The plan: Create a budget build pc for my daughter that she could use to play Roblox and Minecraft on, watch YouTube and in emergencies, actually do some homework with.
The result: Well it’s taken roughly five months to get up and running, but finally it is running! But not without the occasional face palm moment along the way. Although YouTube enjoyed the final monster for at least 24 hours which was kind of amusing..
The budget build PC started with the boss..
No not Bruce Springsteen, I’m talking my radio boss Mal. Once again he decided that he needed to update his own PC rig at home and after upgrading everything under the sun, decided to free up some space by selling off his spare parts. And since I’d bought things from him before (like a bigger screen and speakers), he offered up a big chunk of bits and pieces for cheap. And so I jumped at the offer, agreeing to purchase the lot for a pair of golf shorts.
Yes indeed, I could give him cash or buy him some golf shorts. And since I’ve never paid anyone in golf shorts, I found the idea utterly hilarious and bought them online for him. A week later my daughter Sophie and I drove round to his place to pick everything up. It wasn’t everything I needed but there certainly were most bits in the collection of everything there to build a computer.
That’s also where project overkill was born, coined purely for the size of the case and ultimately what would go in there which will be revealed in a sec. If only it hadn’t taken me five months to finally complete what should have been knocked up in the space of a lazy afternoon…
Project Overkill – what went wrong?
You know those things you work on where you spend frustrating hours searching for a problem only to eventually discover it was in the last place you expected? Well that describes this budget build PC in a nutshell. That was after the first couple of months this year of a very limited budget too I need to add, where buying things to finish this thing off finally was completely out of the question. There was only one income coming in at the time, nasal surgery took up a huge chunk of time and then finding the right parts to fit what I had on hand turned out to be its own interesting challenge.
Yes once upon a time sourcing suitable parts online (ie Facebook Marketplace) was easy and fruitful. I had scores of spare part bargains practically overflowing the shed. It was raining computer spares and I could easily build a working system – lovely.
Not so much in 2024 though, where the price has gone up and up and up and what you need requires a bit of a hunt. And hunt I did, although a little bit of testing first probably would have cut down the time of this build dramatically..
WORK WITH WHAT YOU HAVE
In Mal’s collection of cords, screws and spare parts was a handy Core i7 2600 CPU and I immediately figured ‘Well there’s one thing I won’t have to buy then, let’s build around that.’ I had some DDR3 ram handy, his old power supply, a factory fan – all I needed was a 1155 motherboard to suit. And after a month of keeping across local bargains on Facebook, I found one. $20 netting me a board that should not only fit the case but work in harmony with everything else.
‘Should’. It did anything but, leading to a week of grumbling about how much I don’t trust Gigabyte anymore (based on a few board issues over the year). Stopping and starting more times than I’d like to remember and flat out refusing to boot, not even once, I cursed it’s machine spirit and the guy who sold it to me. So I chucked it on the broken parts pile and looked for something else.
Fast forward to the back end of last month when I finally had some spare case to buy another 1155 socket motherboard from eBay (this time from Msi). I loaded it up with all the parts on hand, it powered up….and then nothing happened. No signal to the monitor, no boot screen, nothing.
Another dead board? Shoot me now. How rotten is my luck with computers?
Luckily this board came with it’s own spare processor (another part for the spare pile? That’s a yes from me!) and wouldn’t you know it, putting this low end processor in place of the 2600 suddenly caused things to spring to life. Hugely elated by this small sign of success, I made sure to update the Bios to the latest version, swapped the i7 2600 back in and…
Nothing. Same issue of fan spinning but nothing else happening. No signal, big issue.
And so just in case the operating system had something to do with it (it shouldn’t but still), I loaded up Windows 10, installed MSI’s updating software and made sure everything was the newest version possible before trying the old CPU again.
Same result. Suddenly it dawns on me why I thought the previous motherboard was junk in this budget build pc..
Yes it looks like I’ve bought two motherboards here to find out the hard way that my supplied CPU has burnt out. Great. (Although if it turns out the Gigabyte board still works I’ll be happy with a spare..)
But after time and a fair sprinkling of trial and error, suddenly we arrive here at Project Overkill – a tiny board in a hilariously oversized case, powered by a the equivalent of a nuclear reactor. Hope you enjoy you new computer Sophie!
Project Overkill – budget build PC parts list
MOTHERBOARD – MSI H61M-P20 (G3). $40 off eBay + delivery with the CPU included, it’s a tiny board with a couple of slots for things and precious little else. Now that the Wi-Fi card is in there I’m not sure how we’re going to wedge a graphics card in there above it but that’s a problem for another time. But I like MSI gear a lot and since this worked right out of the box (with the right processor), that’s another thumbs up for the brand from me.
CPU – Pentium G630. Thrown in with the Motherboard when I bought if off eBay, boy oh boy am I glad this low end processor came included so I could finally discover what was causing me all this budget build pc related grief. Interestingly enough even though it’s a) underpowered and b) practically worthless, the integrated graphics on it are still at enough of a level to handle Roblox just fine.
Once you update Windows 10 within an inch of it’s life first though.
Arriving soon though: An Intel Core i5-3570 CPU. 75% better in just about everything it does compared to the Pentium holding fort currently, it’s cost me a hilarious $5 for the CPU and $4 to post to my house. It should be cheap and cheerful upgrade for sure!
CPU FAN – Stock one. Still going strong.
RAM- 10 combined gigs of not sure. A pair of mixed sticks I grabbed when putting things together. I’d pull them out to have a look but I don’t want to upset the machine spirit and I don’t think it matters really.
GPU – Ha ha what? No time for that malarky in this budget build PC! Not with the integrated graphics on the G630 able to handle Roblox and YouTube just fine. And when the i5 3750 arrives, it’ll go from intel HD on board to Intel HD 2500 – whoosh! (Although I’m not sure it’s going to handle Sims 3 which she’s keen to play: Works just fine for any basic web browsing or watching videos. Don’t expect it to deliver on any games, though. Usually won’t run at a playable framerate on anything other than the most optimized/basic games)
WIFI CARD – Asus PCE-AC68. Another edition in Mal’s big box of goodies, the tri antenna setup came with a broken stick but still picks up the signal in our house just fine. It’s been working hard over the week update Windows 10. The install disk supplied was well behind it’s updates so there was a lot of catching up to do..
DVD Drive – Something ASUS? It’ll barely get used considering everything’s a download now.
PSU – Antec Earthwatts 750. And it came with enough extensions to drown an IT department. Part one of two of ‘bits that are complete overkill’ here, this PSU is now going to have the laziest existence in history as it’ll barely need to think at all to get the system up and running. It’s powering a basic board, a stock fan and no GPU. Therefore I expect it to gain weight soon enough from lack of actual activity.
The other part of the complete overkill here? Well, that’d be this budget build pc’s monster shell..
CASE – Thermaltake Armor+. Oh mother of god is this thing a monster. It’s huge and just fits under Sophie’s desk. It’s got space for 14 drive bays, 14! It’s got air flow for years (especially with the tiny board in there) and enough leftover real estate to smuggle a family or two across any border in the world. Not to mention that if you threw this thing at someone a) You won’t damage the case at all, it seems as strong as hell and b) at 16.8kg empty, it’ll probably knock someone out cold.
What are the front metal flaps for? No idea. Could this thing stop a bullet? Undoubtedly. Would I have been better served with a smaller case? For sure! But when it’s the only one at hand for my budget build pc, well beggars can’t be choosers can they?
(While Mal managed to work the space in this thing, it’s highly doubtful I’m going to get anywhere near that level with this current build..)
Combined in their massive spacious housing, it’s up and running and hasn’t fallen over yet! Winner!
Finally a shout out to CeX
I mentioned before how the price of things have gone up when buying computer spares for your own budget build PC via Facebook and Gumtree. Therefore I’m super happy I discovered We Buy CeX here in Australia, a store I used to visit a few times when we lived on the Gold Coast. They’ve got an online shop with second hand parts that are very affordable and for older builds like this, in some cases super affordable.
I mentioned before the i5 3570 that’s cost me all of 9 bucks delivered to my door, that’s coming from CeX. Looking on Facebook there was no local version to buy and the cheapest one I could find was $20 not including postage. Unbranded ram is pretty cheap there, 16gb which would be more than ample for my build above would set me back a little over $20. A year or so ago I bought my son a GTX 1650 from CeX and it’s been working perfectly to fill that GPU sized hole ever since.
They don’t sell motherboards, fans or power supplies but there’s a whole heap of other gear there for budget builds so enjoy!
Update: Now with a better brain
The i5 3570 arrived and it was painfully simple to swap over and get running (massive thanks to Eden at work who suggested all I do first is remove the motherboard battery first). The bios detected the new CPU and once I give it a look over in the pre boot settings, away we went. No having to wipe drives or reinstall windows, winner!
Now to find a cheap graphics card eventually..