Turning a 2000s 70$ pc into a modern gaming rig (help required)

[jadtheone]

Hello,I appreciate all the help on my past thread and know I'm thinking,if I can't buy a laptop and improve it how far can I improve my pc?
My pc isn't so great,the parts are pretty old to say the least,and turning a 70$ pc into a modern gaming machine doesn't sound cheap and by the looks of things it won't be,so I have about a dozen questions and I'd appreciate any help,so I'll start:
Is the i7-7700k worth the extra 5-9$ over a few other i7s around 320$?(the i7-7700k is 329.99$)
What super cheap DDR4 motherboards support 7th gen i7s and 16GB of RAM?
Is it possible to find a 2GB vram GPU within 50$?
What's the best GPU I can find for 100$ or less?
Would I need a new CPU cooler for a way stronger CPU?
If I do need a new cooler what's the cheapest one I can find?
Are these following specs good enough for somewhat modern gaming(doesn't have to be HD):
16GB DDR4
i7-7700k
2-4GBs of VRAM (DDR depends on what I get)
1TB-2TB of HDD
How long do these parts live?
I currently have a 10$ CPU so I wouldn't be surprised if I need a new cooler.
Is 1TB enough?
I currently have a 160GB HDD and I still have about over half it free but that's because I didn't download any big games because I wouldn't be able to run them.
I don't plan on watching 4k movies on this pc,the most I'd do would pretty much be watching a few YouTube videos on 320p-420p.
I plan to have everything happening at once to reach maximum productivity because of what little free time I have,thing such as:
Photoshop (CC or from browser)
Video editor
Discord
Games (I don't think any of them need 8GB RAM)
And OBS
Are those specs enough?
I really appreciate the help,thank you.

 

[racksmith101]

First you really need to give us an idea of your budget.

 

[King_V]

I don't think you'd be retaining anything except the case from the 2000s (I assume early 2000s) PC.

 

[hendrickhere]

There's so much going on here. If you're changing your motherboard you're building a new PC, that's just how it is.

Answer these questions first:

How much is your budget?
What resolution are you targeting (like, what's the resolutions of your current monitor)?
Can you salvage anything? (it sounds like you can't, save your hard drive and maybe the RAM if you have DDR 4)
Have you factored in the price of Windows?

 

[delaro]

" On the Cheap" all used

Combo i3 6th-7th gen
Z110 or B250 motherboard
Basic 8gb of DDR4
$120

970 GTX
$120-$150

120gb SSD new from Adata
$27

1TB HD " Used from a data center"
$5
..............
$272

As far as what you can do with what you have it would be nice to know the detail specs of that, generally something that old has its limitations. It would also be nice to know what kind of budget you plan on working with since you include the new price of a 7700K new.

 

[jadtheone]

Budget going around 550$ more or less.
I'd be fine not having to pay like an extra 30$ for a new case.
I'm aware that by changing my motherboard I'm going to change everything.
I'm not sure about my screen resolution,I can find out soon but it'll take a couple of hours.
The price of windows is no problem,due to not being able to purchase keys here the only way to obtain a copy of windows is by buying a CD that costs about 10-50 cents.
No part of my pc will be left except for the cooler maybe so limitations now entirely depend on the new parts.
Definitely not going with an i3 8gb build,I really do appreciate you taking the time to write but what I plan to do cannot be done with such specs,but you got me thinking maybe I should downgrade to an i5 and save 100$ish to use on some other parts.
Also I'm not so sure about used parts,they're way cheaper but pretty risky.
I'll do research about the GTX 970 since it's within the 150$ range.
SSD to me seems like such a big waste,for 27$ I could get a 120GB SSD or about 500GB HDD,if I have some budget left which I doubt I might consider an SSD since one of my friends upgraded to an SSD and it apparently made some of his apps boot-up about a minute faster which sounds pretty good actually,I'll try to find a good mix of HDD and SSD.
Thank you for the help everyone this brings me way closer to finding out what best I can do.

 

[tejayd]

Good luck with that

 

[jadtheone]

So I looked up my monitor on CNET and it's apparently 1280x1024.

 

[Peter Martin]

I wouldn’t even keep the case unless a very high end one

 

[jadtheone]

Cases don't matter do they?
Doesn't it all depend on your motherboard,ram,cpu,gpu,hdd/ssd?

 

[USAFRet]

Cases don't matter do they?
Doesn't it all depend on your motherboard,ram,cpu,gpu,hdd/ssd?

A 15 year old case may or may not be ATX standard.
$30 for a new case is well worth the brainache trying to make some old POC work with new hardware.

You're not upgrading anything...you're building a whole new PC.
Change everything.

 

[Peter Martin]

plus with cheap cases you always get cut trying to do something. and some are a pain to get to components. Lian-Li for me all the way.

 

[jadtheone]

I think I'm good with my current case,I don't wanna have to downgrade to 200$ i5 and save 100$ just to use 30$ also I would prefer to have it built by a professional, I have no experience in installing pc parts and I don't want to ruin a multi hundred dollar part.

 

[USAFRet]

I think I'm good with my current case,I don't wanna have to downgrade to 200$ i5 and save 100$ just to use 30$ also I would prefer to have it built by a professional, I have no experience in installing pc parts and I don't want to ruin a multi hundred dollar part.

And you'll be giving up USB 3.0 ports on the front.

 

[delaro]

Budget going around 550$ more or less.
I'd be fine not having to pay like an extra 30$ for a new case.
I'm aware that by changing my motherboard I'm going to change everything.
I'm not sure about my screen resolution,I can find out soon but it'll take a couple of hours.
The price of windows is no problem,due to not being able to purchase keys here the only way to obtain a copy of windows is by buying a CD that costs about 10-50 cents.
No part of my pc will be left except for the cooler maybe so limitations now entirely depend on the new parts.
Definitely not going with an i3 8gb build,I really do appreciate you taking the time to write but what I plan to do cannot be done with such specs,but you got me thinking maybe I should downgrade to an i5 and save 100$ish to use on some other parts.
Also I'm not so sure about used parts,they're way cheaper but pretty risky.
I'll do research about the GTX 970 since it's within the 150$ range.
SSD to me seems like such a big waste,for 27$ I could get a 120GB SSD or about 500GB HDD,if I have some budget left which I doubt I might consider an SSD since one of my friends upgraded to an SSD and it apparently made some of his apps boot-up about a minute faster which sounds pretty good actually,I'll try to find a good mix of HDD and SSD.
Thank you for the help everyone this brings me way closer to finding out what best I can do.

1. I was listing an i3 as an example since you didn't include a budget but you greatly underappreciate what a 6th gen plus is capable of they are actually quite usable in everything you listed for a very low budget and give you upgrade potential. i7's will eat up your $550 budget to fast, even something as old as a i7 4770 is going to start at $150 used so your better off looking for a CPU/MB combo for one of those. A i5 is a better value here and will handle Adobe products fast enough unless your looking at doing Photoshop full time.

2. Buying used anything is risky but most people will be honest and tell you to want you're looking at if you surf the right places.

3. With the hits to mining, you are seeing 1060 3gb's/ 580 4GB up for around $125 most all of these are still under warranty and have been used a way to balance performance and power usage so at the worst you might have to do is replace a fan. I passed up on a 970 GTX this morning for $110

4. SSD is a waste? 10 second or less Boot times and instance application starts. Windows and your most used apps go on the SSD, movies and other storage fodder go on a platter. With a B250 board and a 7th gen CPU you gain access to Optane drives which greatly speed up how a traditional hard drive works. Unfortunately, a 16GB Optane is the same price as a 120GB SSD.

5. Let's not forget RYZEN here you can find Ryzen 5 1500x and 1600 used in the $100-$125 price range these are 4C/8T and 6C/12T CPU that is an exceptional value at that price range, the downside is RAM prices since your going to want 16G of DDR4 around 3000mhz or better. 8G is pretty tight with Photoshop.

6. Power Supply- you're going to want a new one, you're not going to want to reuse anything over 5 years old and with small or cheap cases a Semi or fully modular unit in the 500W range.

7. Cases- The Super Cheap
$19 Rosewill Micro ATX Mini Tower SRM-01
$26 DIYPC - P48-W ATX Mid Tower
$40 Cooler Master MCW‑L3B3‑KANN‑01 10$ rebate from Cool master knocks it down to $30

 

[jadtheone]

I looked up some of the games I plan to play on the computer and to be honest if anyone is paying around 500$ on a pc they shouldn't have to download a couple dozen low gfx mods to have them run at 30fps.
I looked up a few of my game choices as soon as I saw your answer to make sure I wasn't wasting 200$ on nothing.
An i5 maybe but an i7 still seems like somewhat of a better deal,I'll look into it.
And I might get my HDD used and if there's a bit of budget left I'll try to get a 100GB SSD to put into Disk C to hopefully boost overall pc performance.
I'll look into a few cases to see if I can find a cheap one that can fit the parts I require.
Power supplies are something that I haven't looked into at all,definitely going to need to look into those.
Thank you for the help.

 

[madmatt30]

you can get a ryzen 6 core / 12 thread cpu for the price (or less ) of an i5.

Thats the base you should be looking at rather than intel in the first place.

With that budget you are not runing 16gb ddr4 ram either ,8gb is enough for most people & on a limited budget you have no choice at all.

For a $550 budget you are expecting way too much,that would be considered absolute entry level on here for a general use desktop let alone a gaming pc.

What country are you actually in ??

 

[jadtheone]

I don't know AMDs too well,every apps specs that I search for doesn't specify which AMD processor it would require which led me to think that it would be hard to find out what AMDs compare to Intel processors.
I currently have 1GB of DDR2 RAM and just by opening Google Chrome I reach 100% RAM usage,about 56% of my RAM is used without having anything running and I'm only using windows 7 32x bit so I'd imagine windows 10 64x bit would require about double if not triple RAM,I might be wrong though I've had windows 8 on the same pc and games like Grand theft auto:vice city would get random black screens and terrible frame rate on windows 8 while on windows 7 I get over 20fps with no lag spikes or black screens.
I'm very aware that a budget as low as mine can't get much.
I'm in Syria,Damascus.

 

[Peter Martin]

1gb is ridiculous. Even for win7. I would not run win 10 with less than 8gb, 4gb min

 

[jadtheone]

I don't actually know how much RAM the windows 10 64x bit uses without any apps running but I would assume it's a lot and a 6-8GB game along with videos rendering and with photoshop running along with discord and Google chrome and probably something installing from a CD I would imagine all that using up more than 8GB of RAM.

 

[hendrickhere]

I don't actually know how much RAM the windows 10 64x bit uses without any apps running but I would assume it's a lot and a 6-8GB game along with videos rendering and with photoshop running along with discord and Google chrome and probably something installing from a CD I would imagine all that using up more than 8GB of RAM.

8GB is all you're going to get for your budget, and all you need for basic modern performance. Also, there is no reason not to include an SSD. None. It's one of the most notable performance enhancers you can use.

Keep us updated with your build because this is an interesting situation.

 

[delaro]

I looked up some of the games I plan to play on the computer and to be honest if anyone is paying around 500$ on a pc they shouldn't have to download a couple dozen low gfx mods to have them run at 30fps.
I looked up a few of my game choices as soon as I saw your answer to make sure I wasn't wasting 200$ on nothing.
An i5 maybe but an i7 still seems like somewhat of a better deal,I'll look into it.
And I might get my HDD used and if there's a bit of budget left I'll try to get a 100GB SSD to put into Disk C to hopefully boost overall pc performance.
I'll look into a few cases to see if I can find a cheap one that can fit the parts I require.
Power supplies are something that I haven't looked into at all,definitely going to need to look into those.
Thank you for the help.

Budget
Power supply 500W-650W- $55- $80
Case $20-$40
Hard Drive
"New 1TB WD Blue $40ish.
Seagate Barracuda E.2 used $5 good for something like a million hours typical use is 1/3 of that
SSD $25 to $1000 depending on the size
GPU 2GB typically $35-$70
1050/1050Ti/1060 3gb/1060 6GB/970 GTX/980 GTX/RX 570/RX 580 "$75-$190 used

A current Gen i3 "6th.7th,8th or Ryzen 3 " something like 40% faster over say a Phenom II X4 965 or i7 950. Both of those are around that 10-year-old range just to give you a comparison so going with a i5 or Ryzen 5 is even better while saving $$$ over a i7 which has retained a great deal of the MSRP value.

 

[jadtheone]

I don't know how many watts my PSU delivers but I'd imagine it's less than 100W,so I used a PSU calculator and it said I need 322W so yeah a 500W supply works.
As for the HDD/SSD I'm pretty sure I'm going to buy those used in a 2TB HDD and a 150GB(?) SSD.
As of GPUs I think I'm going to purchase a new 2GB one.
Probably going to go with an i5 now and use the extra money to see if there's anything else I can use that money on.
Thank you for the support.

 

[jadtheone]

(I didn't see any rules page so I don't know if multipost is allowed.)
I think I know which i5 to go with,the i5-8400T,costs about 70$ more but has better specs than the 400$+ i7-8550u.
Is this a good choice?

 

[tejayd]

If you're not joking and seriously looking for help with building a pc. Just start a new post saying "Looking for help building a pc" "I will be using it for xxxxxx, and my budget is xxxxx"

As this thread goes, it's hard to tell if your joking, really have no clue or are 12 years old. And the i7 8550u is a laptop processor.