Alright, first up, there is no such thing as a "Gaming Computer on the Cheap." It's either a gaming computer, or it's just a computer. Gaming Computers can be "budget friendly" for Gaming Computers, but they're still not cheap. They can be "on the cheap" in comparison to other gaming computers, but they're still really not cheap.
That said, my son and I built his first gaming computer. Budget friendly (for me), meaning I'm not going to miss a mortgage payment or put the family into financial jeopardy and distress to get this done. And now! It is done.
There is actually some backstory to this gaming computer that I won't bore anyone with, but the tl;dr of it all is that oldest son now has a job to help pay it off, and there will be some computer juggling and hand-me-downing going on, so all is good.
If you've ever put a computer together before, it is both exhilarating and frustrating at the same time. But, omg, it is so much nicer to do now than it was 10 years ago.
We spent a lot of time on pcpartpicker.com. What an awesome site that is. It let's you plug and play components into a 'build' and it will let you know if the component pieces work together, right down to the case.
I didn't want to skimp, but also didn't want to lose the house over this. Interestingly, my son and I had different budgets in mind; mine was substantially smaller than his.
The Build
First up... the case
Yes, here is the case, lying on it's side on my green work table. There's nothing fancy about this case; it's a mid-tower ATX case with a glass side. Plenty of room for all the cables, room for some more peripherals if needed. He's not running LCD light strings at all, so no need to worry about any of that.
The Motherboard
An MSI B450 GAMING PLUS Max. At $99 this falls into the "budget/cheap-ass-dad" category of motherboards, but it has all that is required for the aspiring gamer. It will support up to 64gb of ram, AMD B450 chipset, support for multiple drives, USB, yadda yadda. It apparently stays nice and cool, too, which is a bonus.
The CPU
AMD Ryzen 5 1600. It's a 2017 CPU and runs at a smooth 3.9 Ghz.
Memory
16GB of memory. The boy wanted more. I reminded him that I'm footing the bill. That said, I always try to stuff at least 16GB ram into any computer, regardless of it's purpose. The DDR4 3000 is speedy enough that he won't have any issues with it.
Look! It's all beginning to come together.
Storage
I do have several drives sitting around the house; a couple of mSata drives, a 256gb SSD, and a couple spindle drives upwards of 1TB each. We got a 512GB SSD for the primary drive, and I let him have one of my spare 1TB HDD's for a drive D. The motherboard doesn't support mSata drives, so I'm keeping those for some future need.
Power
A new power supply, of course. I can honestly say I was unaware of the power supply options available, and this one required some research. Ultimately we/I settled on an EVGA 450BR, 80+ Bronze.
The GPU/Graphics Card
This was the biggest source of contention between my son and I. He would tell me his "requirements." I would tell him mine (which usually revolved around the statements, "I'm paying a mortgage." "We still want to eat." "Fuck that one.").
The child actually told me once, "Let's wait a day and see if the prices go down." Hah. I humoured him. We waited a day. The prices most certainly did not go down.
We ended up with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 from eBay, on the grounds that he's going to pay me half of it over the next few months when he starts receiving paycheques. I will admit, though, it looks really nice. I was a little concerned that the power supply wasn't going to be able to supply enough power, but I'm pleasantly mistaken.
So far, so good. Computer has been running for the past two hours and has yet to burst into flames.
All in all, the entire thing did not cost me a mortgage payment, which is nice. We both learned something new about modern technology and building a PC, which is also nice, and he has a mid-tower sized computer that he'll be able to upgrade when money starts coming in.
Now I want to watch him play Phasmophobia in full VR.
(c) All images and photographs, unless otherwise specified, are created and owned by me.
(c) Victor Wiebe
About Me
Amateur photographer. Wannabe author. Game designer. Nerd.
General all around problem-solver and creative type.
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