Budget Gaming Build

Brucehankins

Warning - Long Post Ahead. Read at your own risk
I just finished my budget gaming PC, it doesn't have Solus yet, W11 only, but I'm sure a new drive and Solus will make it's way there soon enough. I was thrilled with the results, so I thought I'd share for anyone else who may be looking to upgrade their current machines or build a sub $600 gaming rig themselves.
Base machine was a refurbished HP Pavilion M01-F0016 which at time of purchase ran around $250. It came decently mid-range equipped with 8gb of ram a Ryzen 5 3400G and 256gb m.2 ssd.
It would run the games I enjoy out of the box on lowest settings, but the experience was still a bit buggy, so you'd really have to love the game to put up with it.
I had an older HP 23es monitor that wasn't being used much already, so no cost there. It has a decent display and runs @ 1080 resolution, so it works perfectly fine for my use case.
I upgraded the ram to 16gb of G.Skill 3400 since Windows is resource hungry as is. Next I swapped out the 180W power supply for an HP 400W PSU. If you aren't familiar with HP products or motherboards, a large portion of them use proprietary connectors from the PSU to the mobo, so swapping in something like a Thermaltake unit isn't really an option. Still, the upgrade was only about $130. Finally, I added a refurbished Asus Dual GTX 1060 OC 3GB for around $157.
I know what you are probably thinking, why buy a 6 year old Pascal video card in 2022? And with only 3gb of VRAM?! Well, again I wanted to keep the entire set up as close to the $500 price point as possible. You know because of inflation, budget, family, the fact that I really and truly didn't need another PC, and because my wife would kill me if I tried to build a $1,500+ true gaming rig. Even though the 1060 is going on 6 years old, the 20 and 30 series cards still run $300-$400+. The 16 series of cards just doesn't perform as well as the 1060 unless you get into 1660 Super territory and those are in the $250+ price bracket. What about AMD? The 4xx and 5xx series cards are in the same price range, forget about 5600 or 5700 cards, and having previously owned and used a 6500XT, I'm really not impressed with the performance of those. Also, when it comes to gaming and tuning, I just prefer NVidia.
So I finally got everything after several months and put it all together yesterday. Fired it up, installed driver's, GeForce Experience, GPU Tweak III, and ran some benchmarks. Furmark held a solid 76 FPS. Now on to Destiny 2 (which isn't the most graphically demanding game, but it's what I play mostly). On integrated graphics with lowest settings, I had VSync set to 30 FPS and it was playable but still somewhat glitchy. 1060 on highest settings, VSync off, and I hit a max of 246 FPS and it fluctuated between 56-85 FPS during graphically intense scenes and loads. Turned VSync on at 60, and it holds a rock solid 60 FPS 99% of the time.
The fans are quiet, I didn't have any screen tearing or visual artifacts, and I haven't used all the VRAM it has yet, but I try to work within the capabilities of the card.
Still more benchmarks to run like Unigine Heaven and Superposition, but I expect those will fall solidly in the "mid-range budget PC" area as well. I'll also be comparing the benchmarks to another HP with a GTX 1060 and I7-7700K as well as a custom PC with a RX 580 and Ryzen 5 2400 (this PC also had the RX 6500XT which I benchmarked, so I can compare that card as well).
All this to say that yes, if you want to game, do graphics work, or just have a solidly decent PC on a tight budget, it's very possible. And don't count out the king of the mid-range GTX 1060, even in 2022! While it's still a major downgrade from something like a RTX 3060, at under half the price, it's still a workhorse and won't let you down, even in the paltry 3gb variant.
Can't wait to play with this machine some more and throw in another drive boot up Solus!

brent

Brucehankins first tell me if you went to that awesome website (forgot name) and typed in your price and they spit out templates?

Brucehankins I wanted to keep the entire set up as close to the $500 price point as possible. You know because of inflation, budget, family, the fact that I really and truly didn't need another PC, and because my wife would kill me

Gauging how severe she might kill you is the real backbone of most my decisions.....😉
Still, you said it's not a gaming rig, maybe a graphics rig? PS--I would have no problems putting 6-year old stuff in a DIY build. I'd probably go older than that on stuff.
Congrats Bruce! Especially on achieving good FPS and quiet fans. PS--you talked about everything but # of USB ports and my own weird favorite: the case. Tell me about the case.

Brucehankins

brent standard HP Pavilion case, nothing special, but it is somewhat pretty and unassuming if I do say so myself. It's a mini atx form factor, so it's nice and compact (almost too compact! anything bigger than that dual 1060 just wouldn't fit the case).
4 USB 3.1 type-a ports up front as well as a headphone jack and card reader. The back has 4 USB 2.0 type-a ports. I do wish it had at least one or two usb-c ports, but I've got a couple c to a adapters, so no big deal.

Brucehankins

brent Sorry, I completely forgot to answer the first question! No, not at all. I went to newegg and built two custom pc's the way I would want them, one on a standard atx form factor and one on a mini atx form factor. By the time I was all said and done, the cheapest build I had was just under $1,800 (even price shopping other places for the components). So then my focus shift to pre-built machines. Well again, prices can quickly escalate here too. So I was like "okay, find a pre-built machine that has the best mid-range to upper mid-range processor I can that is absolutely dirt cheap. Then I'll upgrade it".
So that's what I did. I limited my search to a processor of at least a Ryzen 5 3xxx series or Intel i5-10xxx series since these were both two generations old now. That was my baseline for the processor, and I wanted to stay under a $300 price point to leave room for ram, video card, anything like that I wanted to add.

brent

Brucehankins USB-C is so niche and so now...I had not considered it even thought that port is part of all our lives. My build rig (mostly somebody else built it) has about 6 native 2.0 ports and a bank of four 3.0 ports. I read a lot about DIY builds, but NEVER do I read about USB strategy, which to me is so important----
----do you realize you could fill every port up in a heartbeat between mouse, camera, keys, external, work stick, life stick, speakers, printer, scanner etc etc etc....people don't prepare enough for this imho.
---The SD card reader is a GREAT peripheral port to have----I wish I had it.
I like the mini-ATX profile--its still big but so easy to work around the hardware with your hands. Pretty much like a car under hood with room so you don't bleed.
Long story short, I liked your strategy re: modernity vs. money.

WetGeek

brent I like the mini-ATX profile

So do I. Bigger cases were more important in the days of spinning 3.5" disks with limited capacity. By the time you have two or three of those, fans to keep them cool, a couple of DVD drives, and maybe a front-end accessory panel for things like USB ports, speaker/microphone, card reader, etc., you needed a pretty tall case.

But in these days of large-capacity NVMe disk drives or little 2.5" SSDs, disappearing DVD drives, and so on, there's just no need for all that room anymore.

brent

WetGeek disappearing DVD drives, and so on, there's just no need for all that room anymore.

there will always be room for an optic drive in my life🙂

brent

Brucehankins "okay, find a pre-built machine that has the best mid-range to upper mid-range processor I can that is absolutely dirt cheap. Then I'll upgrade it".

thanks for the extra info, I find it valuable. I don't have the hardware know-how as far as mixing and matching and why...that's cool you dialed in your processor(s) first then built around that.