Franksteined gaming PC question

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ILLGotti

New Member
So I am done even trying to play games on Steam with my current computer. Its a quick AMD based machine, but its a laptop and its never going to happen. I've come to terms with needing a desktop and I have assembled a list of components I know will work well together. I am like an uber DIY type of person and I love to save money and piece stuff together. Basically, when shopping for new, I gravitate towards AMD for obvious price reasons.. but I figured i would look at some eBay auctions and I notice quite a lot of what appear to be office workstations and quite a few of them are sporting i5 6500's and some even with i7's (new, these are out of my price range) Also, it appears you end up with a decent hard drive (with an operating system), and some RAM.

Basically what I have churning in my DIY mind is to snag an auctioned i5 or i7, rob it of the processor, the Hard drive (with operating system), and the DVD drive.. and take this stuff over to a new motherboard, mount it in a cheap midtower, with a new power supply and a nice 4gig video card.

Am I way off base here?
 
Ok, there is money to be saved buy second hand parts, some parts are ok to buy second hand, others not so good. Are suggesting buying an entire desktop and salvaging the parts you need?
Also you may have a problem with the operating system as its licence may become invalid after it detects different hardware.
 
Shlouski said:
Ok, there is money to be saved buy second hand parts, some parts are ok to buy second hand, others not so good. Are suggesting buying an entire desktop and salvaging the parts you need?
Also you may have a problem with the operating system as its licence may become invalid after it detects different hardware.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the quick reply. Yes, the idea was to grab a $150 i5 workstation off ebay and hack it apart for the i5 and the hard drive since buying those items new is more than the cost of this whole hypothetically bought ebay computer.

I was not aware of the operating system issue. I have noticed some of these computers have COA's on the side, so I was assuming I could fresh install with the COA code.
 
ILLGotti said:
I was not aware of the operating system issue. I have noticed some of these computers have COA's on the side, so I was assuming I could fresh install with the COA code.
Click to expand...

Is it an OEM or Retail key?

So your telling me its 150 for the workstation, so you could get the HDD, dvd drive and the i5 6500?

I can find new i5 6500 for 172 dollars and a brand new 1TB HDD for 35 dollars, so that's 207 dollars not including the dvd drive.

Cpu's are pretty bulletproof, I have no problem buying second hand, but I personally would not bother with a second hand HDD, for just 35 dollars I would want to buy a new one.

So its up to you if you think worth going second hand for 57 dollars, keeping in mind new hardware will come warranties, second hand most likely won't.
 
To be fair.. its not only an i5 6500. There are others.. I've found a couple with i7's and a couple with better than 6500 i5's. But I totally see your point. I have to assume the COA's are OEM.

I'll probably just build my original plan then.. It will surely be more expensive if I do this, but I'm guessing you'll tell me not to bother with a workstation. lol

AMD FX 8350 6 core @ 3.5 with an EVO 212 cooler
ASUS 970 Pro Gaming MOBO
MSI Radeon RX 480 video card. (its a 4 gig with its own dual fans)
Ripjaws X Series 8GB 240-Pin DDR3. (2X = 16gig)

The only thing I'm unsure about with this plan is whether to get a 250gig SSD for the operating system and a 1TB HDD @7400 for the storage, or just to skip the SSD and keep it all on the HDD. (I've heard the SDD for the operating system makes the boot up really fast)
 
I agree with intel man, avoid AMD right now, they should only be considered for VERY cheap systems, we will see what Zen will brings.
If you buy now, then buy Intel.

SSD's are great, and should greatly improve your experience if you are used to always using HDD's. For years computers have been bottlenecked by the HDD and the SSD is really fixing this.
 
There's also the used route. Not really preferred but you can grab a used LGA2011 (X79) mobo and a Xeon E5-2680 (8-core hyperthreaded @ 3.50ghz turbo) all together off eBay for under US$300. It's not necessarily geared towards gaming, but it's a helluva setup compared to that AMD build you* listed.

*referring to ILLGotti
 
Well then. Maybe the ebay option might be better. I really don't want to wait. I have gaming to do.. even if it's at a lower graphical setting. Maybe the used i5 is actually the better option for now while I wait on a build
 
At the very least you should be waiting for is black friday/cyber monday deals in November. You're really not too far away from that huge sale.
 
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