Budget Rig for $500 US Ish?

Gothch1ck

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So my system specs should be listed, but, I want to know - is it possible to build a Budget Rig today with only about $500?

Reason is... let's face it, my rigs nearly 6 Years old. It's put up a good fight, but the world is pushing me away from my desk, so I plan to sell it.

I want to know just how it stacks up to budget rigs though, if a $500 PC can outperform my PC, then I have no right asking for $500 for it, ya know?

So.... think it's possible? I am crazy out of date with tech. I didn't even know DDR4 came out, or even USB3.0 becoming mainstream.

Oh and were gonna leave the HAF 932 out of this, so "caseless" PC budget rig.
 
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You can update what you already have by just getting a better video card and an SSD hard drive You should be able to easily run that 920 @ 3.2 - 3.4 or even higher with a cpu better cooler. If you want USB 3.0, they do make pcie add on cards. DDR4 is very pricey and will be for a while until it becomes more popular
For My i7 920, I added a sata III pcie card for my SSD drive, my old & tired X58 board only provided sata II
 
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@Joe C - that... wasn't the issue. I am not trying to upgrade, I am trying to find value.

@PP Mguire - basically to make the best PC one can for around the $500 marker (no case, no moni, no keyboard/mouse etc, just case guts) To see if an = or better build could be done.

I plan to sell this one is why. Personal reasons. I want to ask for what the parts cost "today" as if they were buying them to build this rig, but I want to weigh that option against current tech, hence the "budget rig" setting.

Explaination: My PC Guts cost around $500 to replace, this is Motherboard, CPU, RAM, HDD, GPU and PSU. IF a "budget rig" could be made for $500, and perform just as well , if not better, I won't ask for $500 for it.

Why?
Because it's almost 6 years old of near constant-on use and newer tech is available with similar performance, at similar price to replace, but would be new with warranties.

Right now this system plays the Alpha Release of H1Z1 and Landmark, although on lower/med settings, so I am trying to see if a budget rig can do roughly the same.


We can look at it another way if you want.
What GPU would be an upgrade, keeping in mind these few things:
1) It has to be supported by the 2.0x16 slot motherboard (Asus P6T Deluxe)
2) It cannot cost more than $100
3) It has to have DirectX 11 or better
4) It must benchmark = or > the current HD4890 XXX edition
 
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500 bucks would be a better choice to spend on your current rig honestly. You could put a GTX 970 in there, a 2GB stick of RAM and maybe a 120GB SSD and call it a day. Reason being, resale value isn't going to be much on your parts. Your PSU could still last you another 5 years or 2 builds depending on what you do easy, your HDD is fine for a data drive, RAM perfectly fine for modern builds except maybe 2 more GB, but the CPU/motherboard and GPU aren't worth much. I'd give 150 tops for the CPU and motherboard. 150 would get you a Pentium G3258, which while faster in certain circumstances wouldn't be much of an "upgrade" in other areas that will take advantage of more cores.

Now, IF you could get say 400 bucks total for your rig the way it sits minus case and add 500 to that you could build a better rig than you have now easy in terms of CPU/ect performance but if you want to game the wise option would be to use that 500 on what I said earlier.
 
For the last time, I am not "Upgrading" this rig.

I have already priced each part based on current sales, eBay and more to get average values.

I am SELLING this system. (I will be jobless, homeless and on the road soon) I just want to be fair to the friend I am selling it to.

If I sell him this rig for $500, and it turns out he could have built better for $500 I would feel guilty.

Can we please drop the "upgrade your system instead" option? I am trying to use my current setup as a reference point to see if a Budget Rig can be built for him cheaper.

For those interested, these are the values I've found:
CPU: $50
GPU: $65
RAM: $67
PSU: $50
HDD: $44
Mobo:$180 *having a hard time finding 1366 boards to compare with
 
I think $500 is fair. In fact I know places that would probably sell that for more than $500. I see computers with i3's and Core 2 DUO's sell for close that. Like the $250-$400 range, so my guess is that if you have an i7 with all the other stuff you mentioned in it, it should be worth at least $500. He may be able to get parts somewhere cheaper, but it would take lot's of research and time and then he'd have to put it together (which I admit, I enjoy doing) but if he is looking for a decent rig for a decent price which is already assembled then I'd say don't feel bad.
 
It takes a 10 minute Youtube video to put it together.

The reason you see old PCs going for that is the same discussion we had with Spud about selling XP computers today. People do it because they can get away with it. The difference here is he doesn't want to rip off his friend which is why I said it's up to him. The 490 dollar build I linked, or his build for 500.
 
TY very much for the details guys. I can now make a better detailed discussion with him.

^.^

*EDIT*

Well 1 long phone conversation later and he said "no deal". Sooo..

I guess I'll do some upgrading eh?

Quickly referencing concerns:
Will GPUs sporting DX11.2 upgrade to DX12?
Will GPU PCIe3.0 work in a 2.0 slot?

It's been too many years and I am way out of date.

I did find some 6GB more ram for around $50, same voltage, speed, slightly different timings (mine are 7 7 7 24, cas 7 which... are pretty dam fantastic apparently)
 
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