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I could use some advice on the best way to build a super cheap PC for my niece for Christmas. She mainly wants it to play The Sims 3 and 4, Minecraft, and basic things like that. She already has a Macbook she uses for school and internet stuff. By "cheap" I mean I barely have a budget, maybe $200. I have an old EVGA GTX 670, Cooler Master 620W PSU, and WD 2TB HDD I can contribute to it, which is decent enough for those games. I actually played Doom 2016 on the 670 before I upgraded to a 1070. I thought about buying a used i5 Dell Optiplex or similar office computer, adding a SATA SSD and the parts I already mentioned. I don't know if whatever motherboard and case the Optiplexes use would work with a full-size video card, though. I'm just spitballing here. Any help?
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Nov 1, 2020 06:24
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FreeKillB posted:You might still need to remove the drive cage even with the larger models depending on your GPU size, the one spec sheet i could find listed 167mm as the max length for the expansion slot. That's what I read as well, that I would have to get a Dremel tool and cut out pieces of the case, which is a road I really don't want to go down.
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Nov 2, 2020 02:14
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So in pursuit of my cheapest almost decent PC for my niece for Christmas project, I found a guy on Craigslist selling multiple Dell Optiplex 3010s for $50. They only come with a crappy Core i3, but I figure I could buy a used Core i5 3570 off eBay for $40, then wait until Black Friday and add new 16GB RAM and a 500GB SATA SSD for $100 total. I already have a PSU, GTX 670 graphics card, and 2TB HDD. In theory I could have a completed system for under $200, although I'm taking some chances with used components. Any thoughts?
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Nov 8, 2020 10:02
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Rexxed posted:Make sure the PSU you want to put in will fit in the case. The Dells use pretty short ones so while I've retrofitted optiplexes with other PSUs before, they were generally fairly square ones. Longer ones (and a lot of modular ones are long because of the addition of the plugs) can interfere with the side door mechanism. I was under the impression the Optiplex Mini Towers could fit standard ATX PSUs, but now I'm starting to second guess that (the Small Form Factor cases are obviously a non starter). If I have to spend extra on a weird proprietary power supply to utilize the video card then I may as well forget about using an Optiplex because the cost will balloon out of my budget. Maybe there is a comparable office PC like the HP Prodesk that is easier to work with, but it won't be as cheap.
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Nov 8, 2020 12:37
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Coredump posted:Just curious what part of the country you in as I got some hardware to donate if you’re local. Suburban Dad posted:Potentially same from me. I have an old 2.5" samsung evo 250gb ssd I'm not using and my i5 2500k w/evo 212 cooler, case, mobo, 16gb of ram that I was just going to take to the electronics recycler.
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Nov 9, 2020 04:21
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