My Ultimate Budget Build

[Rainwater]

Man it feels good to be back! I have had a run of luck and am finally ready to build my new budget rig. It started by stumbling across an i5 8600k for 100$ Then I gave myself a budget of 100$ on a motherboard if buying used and Friday I found a Gigabyte z370 Gaming 7 for 100$. I don't how much it retailed for when it was released but it's 375 on Amazon right now. I also picked up a Corsair h110i gt from the guy for an additional 40$. Earlier in the week last week I found a 2x16 kit of cas 14 3200mhz Trident z for 120$ and an EVGA Supernova 750g3 for 50$. Then to top it all off also on Friday I purchased an EVGA gtx 1080ti Hybrid for 420$ and I am ready to slap together a 1440p slaying rig for 830$ I can not begin to say how happy I am right now with the way things worked out. I have an old 512gb ssd and a 3tb hdd and an old Corsair case I'm going to use for now to get up and running and Friday I am purchasing a 27" Acer Predator 1440p gsync display for 275$ I am contemplating ordering the Sabrent Rocket 512gb m.2 for 60$ and a Ubit pcie wifi adapter as well but the time being it's not entirely necessary. I just don't want to install Windows on the sata ssd just to later have to reinstall on an m.2 so I may just get the m.2 now. Within a months time I will also be purchasing a Corsair Carbide 275r Case, I really like it alot and it's only 90$ Now I was totally not expecting to get this nice of a motherboard for 100$ I am blown away at the little amount of money I have invested into this right now. I got onto this platform so cheap that the enthusiast in me wants to upgrade to the 9900k/kf this winter around Black Friday/Cyber Monday/xmas. So there is a very high likelihood that I will and that will lead to me building a custom loop with ek cpu/gpu waterblocks. I figure I sell this 8600k for my 100$ back in a few months and get the 9900k and I'm still under 1200$ into this build. Well before the monitor that is. Anyway I will slap a few pics of the new hardware and I work graveyard, tonight is my Friday so tomorrow afternoon when I get up I will slap this stuff together get going. I am going to Overclock and run this 8600k for a few weeks then I will probably De-Lid it since I have a tool and think it will be fun. Anyway I've chimed in here and there talking about how I wanna build a budget rig for now because I don't feel either platform is quite yet above and beyond the other enough to spend a couple grand doing it. It feels great to be back, thank you all for reading and look forward to hearing from my old Overclockers community.

 

[maxfly]

Nice job finding all that solid gear so cheap!

 

[Rainwater]

Thank you man I was patient. I've made up my mind and for the time being I'm going to hold off on the m.2 and Ubit adapter. I have a low end cheap 450mbps adapter I'll use for now and if it's not enough I'll consider the Ubit later. I can afford it but not comfortably at the moment so in about a month I will get either the Silicon Power or the Sabrent Rocket 512gb for OS and 2tb for games along with my new case.

 

[maxfly]

Yw i know the feeling!
Ive been considering a 1tb sabrent myself. They are excellent performers and the price is really nice. I hear you on keeping the budget in mind... as hard as it can be sometimes. I came into a little extra last week and splurged on a 9900kf($419 was to good to pass up). That will be it for a while tho. At least until i get bit again!
That case is nice, it should be a sweet home for all your new gear. Tbh i didnt notice much difference going from a ssd to nvme so holding off or even bypassing an nvme isnt a bad choice. Altho the form factor is what has me coming back. Its nice to have so little space taken up with drives. It makes the interior of the case so much cleaner without drive bays getting in the way.
Enjoy the the new build!

 

[Blaylock]

Very nice. Subbed for build Pics.

 

[Bill_Bright]

I'm still under 1200$ into this build.

Your patient homework paid off as you got some really good deals. And of course bringing your old case, SSD and HD to the table really helped.

That said, what's considered a "budget" build is all relevant and very subjective. I personally don't know anyone who would consider a computer costing over $1000 a "budget build". In fact, I have always heard ~$500 or less defines that category - as suggested by Lifewire, Windows Central and PC Mag.

In fact, for many, $350 would be a budget buster. On the flip side, some would consider spending anything less than $1500 on just the graphics card is being thrifty.

 

[Rainwater]

Ya, that may be correct. I guess it really just comes down to ones individual budget. I guess my idea was if I can get everything at 50% of retail or less it qualified to me as a budget build. Three years ago I spent well over 2,000$ building the rig in my sig that I haven't updated yet but will. And for literally half of what I spent last time I have built something that's more high end that will crush it. I was shooting for a 1440p 100+ fps rig for under a grand. I could easily find a non gsync display for cheap enough to get there but wth, all in all 1100$ out of my pocket to meet my requirements and have gsync. And should easily be able to chew up and spit out any title at 100+ fps for two more years. I am excited. It's 2019, a 1440p/4k gaming rig under a 1000$ is a budget build.

And yes if I were to upgrade to a 9900k like I suggested I may in the future because I have a sickness and always need stuff I don't need then I would no longer call it my budget build. But for now for just over 800$ in hardware to get me started, with no need to upgrade I'm sittin pretty. I just have absolutely zero confidence in myself being able to not go further and further.

 

[Alaric]

I paid more for my mobo, GPU and RAM then the OP has tied up in a 1080 Ti/6 core Coffee Lake chip build in its entirety. I'd call that a budget build.

 

[Bill_Bright]

And for literally half of what I spent last time I have built something that's more high end that will crush it.

Yeah, I built my first computer for me in 1992 and have built new computers every 3 - 5 years since. And each one since that first has cost less but always had more power, more and faster disk space, more speed, better graphics and typically generated less heat, made less noise and consumed less energy too.

Now if only my next vehicle would give me more for less, I will really be happy. But no doubt, my next vehicle will cost more than my first house cost!

 

[Rainwater]

Damn it I got the bug! This case is so old there is no rad support and I have a 280mm and a 120mm for my gpu. I ordered the Sabrent m.2 and I’m in the car on my way to Best Buy to pick up the last Corsair Carbide 275r they have in stock. I can’t help myself

 

[Rainwater]

But no doubt, my next vehicle will cost more than my first house cost!

Lol, the vehicle I bought three weeks ago costs just under what I have tied up in this rig now with the purchase of the Predator I'll make in the morning.

 

[maxfly]

Damn it I got the bug! This case is so old there is no rad support and I have a 280mm and a 120mm for my gpu. I ordered the Sabrent m.2 and I’m in the car on my way to Best Buy to pick up the last Corsair Carbide 275r they have in stock. I can’t help myself

hahaha i hear ya man. ya gotta do what ya gotta do.
its a good thing microcenter is a hr+ one way drive or i would live there!

 

[Rainwater]

So I'm just going to turn this into a build log. Maybe we can get some more people to chime in over time. I decided against the case for now. I already have most of the hardware in the other one. I can make it work. It's not going to be pretty by any means right now but it will function and for now that is all that matters. The drive bay unscrews into three pieces so I took it apart and the piece that screws into the front fits around the 280mm rad and with some zip ties I will be able to attach the other rad to the other side of it. I will post pice later. Also the upper disk drive bay was tacked on from the factory so I had to grind off the tacs to remove it so I will be able to get this to work. I will eventually upgrade to a better case but I think I will be going with something from Fractal or NZXT.

I also just got home with my Acer Predator XB271HU. I went and saw it hooked up and cycled thru all the colors and could not find one dead pixel. This thing is very clean very well taken care of and is a very nice display. I may have slightly over paid just a tad ay 275$ considering they are only 450$ new these days but it's a fair price. Not a steal like the rest of my stuff was but definitely fair. Here is a quick pic of the monitor in box and later I will post some build pics but do not laugh it is not pretty. It will be in a couple months down the road but right now it's a budget build and functional is all I care about for the time being.

 

[DaveB]

Not getting the $ sign following the amount so 275$ instead of the correct $275. Since I see this a lot lately is it some anti-capitalist thing or is it just something the cool people do these days? Everywhere you look at any price anywhere the $ sign is always first so there's no way anyone could not know that 275$ is wrong.

 

[Bill_Bright]

is it some anti-capitalist thing or is it just something the cool people do these days?

I see it as neither but do note in several foreign countries, the currency symbol is placed after the number. Even here in the US, the correct placement for the cent symbol is after the value - as in 17¢.

 

[trents]

I never thought about it before but actually the word "dollars" comes after the words "two hundred seventy five" when you actually speak it so it kind of makes sense to put the symbol for "dollars" after the numbers.

 

[Rainwater]

Ya that’s how I’ve been doing it all my life when writing sentences. Of course I don’t post something for sale like that. But that’s exactly how my thought process has been when writing.

 

[Rainwater]

Alright well the disc drive bay was tacked on so I had to grind off the ends to get that removed. Then the hdd bay unscrewed into three pieces so I was able to take the piece that screwed into the front and still use that to finally mount my gpu rad. I got lucky and the thing fit right over the 280mm rad I mounted up front. So I have two fans on the front then the 280 rad with one fan mounted to the top of it. Connected a 120mm fan to the gpu rad and had to zip tie that to the remaining piece left over from the hdd bay. Screwed that on over the 280 and hooked one more fan for push pull on the gpu. It’s not pretty right now but it works. Here are a few pics. I still have my desk and my Razer k/b and mouse. Now I’m going to install windows and here soon I’ll do some overclocking and post my results. Then I’m about a month or so I’m going to treat myself for my birthday with a 2tb m.2 and a new case. So when I do my rebuild I will de-lid and see what I can squeeze out of this 100$ cpu. Thanks for tuning in.


First boot up success.

 

[Rainwater]

So I've been super busy but today while I slept all day I decided to work on a quick overclock. I started at 4.8Ghz with 1.295v llc turbo. Idles at 1.296 drops to 1.284 under load. These settings are not verified "stable." Just some quick places to start. Ran Aida 64 Extreme for six hours, and went back into bios and bumped up to 4.9Ghz same voltage. Ran Aida for 5 hours and just stopped it. I am ready to game for a couple hours and we'll see how it holds up. I have no fan software installed yet, haven't needed to. Everything is running very slow and quiet. I have always used speedfan in the past but it does not seem to work on my board. I haven't been able to find anything that's been updated since the Skylake chipset. But I will be doing something about that soon as well. Usually don't like to install any of the Mobo software but may have to use the fan software for Gigabyte. Running a pass on r20 my temps hit 95c. And maxed at 88c on Aida with only the cpu stress test. Gaming I never hit 70c. Did for the first couple days but as everything began to settle it doesnt really pass 65c now. Gpu pretty much always under 50c. I think the highest I have ever seen it get was 53c during a hot day.I just picked up 3 black ml 120 pro fans for 20$. I actually still have 3 blue ones and 2 white ones but really only have one installed. Besides rad fans I have one exhaust as of now so I will put a couple more fans in and get some curves set. Anyway just a quick update mainly because it just gives me something to do.

 

[Vishera]

A word of caution if you do still decide to go with the 275R, the front panel is almost completely sealed off. I've got fans in all three front mounts in mine, and still don't get much breeze coming through them. If you have the computer on your desk all the time, or have hardwood floors, this isn't much of an issue. But if you have carpet, you're gonna find that your case will have significantly reduced airflow. I'd recommend going with a different case, to be honest, but if you're deadset, make sure you have plenty of open space under the opening in the bottom of the front panel.