Proof that a gaming machine doesnt need to be costly if youre brave enough

It's cool that computers don't get obsolete so easy anymore. Back when 2nd gen was new a 12 year old system couldn't even browse the web anymore

I love that era of MSI cards, the heatpipes almost look like a motorcycle exhaust.

I recently put together a budget build with a 4790k and rtx2060 for $270 USD. Just have to keep your eyes out for deals and be willing to negotiate

that Cpu is still kicking in 2023 wow just wow. Sandy bridge really was legendary ❤❤ I still own a 2600 non k PC and it still works to this day and still gets put to use with modern and older games too just fine.😮

Recently took the plunge and brought a few bits off Ali express and I was really surprised. Ok it’s not the branded stuff we know and love but it’s come a long way with the potential to make a really cheap but capable system. Love the content as always ❤

i7-2600 is a great value CPU. Carried my RX 570 system for a few years and now sits in a friend's PC who has a 1050!

This is honestly impressive

legend me who's still rocking a core 2 quad q8400 in 2023 lmao

I like how this is basically the same system LTT tested in their "PLEASE stop buying these" video (but cheaper ofc)

Pretty surprising results! Now I've got somewhat of a good budget to work for, for a friend of mine in the future, thanks a bunch! :D

inspirational and motivational to build such budget build ..Thank u ..and keep up 👍

4th gen intel haswell is going to be the next best budget option due to it still supporting all the modern api.

Love from Spain. Keep up the good work!

Honestly, I just happy these kinds of budget builds are possible again that's just a win.

It was never as easy as these days to build cheap but decent PC. And thanks for keeping this content on KZfaq, i'm bored of 2-3k pc builds all over the internet, i like to see those low-end things that would otherwise end in trash perform so well they can handle most of the modern games.

Reminds me of the $200 PC I built recently as a backup I bought used parts for. i5-4670K on a Z97 ($50), 16GB DDR3 ($15), ASUS STRIX 980 ($60), EVGA 500BR ($15), NZXT S340 ($20), 500GB of SATA SSD storage ($20), and 1TB of HDD storage ($20).

Great video. It actually surprised me how well the PC was able to run those games, very impressive.

I love seeing how far these older and economic builds can be pushed. Nice price for a simple battlestation. 👌

THE LEGENDARY "Hello Everyone and Welcome to Another Videouu, Now.." 🤓🤓.. Well anyways good Content.. These Potato PC etc older stuff videos are always Relaxing for not so anymore young PC enthusiast 🙂

Ooh nice timing! Got a very similar system for sale right now XD tho a bit more luxurious with among others an AIO

I really appreciate you making videos of low budget builds, not all of us can splurge on top of the line stuff like corei9s or 4090, DDR5 RAM 😅

watching this from almost the same build . got the i5 2500k OC still rockin with the gtx 980. Absolutely underrated.

Legit build, nice to see a decent PSU. Performance seems on par with my Q2 2023 £250 build with GTX 970 & i7 4770K. Even though prices have dropped now it would still cost £200 using the Dell Optiplex base unit I opted for, it would still be my go too build.

Hay! I have the white version of that case & in white looks like a Storm Trooper’s PC. Nice cheap build, well done.

if i can make a $200 gaming pc that can play COD and GOW at 60 fps id say that's a win even with used parts that's insane always appreciate your man looking forward to the next one :D

It’s great to see someone with as greater aim as myself 😅😂🤣😉👍

I still have my old 3770K and RX 580 build, and I launch newer games on it for the fun of it. New console ports absolutely devastate it. Tried Remnant 2 on it and it can barely hold 30 stable fps on ALL LOW with FSR PERFORMANCE. But, then again, RX 5700 XT in my main rig can't keep 60 fps on ALL LOW.

Love Sandy Bridge processors! They never seem to give up and just keep performing.

Hurt alittle to see the nv2 being used, considering the fact that the m.2 slot is most likely at best gen3, and also that the nv2 is a pretty bad ssd in quite a few regards, but always love the vids, keep it up yeah?

And now I've gotten a minor review of the case I am currently looking at. I'm a sucker for 5.25" front bays.

Damn dude nice

Thought the Deepcool Smarter was cool back when it came out. Not too flashy and the speaker-like design of the front stood out from the robotic look most cheap cases had going on back then.

I just recently picked up a Cooler Master NR400 to transplant my aging I7 3770 build into and I absolutely love the case. Also just put a GTX 960 in it... looking for the 100% XP compatible (officially) gaming system.

This is pretty decent for a CPU that was almost obsolete a year after launch. AND it is paired with the notorious 3.5 GB GTX 969 1/2 lol This is damn nice! A bit better of an idea FOR THE SAME PRICE would be to go with a xeon 1230 v3 (they are down to $15 usd) and any random dell or hp board from the 4th gen era as most of them ALL support ECC / non ECC and will run it regardless! That's basically an i7 4770 without an iGPU and the motherboards can be picked up for about $20 and that is on the expensive end. Most of them are listed as used but I have received several that are NOS with the cpu socket tray cover still over the socket pins. I built one for 200ish and it runs more titles, games like Last of Us, Cyberpunk and Read dead run with minimal sacrifices. Given most of my hardware was used, except my knockoff china RX 580 2048, mobo and ssd. I would say that is not bad at all. My son wanted to play stupid Garten of banban. . . Anyone ever seen the graphics of that game and compared them to the needed specs? its like needed a RTX 4080 to play friggin minecraft. Whoever optimized that game needs to level up and head over to ubisoft, they would fit right in!

Amazing

i have a similar build for my secondary computer. a 3770k and a 980ti, still a great machine that can play AAA games just fine. and built for relatively cheap with some used hardware.

I got two custom i7-4790 ex office PC's off ebay recently. One was £73 with 8GB RAM and the other was £97 with 16GB RAM and a GTX 750Ti. Both had 240GB SSD's and ASUS B85 motherboards. They only had 300W power supplies but I couldn't complain for the money 😊

the good ol gtx 970. glad to see it still games!

I'm glad I'm not the only person looking for a bargain gaming pc. I recently bought a Dell Optiplex 790 SFF for £10. I've took upon myself to give it a R5 340x 2gb, 12gb ram and 128gb SSD. Just got the GPU today and annoyingly it needs a DVI to HDMI adapter. I'm also upgrading the painfully slow G620 CPU to a more modest i5 2400. Hopefully my daughter will get along with it.

Nice build mate. With the cost of living causing people to reign in spending, this build is ideal. Maybe mention some of the decent older games like Wolfenstein New Order, Quake 4. Still stand up even today. Plenty of the early far cry games. Doom 2016 is still great.

I just bought a XEON E3-1231 v3 with 16GB RAM and combined this with the MSI 970 to build my "ultimate" replacement for my Xbox 360 / Xbox One in my living room. Its such a nice feeling when you get a great build (i paid 140€ for all parts) and it runs so well after these years! Maybe i will upgrade on a better graphics card (1070/1080) if I find a nice deal.

Hehe, that’s almost the same spec as Linus just featured in a video.

I had a build with essentially the same specs it was my first “high power build”

I've been using an i7 3770+rx 570 combo with 16gb ddr3 in an Optiplex 9010 build and its doing just fine with these kind of older games :D

GTX 970 was the card two different friends of mine had paired with an i5-6600K + 16GB DDR4 (one had 2400Mhz, the other had his running with a 3200Mhz kit lol). On my end I was still running my i7-2600K with an RX 580 (+16GB DDR3 1600Mhz). Despite the lower IPC and RAM speed, having the overall better GPU along with hyper-threading still yielded better gaming performance. Haven't talked to the friend who had the 2400Mhz kit in a long time, but the buddy with the 3200Mhz one ended up upgrading to a R7 2700x on an Asus B450 Strix (reused his previous RAM) along with a 1660 Super to replace his 970. This happened to be around the same time that I also went for a R5 2600 on an MSI B450 Tomahawk (upgraded to 16GB DDR4 3200Mhz - kept my RX 580). This was during mid to late 2020, where GPU prices had skyrocketed but everything else wasn't too bad. The guy who got the 1660 Super was able to get it for $289 at the time he bought it. Can't exactly remember when, but it was at Micro Center and an overall fair price given the fact that they began selling for 2-2.5x that amount not too long after. But yeah, the 970 was a solid card but the 3.5GB of total accessible memory really seemed to be the biggest thing holding it back when it came to (most) new and upcoming games at 1080p native res (also before FSR really took off/gained mass adoption)

I'd probably put some more money for kryonaut thermal paste (both GPU and CPU), a budget tower cooler and two p-12 for the case (and an AliExpress 2$ fan filter). Around 50$ more to squeeze that little extra performance or much silenter operation

Oh shit you did do an 1155 build!!

I had a pairing of an i5 2400(?) with this exact graphics card for many years and it could handle basically everything I played at 1080p, 60FPS, no problem, including the classic version of Witcher 3 at the highest settings. I still use this GPU in a newer system, because I can't afford a new GPU. But since I also can't afford a new monitor, it's not as much of a problem. :D

I still have this same old system in my living room, couldn't sell it. Had it for a too long time now

G'day Random, Yeah a i7-3770 allowing PCIe Gen3 would make a difference with a newer GPU especially as now one of the corners cut is PCIe lanes to 8x or even 4x, I have a DeepCool Smarter Case for my Athlon 200GE build, I got mine used for $20AUD (new they were about $45AUD) It's not super fancy but Airflow + Build Quality is good... & it has space for ODD, 4 3.5" HDD & 2.5" SSD/HDD, I use it for watching YT & playing music while I am doing other stuff which the 200GE is Awesome for as it uses so little power.

I still think that these type of systems are a great entry level gaming rig for younger kids who want to enter into PC gaming, arguably if you have any kit lying around like a spare monitor and a half decent keyboard and mouse then this becomes maybe a better option than a console and a system that can be used for other purposes too? I mean I work in IT so maybe I'm more of the exception and I have lots of old bits lying around but my kids started a year or two ago on a similar system. Throwing something like a 1050ti into an old Dell optiplex is still a great option too. There's some great components out there cheap in marketplace/ebay if you shop around and wait... I've recently upgraded my son's rig from an old 4th gen i5 to a 10th gen i3. I managed to pick up a b560 board, i3 10105f and 16Gb DDR4 2400 for £110 ... great little rig and the b560 gets 2x m.2 and usb-c too so pretty modern by all accounts. Luckily I've just re-used the case, psu, storage and gfx card.

Found a used i7 3770 + mobo + 16GB combo for 45€ (40 pound ?). Added a used RX 580 8GB for another 75€, a used 500W corsair for 15€. A new jonsbo case for 50€, a 500GB sata ssd i had still lying around. A new wireless keyboard with an included touchpad new for 20€. All in all a pretty capable replacement for my fire tv stick for the livin room TV

FSR is a really good way to make older budget GPUs last longer. NVIDIA didn't do anything about it, they just added DLSS for newer GPUs.. Good job AMD, from an NVIDIA GPU user (GTX 1660).

Another morning of watching randomgaminginHD

I´ve built an sleeper last week. Ryzen 7 2700x (35 bucks), 16gb DDR4 (20 Bucks), GTX1660ti (80 Bucks), cheap A320 Mainboard (25 Bucks), 500 GB SSD (20 Bucks), used 1 TB HDD (10 Bucks) Used 500 watts 80+ EVGA PSU (10 Bucks)... 200 Bucks in Total and it works absolutely gooooood and plays every game in 1080p. Even Cyberpunk is no problem at 1080p. All other parts (very old office pc case, fans and cooler) i had laying around. Love those cheap builds. Still capable of playing every game on the market, and dirt cheap.

this was my first setup i bought the whole pc off facebook but the guy had no idea the specs and said it was ddr3 and a gtx970 for 70 pounds but it was the i7 2600 but its a not bad pc for the price

I had a i7 2600 until two years ago and loved it just built a new system because the gt 1030 died. If I had to do it again I would get get a motherboard that allowed for faster ram and overclock the i7 a bit

Id say strap a Cooler Master H410R to that thing to improve temps and an exhaust fan and you're set! :)

C'mon CEX give this man a sponsor 😜

I have the MSI Gaming X Limited Edition Green Dragon GTX 970. I have it on display on a little shelf under the main monitor of my gaming pc.

I have an Ivy Bridge based Dell Precision T5610 with Dual Xeons. 8 cores and 16 threads each and 128 GBs of RAM for the price of a cheap laptop (500) here in Canada. Dropped in a ridiculously overbuilt GTX 1070 AMP Extreme from Zotac and it runs great. It doesn't even really slow down when multi tasking.

Budget PC gaming can be fun if you're resourceful, got a i7 6700, 1660 Super with a 512gb nvme unit for around 180$ which is insane!

Also consider old xeons if putting together a system using LGA1155 or LGA1150. They can usually be found cheaper than i7s while still having 4c/8t.

This man has a very beautiful garden

I have that GTX 970. Overclocks like a champ

Cool

It's not like the build is bad, but at least in Germany, UK and US there should be a lot of phased out office PCs from 2nd-4th gen and slowly 6-8th gen (with the downside of more expensive upgrades for CPU/RAM). GPU wise, I'd suggest going with RX400/500 or GTX10 series and up unless it's a low budget or retro build. As for Ram, it depends on supply and budget, but I'd say over 150€ you want to aim for 32gb or at least have 16+free slots, because it feels like plenty modern games come with memory leaks and/or simply awful optimisation. Generally, I feel like a lot of recent game requirements come from lack of optimisation rather than huge upgrades over previous generations.

for about the same money I got a china mobo with an xeon E5-2680 v4 (same price for my cpu as yours), that has 35mb L3 cache, spent a bit more on larger storage and 32gb memory, then got a great deal on an overheating gtx1080 (so also same price as your 970), new thermalpaste and a slight undervolting, just finished The last of us Part 1 in 1440p at high settings (FSR quality setting) and 60fps :)

I’m glad I picked up the platform/case/psu for 100 and the gpu for 75 I ended up with the same system but with the 2600k and 24g ddr3 2133

I just picked up a pc with a gtx 980 and an i7-4790k for 110 pounds which i think is a crazy deal

Not bad at all. Personally I would go for a board that supports 4 RAM slots (so not the cheap AliExpress board!) and more SATA slots. DVD drives aren't that expensive either, and that cheap case has the room for one. Otherwise, that's pretty much what I'd do, and yeah 1TB SSDs are really cheap nowadays! Though maybe I'd add a hard drive as well for secondary storage.

I just bought 5 G325803 pentiums for some HWBOT submissions. I fully believe paired with a 1650 or even 3050 would be decent for things like older games.

Used a 2500k in my rig from 2012 to 2020 coupled with an HD 6870 first then a GTX 570, HD 7950 and finally an RX 580. 2500/2600k best CPUs ever.

Quite nice. Today, I'd probably recommend a Ryzen 2600 to be compatible with Win11, as they are very cheap. 2400/2666 RAM is also very cheap on CeX. The case is probably worth spending or saving some extra 15 quid for one with bottom mount PSU. These types of cases can struggle with modern GPUs.

I built one with 24 gigs of 2133 ddr3 and a 2600k. With the 970 the 2600k I keep it to 900p but get a great fps boost like red dead with about the same settings I sit about 10-15 frames higher avg

Can you do a video on getting second hand monitors or keyboards you just do internal pc parts

I have the exact same configuration with an i7 3770, except the GPU (still using the iGPU). I will probably fit an RTX 4060 for the time being, then upgrade to Ryzen 3 7X/8X next year.

How much do used Series Ss go for in the UK? You can easily get one for $200 in the US and it's not difficult to find them for less than that as well. Probably around the $180 mark or so.

I have a first gen i7 with a r7 240 4 gb and I can play some games with it 😁

Xeon E3-1240 V2 would be a good CPU option too, you can pick them up for about £15, with that you get hyperthreading and i7 3770 performance. Pairs very nicely with an RX 5700 xt.

Main concern would be Windows support with such an old system. But with how gaming on Linux has improved it can be working for most people. Presumably it will continue to be better as time goes by, now that Windows 10 is still supported for bit more than 2 years.

Take a look at the 6700, it may be slightly more exoensive but it actually enables a completely different level of gaming to those old sandy bridge chips.

I've been using my i7 4790k paired with a pallit 2070 for 4 years now. Built it on a massive budget and it handles 4k at 60fps on lots of titles, even cyberpunk with dlss tweaking. I bet a lot of you put there are the same as me, upgrade the mobo and CPU. Wait a bit upgrade the GPU. Repeat and rinse. Next I'm gonna do the mobo with maybe an 9900k and switch over to ddr4. Quick change over of GPU, m.2 and 2tb HDD and I'll be good for another few years again.

0:19 "Cableless Nvme Hard Drive" - RGinHD 2023 😂🤟

Just sold a xeon e3 1270 v2 chip 4c 8t, as good as a 3770 or 4770, paired it with a gtx 1060 6gig and 16gigs ram, a 256ssd and a 4tb i slammed 72 good games on it and left new owner about 1tb of free space, guy n his son bought it, 410$ i charged him, wanted 450, n could have got that but this guy wanted for his kid and was willing to drive an hour to me so instead of 425 I told him 410 and keep the 15$ for gas, his kid was happy as can be with all the games he got for free :) ended up getting me an asus ally after that and I love it, got 32 good games on it :)

This budget PC case have better air circulation than majority of "gaming" PCs. Overall, quite good performance.

Remember to clean up the old windows updates from time to time to save SSD space. I doubt anyone just decides to go back 50 critical updates one day and would rather free up a few gigs of storage those updates take up.

you can build a am4 system for a similar price with parts from amazon 4500 cpu is 65 quid now its insane for a 6 core cpu

im impressed that cyberpunk even ran, but to get 1% lows of 30 isnt that bad!

I was really considering on using silent pc case fans for my pc but then realized that I use an electric fan for my room which is loud and would defeat the purpose of having a silent pc anyways so I went with generic pc case fans that costs 1usd each😂

@RandomGaminginHD you ever think of doing a Athlon 860k Revisit in 2023 if you still have that hardware?

$27 - EVGA P55 motherboard, socket 1156 $6 - Xeon X3450 $7 - Captain Power 520w PSU $20 -32GB of DDR3 1600Mhz $0 - Open Air Case (A cardboard box) $7 - 1TB HDD $30 - 500GB SSD $30 - The best cooler you can find, either cheap air or used liquid $80 - The best GPU you can find $207, and you can get 4c/8t at 4.0GHz, 32GB of ram, a 580 8gb or even better, and SSD storage that's not abysmal

As someone who built and ran a 2600k system for 12 years, only do this now if you can do it for under $200. Even then you'll be better off with an new i3 12100 build. A 2600k and a gtx 1070 ran ok but the 1% low happened quite a lot and they WILL ruin games.

Solitaire probably... ;-)

I have a similar budget build here. I7 2600K + RX 480 8GB.

I still have a Dell Inspiron 620 that I upgraded to an E3-1245, 16GB of RAM, and a 250GB SSD.... along with a 550w XFX Power Supply. Maybe I should look at getting it something like a GTX 1060 6GB.

i7 3770 and the gtx 970 is a superbly balanced system. The 3770 is put down as just a die shrink but in my experience it's way better than the 2600/2700

1:37 Now I know why those SH video cards are scratched.

IIRC the sandy bridge only supports PCIe gen 2, not too concerning for the GPU but it may be so for the nvme SSD, would love to see an upgrade video to an Ivy bridge where PCIe gen 3 is supported