Newbie trying to buy a PC (student budget)

[ggOlle]

Hi,

I've never bought a stationary PC before. Came over from Mac to Thinkpad one year ago and want a steady but cheap PC now for light gaming and studying. I found a 2nd hand PC and it is pretty cheap, roughly 550 EUR with 2 monitors, a QuickFire Rapid-i-keyboard and a decent mouse. The thing it is lacking is a SSD. I've been trying to look through forums and the only thing it has told me is that these components are really old/not good. What do you think? Is this setup fine or do you have any tips?

MSI Geeforce GTX 770 2GB GDDR5
AMD FX-6300 Black Edition
RAM minne 16GB
Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P AM3+
Cooler Master Silencio 452 Midi
Corsair CX 500W
DVD-reader
Noctua NH-U9B SE2

Thanks in advance from a newbie.

 

[superninja12]

hey gg0lle welcome to the forums,

I strongly recommand to build your own pc, if your budget is 550-600 euros you can build a great pc.

 

[okcnaline]

Maybe 3 or 4 years ago. But still, the CX 500 is a major no-no. And the FX-6300 can't play games well since 2 years ago. Like superninja12 said, maybe build your own?

EDIT: Just realized. No, the GTX 970 can't handle gaming on 2 monitors. But it's a great deal since you can just get some new CPU, motherboard, and RAM then you're good to go.

 

[boosted1g]

$550 for 2 monitors is a decent price for the PC, but it is still an old outdated platform that will struggle with modern games.

 

[ggOlle]

hey gg0lle welcome to the forums,

I strongly recommand to build your own pc, if your budget is 550-600 euros you can build a great pc.

Maybe 3 or 4 years ago. But still, the CX 500 is a major no-no. And the FX-6300 can't play games well since 2 years ago. Like superninja12 said, maybe build your own?

EDIT: Just realized. No, the GTX 970 can't handle gaming on 2 monitors. But it's a great deal since you can just get some new CPU, motherboard, and RAM then you're good to go.

$550 for 2 monitors is a decent price for the PC, but it is still an old outdated platform that will struggle with modern games.

Hi! Thanks for the input. Would this be a better setup? Something to emphasize is that I don't anticipate to use this for full on gaming, it might just be very simple games like overwatch, lol and hearthstone. The main purpose is to have two monitors for studies, research and then again a little gaming on the side.

 

[ggOlle]

I've also heard a lot of good stuff on forums regarding Intel i3 processors. Guess that would be a good start? I find it really difficult to navigate and understand why some parts are good/bad and so on. Any tips on a cheap setup would be appreciated, but also some good places to learn more since this has turned out to be a lot harder than I anticipated..

 

[okcnaline]

1) Get the RX 480 instead of a GTX 1060 if you're playing Overwatch.
2) You could go for the Intel Pentium G4560 which offers virtually identical performance. But yes, i3 is a good place to start.
3) For that price you can get better power supplies like this one: http://pcpartpicker.com/product/4Vzv6h/seasonic-power-supply-s12ii430b

 

[boosted1g]

For light gaming you can drop down to a gtx 1050ti to save some money. PSU is not good and SSD is really bad (kingston played bait and switch tactics with those drives and put garbage chips in them after already benchmarked).
This pentium is hypethreaded just like an i3 so is pretty much the 6100 - a couple hundred mhz of speed for only $60:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Pentium G4560 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor ($59.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B250M-DS3H Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($68.89 @ OutletPC)
Memory: Avexir Core Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($46.90 @ Amazon)
Storage: PNY CS1311 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($49.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($49.33 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB SC GAMING ACX 2.0 Video Card ($139.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1500 MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($42.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12II 520W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($47.89 @ B&H)
Total: $505.97
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-03-24 10:45 EDT-0400