$20 Flea Market Gaming PC

[pellui]

I found this PC, it looks nice. Subtance abusers were all over it. One was stoked to get it and was dusting it thoroughly. It was reserved for two people. I was the third one in line to get it, but hey, I guess you can get a lot of other things for 15€ too because I ended up getting it... Come to think of it, one of these substance abusers tried to sell me his JBL earphones for 15€. Maybe he just couldn't come up with 15€? This PC sure looks nice, modern. I have no idea whether or not it is any good or not, but few indicators suggest it could be fine:

-sleek design, custom build:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/977katri8bci3qg/IMG_20180914_121233672.jpg?dl=0

(inside photos at the end of this post)

-1tb hard drive + ssd
-usb3.0
-at least couple HDMI, whole bunch of DVI ports
-cooling system seems sophisticated

The only thing that to me suggest we're not talking about anything too great is that it has some weird taiwanese gpu: powercolor or something like that.

The reason why I can't check the specs easily is that it is missing RAM, thats obvious to me. But I am a total n000b with 3 zeros. I know cpu chip is under everything on the motherboard so you can't really see it without removing all components. My plan is to just stick some RAM in to find out whether or not that's all that's missing...

GPU is there, so is HD, so is power unit... Here's some photos. Could you guys point out to me if there's some other major component missing. Again, I am a total noob.

So anyway, currently it turns on, but doesn't boot because ram is a prerequisite for even bios to start. I'm going to be updating here with progress etc. that is if I get some replies.
Next Im going to look into RAM and whether or not I need to get a specific type of RAM that is supported by this motherboard (yes, complete n000b). With RAM I will find out whether or not this thing works or if something else is missing... If this thing is a working package I will obv. look into getting proper 2x 4gb or even more ram for this.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/esseud8n2w9405d/IMG_20180914_121241672.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/amgld9df5u3vucr/IMG_20180914_121247940.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/roawg1ct7pyndgw/IMG_20180914_130010476.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mp2ahh9k6me9w22/IMG_20180914_130040136.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qs2255apfkh3oyf/IMG_20180914_130050338.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/49pagcs4wunange/IMG_20180914_130054600.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/l4h0ze4xwzda4qa/IMG_20180914_130103250.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tw7ik1w6daq2ddg/IMG_20180914_130110849.jpg?dl=0

 

[pellui]

I tried 4gb alone... doesnt work...
i guess it is damaged, as photo also suggests...
any thoughts on the photo?

 

[pellui]

prolly final post: i had left "will buy 16 gigs of ddr3 ram" announcement on tori.fi, and some woman contacted me and sent me exactly what i was looking for for 20€ incl. shipping (crazy, I know, cos shipping is 2.2€). Anyway, I put the sticks in and red led dram light flashes, but then I tried again, putting them in one by one and success! all work perfectly, zcpu says "u got 16g gigs ram monica" so, currently we're at 35€ total cost, and its gonna go down a bit if someone buys these 2x2gb ddram3 sticks from me... i will try to sell them for total of 10€. chances are no-one wants 2 gig ram sticks tho.

 

[The Paladin]

wow you nailed 16GBV of DDR3 for 20 euro.... they are work 80$ easy on ebay

 

[pellui]

she was middle aged woman, so, not too tech savvy, she bent a cardstock sheet in half and taped it in shut after throwing the bare sticks in there (no antistatic bags or any kind of cushioning), but somehow these sticks survived. Not best benchmarks tho. Those 4 gigs of ram performed exceptionally good, and these 16 gigs performed exceptionally bad... here's a userbenchmarkscore screencap... I am a bit of a noob, so, does this result actually mean what i think... that those 4 gigs of ram were around as good as these 16 gigs of ram??? that the upgrade I made gave me a 0.1 percent unit ram improvement, and not 400% ram improvement that I expected to get from quadrupling the ram?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fljrt41u0u2g2hx/Screenshot_5.jpg?dl=0

 

[The Paladin]

I wonder, after putting the 1600 mhz ram into your system did you go to bios and enable xmp ? because if your did not it would be running at 1333mhz and that is why its matching your other ram.

but regarding your performance improvement from 1333 to 1600, the 400% improvement is not realistic. 1600 mhz over 1333mhz is only a 17% increase of speed. having 4x4gb over 2x2gb will mean that you system (if your ram is running properly in dual channel mode) can run 2x dual mode ram pairs.

I expect your speed improvement will comes in the form of what is the amount of ram your system can utilise as direct access memory (2GB vs 16GB) versus utilisation of hard drive pagefile memory.
if I was you I would per4form a benchmark with PASSMARK performance test software : https://www.passmark.com/products/pt.htm
2 runs one with 2x2GB and one with your 2x8GB ram... and see the overall score and score for ram differences.

I would say about... 15-20% improvement in those scores

 

[pellui]

Hi, I'll go to bios and enable xmp tomorrow, thanks for telling me about that, whatever it means.

I was testing this PC out yesterday and I opened dozens and dozens of tabs and the chrome kept working perfectly. I was surprised to see how well this pc performs. I guess 16 vs 8gb of ram makes a big difference (comparing to my laptop)...

I also noticed that theres couple mini dp ports... they were under plastic caps so I didn't notice them until I read gpu specs. So all GPU video ports work perfectly. I am considering trying this PC out in everyday use as my laptop has an annoying overheating issue with cpu... quad fan stand isn't helping much. and since this pc has all these digital video ports it is going to be so much more practical if i don't have to switch hdmi's constantly. I got quad display setting (but only utilize like 2 at a time so its probably not gonna be a problem that you can only use 3 at a time with this gpu)

 

[pellui]

ok... there was nothing extreme or xmp... looked into advanced stuff too... however, i found dram frequency and switched it to 1600... is this safe to do? does this change anything? benchmark on userbenchmark did not change after i did it...

 

[The Paladin]

From the user manual : https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/M4A89GTD_PROUSB3/HelpDesk_Manual/

And more interestingly.... look where the arrow is pointed

so for higher speeds seems you need to overclock the ram.

 

[pellui]

Yep, I can read but I don't know what that means... Should I go to AI Tweaker menu and switch the speed to 1600? Or is it not safe to do so?

 

[pellui]

update: I sold the 4 gigs of RAM for 15€ but used half priced stamps I get from a male nurse named Ronnie, so I made 16€ altogether, so currently the total cost of the PC is at 19€. I am thinking about starting to use it instead of my laptop, because I don't really perform anything that cpu intensive on this laptop... And I do perform ram intensive stuff like 88 tabs open in chrome -> chrome crash. I think the PC is gonna handle that shit better, who knows. Also, I love the fact that it has all these mini dp, dvi and hdmi ports (5) altho I think only 3 can be used at the same time. Nevertheless its better than having to constantly shift HDMI cables. Just have to format and install win10. quick format should be just as efficient at removing anything malicious?

 

[ctornado]

A quick format will work fine. An in depth format is better, but a quick format will work.

 

[davidresh598]

If you are still wiping the pc clean and installing a clean version of windows i reccomend you do a clean install and wipe all partitions and do a clean install of windows. After that i reccomend you download the following programs. CCleaner, Defraggler, and Avast Free anti virus. These are the only programs you really need to run windows i dont tend to use chrome bc of how much ram it eats up

 

[davidresh598]

Feel free to message me if you need help with any pc problems you have im more than happy to help you out i enjoy fixing computers and did this to my current desktop and a desktop my friend threw away and they run pretty fast especially the one i have with a core 2 duo 6300 and 4gb ddr2 ram.