- Jan 23, 2011
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Here's the Skinny. My brother in law had shown interest in building a PC as an xmas present to himself. I offered to help him as i'm pretty familiar with the parts/cost/deployment of windows based office and gaming machines.
I drummed him up an intel-based tower to the tune of 600 bucks, patted myself on the back and called it a day.
A few days later he called asking me if he could just buy a Dell (lol) and upgrade that. I said "Theoretically, yeah, but it's not really the same, why would you consider that"
To which he responds "My wife keeps insisting that her parents only spent 300 dollars on their computer"
Avoiding the obvious (the apples and oranges argument) he wanted to know if there was any way we could build a simple machine now and upgrade it for the future to do what he wants/needs to do later.
I had originally quoted him a B75 board, (MSI branded) an i3-3220, 8GB G.SKILL RAM and an ATI 7850. To cut costs I have an old screen, KB/M and case he can use.
I could trim some fat and get that build down to maybe 500 bucks, but 300 would be fairly unreasonable, so as I see it, here are my options.
1-Find a B75 board, get the i3-3220 anyways and let him run with the HD 2500 graphics (Should at least get his foot in the door) until he or I (more hand me downs) can get a better video card. This should reduce the cost to about 350, which may be doable.
2-Get an absolute bare-bones build (celeron dual core or pentium 860, 4GB RAM, no video card, but decent motherboard that supports Ivy Bridge) and tell him "It will cost you more in the long run, but you can at least use this for internet and java/flash games in the meantime." and upgrade him as the money comes. I figure this could easily be done for the 300 he specifies, and possibly go even lower to 250 or so, but of course you get what you pay for, and it will cost more in the long term as the parts won't be relevant when he's ready to sell.
3-I haven't done much with AMD systems and, to be honest, have basically completely disregarded them in the last 2 years or so (Still do like ATI though) but if anybody has any suggestions about some of the AMD cores with embedded graphics, fire away. Bear in mind that I don't know much about AMD's recent exploits, so put on the kid gloves if you're talking AMD.
4- Try to convince the wife to increase the ceiling a bit. Unlikely, but I suppose it's plausible. She's really rather stubborn and they aren't well-off by any means. I would obviously see him spend an extra few hundred and have a good PC right off the bat, but obviously if it's not possible, it's not possible.
Opinions? Let me know. Thanks in advance!
TL;DR: Best option for building an upgradable ~300 dollar rig for present low end but future high-end gaming.
I drummed him up an intel-based tower to the tune of 600 bucks, patted myself on the back and called it a day.
A few days later he called asking me if he could just buy a Dell (lol) and upgrade that. I said "Theoretically, yeah, but it's not really the same, why would you consider that"
To which he responds "My wife keeps insisting that her parents only spent 300 dollars on their computer"
Avoiding the obvious (the apples and oranges argument) he wanted to know if there was any way we could build a simple machine now and upgrade it for the future to do what he wants/needs to do later.
I had originally quoted him a B75 board, (MSI branded) an i3-3220, 8GB G.SKILL RAM and an ATI 7850. To cut costs I have an old screen, KB/M and case he can use.
I could trim some fat and get that build down to maybe 500 bucks, but 300 would be fairly unreasonable, so as I see it, here are my options.
1-Find a B75 board, get the i3-3220 anyways and let him run with the HD 2500 graphics (Should at least get his foot in the door) until he or I (more hand me downs) can get a better video card. This should reduce the cost to about 350, which may be doable.
2-Get an absolute bare-bones build (celeron dual core or pentium 860, 4GB RAM, no video card, but decent motherboard that supports Ivy Bridge) and tell him "It will cost you more in the long run, but you can at least use this for internet and java/flash games in the meantime." and upgrade him as the money comes. I figure this could easily be done for the 300 he specifies, and possibly go even lower to 250 or so, but of course you get what you pay for, and it will cost more in the long term as the parts won't be relevant when he's ready to sell.
3-I haven't done much with AMD systems and, to be honest, have basically completely disregarded them in the last 2 years or so (Still do like ATI though) but if anybody has any suggestions about some of the AMD cores with embedded graphics, fire away. Bear in mind that I don't know much about AMD's recent exploits, so put on the kid gloves if you're talking AMD.
4- Try to convince the wife to increase the ceiling a bit. Unlikely, but I suppose it's plausible. She's really rather stubborn and they aren't well-off by any means. I would obviously see him spend an extra few hundred and have a good PC right off the bat, but obviously if it's not possible, it's not possible.
Opinions? Let me know. Thanks in advance!
TL;DR: Best option for building an upgradable ~300 dollar rig for present low end but future high-end gaming.
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