I’m not about to do the thinking and math required… but I’m curious if this is actually a decent way to go about upgrading on a budget. If this actually gets you a comparable average experience to saving money at the same rate, but only upgrading when you’ve got enough for a whole new build.
Not sure how people do that. It’s not like you can upgrade the processor without the motherboard (at least these days. Socket always seems to change every time I need a new one. And memory type is almost as often.
That’s your fault for buying Intel. AMD boards get several generations. They’ve just switched to AM5. Build a system around that and you could probably throw in a great brand new CPU in about 5 years time and get ten years out of it.
A few months ago I spent 2800€ on a new build with a flagship AMD CPU and GPU.
I lost my shit when I realized I had installed a mobo that supported PCIe 5.0 for storage but only PCIe 4.0 for the card slots, until I checked the specs of my RT7900 XTX and saw that it was also PCIe 4.0, so I was even.
I also ignored the RAM OC compatibility sheet of the mobo, as the manufacturer can never test every possible RAM module, and I got other modules that were still within the supported OC ranges. When I tried to overclock the RAM the system became completely unstable, so I cannot use them to their full potential.
I’m still happy of my non-rgb and non-glass panels build, tho.
One of my SSDs just dangles in the case even though the rest of the build is put together just fine
Got a new SSD and didn’t think to measure out the distance the wire was going to need and it ended up like an inch short so it now just dangles from a little setup I did to remove tension from the connectors
Looks silly but since SSDs don’t have moving parts I see no reason it wont be fine
I’ve had a dangling SSD in my machine for years now, no issues. It’s one of those things you do when on a budget and things don’t work out fully as expected.
I also still habe optical drives in my machine, one of which is only in there because I no longer have the cover for the drive slot. The drive itself is disconnected and dead.
After my last build I had to rewire the case for some reason, which was a pain in the ass. Somehow, after the rewire, the "reset" button became the "on" button, and the "on" button does nothing but light up when the computer is on. I've been saying, "Meh, good enough" for seven years now.
I’ve had a dangling SSD in my machine for years now, no issues. It’s one of those things you do when on a budget and things don’t work out fully as expected.
I just recently (a year ago) pulled my Phenom II x6 out of the old AT case to put in a Dell ATX, and bought a modern power-supply-on-bottom ATX case from Montech for like $100 because it had 6 RGB case fans preinstalled with a glass side panel. I gave the Phenom II x6 to my daughter with a 970 GTX, and got a cheap X570 motherboard and Ryzen 5 3600x to throw in the case. Cost me about $300 all said and done, because I already had all the rest of the stuff. A friend from the local hackerspace gave me his “old” 3060 12gb, because he was upgrading to a 4090, and I couldn’t be happier. I feel like royalty rn even though I know it’s not the best machine out there, lol
But the RGB button stays off. And I use a BRICK of an air cooler, it’s like a knockoff Noctua D12
Also I would definitely recommend getting an IDE to CF or an IDE to SD adapter and backing up the hard drive to an SD/CF card so you don’t lose that data.
…and one thing I neglected to mention is that I no longer have an old enough monitor to go with it, so it’s been a while since I made sure it’s still runnning. Might be gone by now =/
I haven’t had a monitor with a vga port for a long time now (ever since I decided the old crt one I had connected to this old monster was just too bulky). I’m keeping the PC though. It’s my first one (Theseus approved). Haven’t looked to see if any sort of convertor to vga input is remotely viable and it’s not really a priority.
The case is an old extra-tall full tower that doubles as a mouse table. It even sits under an L desk. I just prefer that height when leaning back in my chair.
If you count an old hard drive I’ve always had that going, easiest to use your old app drives any reinstalls may go more quickly plus any media files on there. Though my media is mostly on my NAS, pictures tend to be on a local drive. I’m not sure I’ve ever done a new computer without an old drive and I’ve been doing this for like 25 years. Though I tend to move the old files to a newer drive before the next upgrade so not a true ship of thesus. Though most times the GPU upgrade is done at different times than the CPU/mobo/ram to keep it cheaper.
At this point I replaced my oldest original hard drive. I rebuilt another computer using entirely the parts I replaced. Literal ship of Theseus dilemma right there lol.
I specifically required a case with no windows on my last build. I don’t need to see it, I just need it to work. Plus, I was too cheap to pay for for the same fan in black when the brown works just fine, so it was gonna be kind of ugly in the guts no matter what.
I have a case with no window nor RGB but still proper cable management, lol.
These new cases with all those holes on the internal panel really invite to do a proper cable management just for the sake of it. Also: better cooling I guess, although we don’t have those bulky PATA/IDE cables anymore.
Yes. It’s a workstation that a corporation discarded, with a used 1050Ti, several unmatched RAM sticks and a 500GB SSD duct-taped into one of the HDD bays.
When I was single and moved awhile back I had a $500 gift card to walmart given to us by our company to help us out after a hurricane wrecked the area. I went on Sam’s website and ordered a bed, sheets and pillows. The box for the bed became my computer desk and the boxes for the pillows became my night stands. 5 gallon pickle bucket from a nearby restaurant became my computer chair. I used it like that for a year and a half… then someone came along and we upgraded some things. I looked at it as being poor and ♻️, but others don’t always see it thay way haha
Definitely the bottom one. I have a totally black PC case and one of the case fans has a power cable that’s extended using 2 taped together GPIO cables from my raspberry pi kit. There’s also a hard drive in there that hasn’t been working for 1 year at least
The one hard drive that doesn't work just sitting there is a true testamnet to my false hope. I swapped my psu a year ago and accidentally fried my 2tb hard drive. I got a new rig this summer and still transferred it over and plugged it in with the hope that it would resume life, only for it to be truly dead. It is still sitting in the new rig lol, couldn't be bothered to remove it after testing.
I have a black windowless case to, my hdd is ironicly in the place where the hdd case was put in for shipping purposes (chilling next to the psu). Also I used an anchient 2+4pin pigtail cable together with a 8pin cable to power the gpu.
If you look around you might be able to find a low spec one for cheap or even for free, and if you get really lucky you might find some rich gamer willing to throw away his high spec PC because he/she considers it outdated.
That last one is what happened with me, the guy wanted to throw away the PC because according to him it was 2 years old and thus “outdated”.
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