, an old spindle hard drive and 8gb RAM. She does mild gaming, nothing on uber high settings like I do. Performance isn't huuuugely important, but I do want it to run quiet and maybe toss in some high quality LED fans for her so it looks cool.


1. What YOUR PC will be used for. That means what types of tasks you'll be performing. Games like Star Dew Valley, Minecraft and other basic PC use

2. What YOUR budget is. A price range is acceptable as long as it's not more than a 20% spread $450 (Can be stretched to like $475 or something)

3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from. USA

4. IF you're buying parts OUTSIDE the US, please post a link to the vendor you'll be buying from. NA
We can't be expected to scour the internet on your behalf, chasing down deals in your specific country... Again, help us, help YOU.

5. IF YOU have a brand preference. That means, are you an Intel-Fanboy, AMD-Fanboy, ATI-Fanboy, nVidia-Fanboy, Seagate-Fanboy, WD-Fanboy, etc. NA

6. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are. Only reuse monitors and peripherals

7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds. NO OC

8. What resolution, not monitor size, will you be using? 1080p

9. WHEN do you plan to build it? Within the next 2 weeks
Note that it is usually not cost or time effective to choose your build more than a month before you actually plan to be using it.

10. Do you need to purchase any software to go with the system, such as Windows or Blu Ray playback software? Yes Win10 will be needed.
 
z1ggy said:
Thanks!

Is Ryzen 5 much better than 3? I had originally started making my own list of parts and found the Ryzen 3 for $88 @ Walmart.
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The Ryzen 5 2400 is sort of an oddball with pricing and placement as the Ryzen 5 2600 is not much more, and really only worth getting if you are not planning on using a video card.

The 2200 has 4 cores/4 threads while the 2400 has 4 cores/8 threads and a larger iGPU. Keep in mind however that both APUs will use 2GB of memory for graphics leaving 6GB(if you have 8GB) for the system.

Either one will be faster then the A10-6700 your sister is gaming with, especially paired with an SSD.
 
Yeahhhh it's lame but she's on Win10 now and I don't see her converting to an open source kind of lifestyle so... I'll have to deal.

Most likely going to go with your first build. She can always upgrade parts later, or I can buy her stuff for Xmas down the road.
 
z1ggy said:
Yeahhhh it's lame but she's on Win10 now and I don't see her converting to an open source kind of lifestyle so... I'll have to deal.

Most likely going to go with your first build. She can always upgrade parts later, or I can buy her stuff for Xmas down the road.
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I take it you will be installing Windows 10 for her, or will she be doing that herself?
 
I will do it. Plan is to buy all the parts, ship them to me, build it, install and set up windows, then ship it to her so all she needs to do is plug in her monitor and power and away she goes.
 
z1ggy said:
ok I switched it out for 2x4gb of ddr4-3000 Patriot Viper 4, price only went up a few bucks.
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I should add that the SSD in your build is rather small and 500GB ones are not that much more. Even e-sports and light gaming titles now take a great deal of space and I can assume that she is doing other stuff with her system as well?
 
If you care about the aesthetics, you can get a case with tempered glass for $10 more than the one you've currently selected. A really good gold rated PSU with 10 year warranty is $20 more. That might be worthwhile if this is ever getting turned into a real gaming rig with 6-8 core ryzen and a discrete GPU.
 
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811353157&Description=DIYPC RGB&cm_re=DIYPC_RGB-_-11-353-157-_-Product

If you like this case, I have a custom pre-built rig in it, with an MSI B350 Bazooka mobo, an Athlon 200GE APU (Zen/Vega-based, basically half of a 2400G), 2x4GB DDR4-2667 Corsair, and an SSD, I think a 240GB. (Oh yeah, a 256GB Patriot Scorch NVMe x2 drive.) Would let that whole thing go for what you're looking to spend, PM me if interested.

See my thread in Hot Deals for links to parts, if you want to replicate that build and build it yourself. It OCs to 3.80Ghz.
 
whm1974 said:
I should add that the SSD in your build is rather small and 500GB ones are not that much more. Even e-sports and light gaming titles now take a great deal of space and I can assume that she is doing other stuff with her system as well?
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Yes 240 isn't large but I think the case I selected has room for 1 more internal 2.5'' slot, so she can add another larger drive later if she wants. I need to ask if she has tons of music or not... I know for a while I was putting all my movies and music an a 2TB external and then all my games on the SSD.

Campy said:
If you care about the aesthetics, you can get a case with tempered glass for $10 more than the one you've currently selected. A really good gold rated PSU with 10 year warranty is $20 more. That might be worthwhile if this is ever getting turned into a real gaming rig with 6-8 core ryzen and a discrete GPU.
Click to expand...
The case I picked has a clear side panel, although not sure if it's tempered glass or not.

She's currently a 21yo college student who as of yesterday told me she's planning on going to grad school, so... She's going to be a "poor" college kid for another 3-4 years minimum. I don't see her throwing down the required $$ to turn this thing in to a full fledged gaming rig. She doesn't really do high scale FPS although I do know she's been into Skyrim in the past.

I'm just trying to get her something half way decent that won't break my wallet and is going to be a noticeable improvement for her, that leaves her room to upgrade a little bit if she wanted.
 
z1ggy said:
The case I picked has a clear side panel, although not sure if it's tempered glass or not.
Click to expand...

It's not glass. Go to the case section of pcpartpicker and search for "tg" and "glass". Between the two you should see most of what's available of cheap cases with tempered glass. This looks like a good deal.
 
Ok so it turns out she has a lot of school work and related stuff on this PC - Is there a way to just upgrade her mobo & CPU and keep the hardrive/os/files unmodified? At the end of the day, I just want her laggy POS computer to run smoothly and allow her to game with friends comfortably.

As much as I want to build her a sweet little rig with flashy lights, I won't have the time to migrate all her files and reinstall software for school, etc.
 
z1ggy said:
Ok so it turns out she has a lot of school work and related stuff on this PC - Is there a way to just upgrade her mobo & CPU and keep the hardrive/os/files unmodified? At the end of the day, I just want her laggy POS computer to run smoothly and allow her to game with friends comfortably.

As much as I want to build her a sweet little rig with flashy lights, I won't have the time to migrate all her files and reinstall software for school, etc.
Click to expand...
Just install the OS and let her do all of the rest.
 
whm1974 said:
Just install the OS and let her do all of the rest.
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I always had all my random files other than games and OS on an external so I haven't had to do this in a while (forget) but can I plug her current HD into the mobo so she can at least access stuff or will that cause problems because that HD currently has her old OS on it?

Otherwise that's the "best" way to get all her current documents into the new pc? I'll have to probably give her some mild instruction.
 
z1ggy said:
I always had all my random files other than games and OS on an external so I haven't had to do this in a while (forget) but can I plug her current HD into the mobo so she can at least access stuff or will that cause problems because that HD currently has her old OS on it?

Otherwise that's the "best" way to get all her current documents into the new pc? I'll have to probably give her some mild instruction.
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The last time I had to move files over to a new system, I just copied them to an external HDD, then moved them over to the new rig after I installed new versions of both Windows and Linux Mint along with the programs I was using.

I was running XP/Linux on the old machine so it was time for me to upgrade everything anyway.
 
Ok so I may need to factor in the cost of a small external drive so she can move her stuff over, pretty much like I used to do.
 
If it's just documents then 32GB usb sticks are handy. A free way is to install drop box on both machines, put the files into the dropbox folder and sync them.
 
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