Goal to build a cheap ass gaming pc that will play games on 1080p on medium to high for a family member that wants a second pc to bring to her moms house, she already has a i5 gaming pc at her dads.

Can it be done?

Looks like it's doable by using as many used parts as possible.

Only criteria is that she has to pick out the case, and she picked out this one. Not the best for airflow but she likes the mint green color. $55.00


Motherboard:
Machinist "Brand" "X79" M-ATX motherboard    $98.00




One issue is that the "x79" motherboards do not necessarily have a x79 chipset, its kind of a crap shoot.

Some come with a X79 chipset some have a H87 some have a b85 chipset and some have the server based c602 chipset.

So I popped the chipset heatsink off and its a C602.

Used parts that I already have:
MSI GTX 1060 video card.
Xeon E5-2643 v1 cpu
4 sticks of used DDR3 ECC 4gb ram for 16 gigs total.
SSD
212 Evo cpu cooler.
Hard drive for storage, maybe a 1tb WD black.
1080p Moniter
Usb mouse and keyboard.

Unknown is the power supply, I have a few but I just might go for a new name brand one thats on sale.

The motherboard is kind of unusual, it has USB 3.0 and a m.2 slot that acually boots a m.2 ssd.

Both are not normally used with a c602 chipset board.

But it seems just as good of quality as any name brand low end board I have owned.

First hurdle... No manual.

That dog will hunt.

Won't necessarily play the MOST demanding titles, but it will do a heck of a lot better than most folks think it would.

BOOTS!!

Works with either DDR3 ECC ram or regular DDR3 ram.

I REALLY was not expecting it to work with regular DDR 3 ram since its a Xeon cpu and a c602 chipset but it does.

The bios has some weirdness to it with settings I have never heard of and missing some common ones I usually see.

But the goal for tonight was to get it to boot, I stuck a  500 gb ssd that has Ubuntu 20.04 on it and it's really responsive.

Will let it just sit running a while to make sure it does not lock up or do anything stupid.

I'm lost. you spend 97 on a mobo
spend 55 on a case,

and somehow managed to get a 1060, cpu, cooler, ram, and SSD for less than $47?

I had them already, so no additional money spent.

well thats kinda cheating isnt it

Nope, I have a ton of pc stuff I have collected over three decades.

Bought some but was given alot more.

lol, that's a big ass fan-sync.  I love it.  I don't build gaming PCs anymore but I still follow some Youtube channels.  Looks like a fun little build.

It's not really that big, only 120mm, it's just the motherboard is small since its a Micro-ATX.

Went ahead and broke through the $200.00 budget and purchased a new Thermaltake 700 watt non modular power supply for $59.95, will put it all together this weekend.

I'm creating a Windows 10 install flash drive using the widows media creator program, it's just so damn easy.

Went with a Samsung 850 Evo 500Gig boot drive and an old but good 400 gb hard drive as a secondary storage drive.

Threw in some used fans, THREE WITH LIGHTS!! , then finished building it and now i'm installing Windows 10 pro.

So I installed the drivers off the chinesium driver disk, had an issue with the sound card driver kept erroring out if I tried to install from the cd but once I copied the files over to the ssd it installed fine.

The downloaded the latest Nvidia GameReady driver and rebooted last night then shut it down since it was late.

Tonight I downloaded and installed Brave browser and then Steam and logged it in then had to enter the code that was emailed to the account that it needed to be tied to.

Next I started to think about activation, I still have a bunch of windows 7 keys since my MS Technet account days and I figured it was worth a shot to see if any would activate on Windows ten.

So I typed "Activation" in the search box and this pooped up.

So I installed the drivers off the chinesium driver disk, had an issue with the sound card driver kept erroring out if I tried to install from the cd but once I copied the files over to the ssd it installed fine.

The downloaded the latest Nvidia GameReady driver and rebooted last night then shut it down since it was late.

Tonight I downloaded and installed Brave browser and then Steam and logged it in then had to enter the code that was emailed to the account that it needed to be tied to.

Next I started to think about activation, I still have a bunch of windows 7 keys since my MS Technet account days and I figured it was worth a shot to see if any would activate on Windows 10.

So I typed "Activation" in the search box and this pooped up.



The only part that was ever in a activated Windows 10 pc was the video card.

The hard drive had Ubuntu on it in a laptop that I did install Windows 10 on just to try it out but it was never activated and it kept nagging me to activate.

The motherboard is new, the secondary hard drive had Linux on it and maybe Windows Vista back in the day but it was wiped a long time ago.

WTF FREE ACTIVATION!!!

Edit: Set the pc up with a "offline account" so its not tied to any MS based login.  

Delivered last weekend and is working great for her.

She is 18 so I installed GTA 5 and with everything on max at 1080p and running the benchmarks it gets any where from 80 to over 100 FPS.

So it should play any game she wants it to at decent settings and speeds.

Interesting motherboard. I've never heard of that brand before. Surprising a board that small still supports 4 RAM slots. I can't find much information or any reviews for the board. They must a new company or at least a new importer.

There is a huge supply of used server cpu's and ram.

These and other chinese built boards are made for that market.