- Oct 15, 2016
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A friend of mine recently got an old stock Dell Inspiron 518 desktop for free and asked me to help him upgrade it for gaming. I would very much appreciate some advice on my part choices. We have a couple of extra hard drives already, so no need to worry about that.
First I looked at the old motherboard, which I decided wouldn't be adequate for modern games since it only supports DDR2 memory and SATA 2. After looking at Intel boards, as well as processors, I decided to go with AMD instead because of the cost difference. We won't be doing any overclocking (unless someone here thinks it's a good idea), and it seems to me that AMD in general is better at the entry and mid level price points.
I tentatively went with the Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 board because it seemed pretty inexpensive and offered a a good amount of features for the level that it is. This is an area where I could use some guidance, which is actually true for all of the parts since I haven't built a PC before.
So with that in mind I found two processors--the AMD FX-8350 and the FX-6300. The former has two more cores and a higher clock speed, but is a little bit more expensive. I am planning on the 6300, since it still seems pretty good, but that depends on what other costs we have.
Sticking with the theme of cheaper entry/mid-level parts, I chose the new MSI radeon 400 line of video cards, which as far as I can tell blows Nvidia's mid-level lineup out of the water. The roughly $30 difference was enough to make me lean towards the 470 over the 480.
For RAM, cheapest seems best so I'm just going with some G.Skill Ripjaws X Series with a total of 8GB from two sticks. 8 gigabytes seems like it should be adequate, at least to start with. I realize that the board I currently have selected only features two ram slots though.
The power supply is what made me most want to ask for advice. It seems like we'll pretty much just be using the case, cd drive, cooling stuff, and front peripherals from the old Inspiron. I found a new power supply, the Corsair CXM 450W 80+, that should be more than adequate for this build. However, the old power supply looks like it may be good enough for what we need. Here's a picture of its specifications:
It would be awesome to be able to use this one and just knock off some $40, but I don't want to take any chances on power. Advice?
The original pc also had some cooling fans and a cpu heatsink:
I am assuming that they will be adequate for cooling as long as, like I said, we don't do any overclocking.
Here are some additional pictures of the original PC case and hardware, for reference.
We aren't going for looks, just something that combines as much old stuff as possible with new parts to get the best $300-$450 1920x1080p gaming experience we can get.
So I guess the question would be: do you think these parts are the best for the price? Will they work well together, and not have any serious bottlenecking issues? AKA I don't know that much about building a PC and I want to make sure that we're using my friend's money wisely.
Here is the PCPartPicker part list that I put together for these items. The power supply has a manually entered price because it doesn't seem to have newegg's latest promotional price:
CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor ($99.89 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 Micro ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($56.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($44.89 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: MSI Radeon RX 470 4GB Gaming X Video Card ($199.88 @ OutletPC)
Power Supply: Corsair CXM 450W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($39.99)
Total: $441.63
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-10-14 23:56 EDT-0400
Thanks for reading my super long post, and I hope you have some input to share!
First I looked at the old motherboard, which I decided wouldn't be adequate for modern games since it only supports DDR2 memory and SATA 2. After looking at Intel boards, as well as processors, I decided to go with AMD instead because of the cost difference. We won't be doing any overclocking (unless someone here thinks it's a good idea), and it seems to me that AMD in general is better at the entry and mid level price points.
I tentatively went with the Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 board because it seemed pretty inexpensive and offered a a good amount of features for the level that it is. This is an area where I could use some guidance, which is actually true for all of the parts since I haven't built a PC before.
So with that in mind I found two processors--the AMD FX-8350 and the FX-6300. The former has two more cores and a higher clock speed, but is a little bit more expensive. I am planning on the 6300, since it still seems pretty good, but that depends on what other costs we have.
Sticking with the theme of cheaper entry/mid-level parts, I chose the new MSI radeon 400 line of video cards, which as far as I can tell blows Nvidia's mid-level lineup out of the water. The roughly $30 difference was enough to make me lean towards the 470 over the 480.
For RAM, cheapest seems best so I'm just going with some G.Skill Ripjaws X Series with a total of 8GB from two sticks. 8 gigabytes seems like it should be adequate, at least to start with. I realize that the board I currently have selected only features two ram slots though.
The power supply is what made me most want to ask for advice. It seems like we'll pretty much just be using the case, cd drive, cooling stuff, and front peripherals from the old Inspiron. I found a new power supply, the Corsair CXM 450W 80+, that should be more than adequate for this build. However, the old power supply looks like it may be good enough for what we need. Here's a picture of its specifications:
The original pc also had some cooling fans and a cpu heatsink:
Here are some additional pictures of the original PC case and hardware, for reference.
So I guess the question would be: do you think these parts are the best for the price? Will they work well together, and not have any serious bottlenecking issues? AKA I don't know that much about building a PC and I want to make sure that we're using my friend's money wisely.
Here is the PCPartPicker part list that I put together for these items. The power supply has a manually entered price because it doesn't seem to have newegg's latest promotional price:
CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor ($99.89 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 Micro ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($56.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($44.89 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: MSI Radeon RX 470 4GB Gaming X Video Card ($199.88 @ OutletPC)
Power Supply: Corsair CXM 450W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($39.99)
Total: $441.63
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-10-14 23:56 EDT-0400
Thanks for reading my super long post, and I hope you have some input to share!
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