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New build for friends kid

MMOman101MMOman101 Member UncommonPosts: 1,786
edited September 2018 in Hardware
I was talking to a friend of mine and they need a new PC.  His son wants to play Fortnite (maybe other games) and does not like it on a mobile device.  They don't have an operational computer right now and they don't have a lot of disposable income.  I want to be at $470 without the OS/case/Monitor/Mouse/Keyboard.

He wants the PC to last ~5 years, although I am not sure it will be able to play games that are new 5 years from now.

I think I waited a bit too long, as video cards seem to have moved up a bit in price post 20xx launch and reviews.
*****Notes, I can shop at the local Microcenter (Westmont)

Here is what I was thinking of doing:

CPU

Motherboard (Open box)

SSD

Ram (not on the supported list but seems to be supported)

I now need a video card and powersupply. 

I was looking at

Power:

The problem is that leaves with me ~120 bucks for the video card. 

I could go with (comes with a free EVGA Bronze power supply):

Free power:

I can talk to him about getting a bit more budget, or maybe present some different options to see what he thinks.  This would have been easier if I had done it ~3 weeks ago. 

Any help would be greatly appreciated. 


Edit: Does anyone think waiting a few months and doing it closer to Christmas may drop the prices?  If it does I might suggest that. 

“It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”

--John Ruskin







Post edited by MMOman101 on

Comments

  • RidelynnRidelynn Member EpicPosts: 7,383
    edited September 2018
    Black Friday can bring some great deals if you can wait. You just need to be ready to jump on them and then wrap up your build around them
    [Deleted User]
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,351
    One option would be to pick up a used Radeon RX 470/480/570/580 in the $120 budget, which is a lot faster than the GTX 1050 Ti that you're looking at.  Now that the mining craze is over, there are a lot of them on the market.  Be warned that it might have spent the last year mining Ethereum around the clock, however.
    [Deleted User]
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,351
    If you're in the United States, then waiting could easily bring price hikes.  A lot of video cards are made in China, and thus scheduled to be hit by tariffs soon.
  • MMOman101MMOman101 Member UncommonPosts: 1,786
    Quizzical said:
    If you're in the United States, then waiting could easily bring price hikes.  A lot of video cards are made in China, and thus scheduled to be hit by tariffs soon.
    Yeah, I am in the states.  It seems like we have already seen some price increase from just a week ago.  I am not sure if it is tariffs or the normal price raises before the Christmas sales. 

    “It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”

    --John Ruskin







  • MMOman101MMOman101 Member UncommonPosts: 1,786
    Quizzical said:
    One option would be to pick up a used Radeon RX 470/480/570/580 in the $120 budget, which is a lot faster than the GTX 1050 Ti that you're looking at.  Now that the mining craze is over, there are a lot of them on the market.  Be warned that it might have spent the last year mining Ethereum around the clock, however.
    I don't think I want to do that.  Not sure how much life those cards still have in them.  Also I have done some research on the 570/580 and they seem to have temp issues, many of the cards. 

    “It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”

    --John Ruskin







  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,351
    Does "here is what I have" mean salvaged from a different build?  Or are you buying parts piecemeal?
  • MMOman101MMOman101 Member UncommonPosts: 1,786
    Quizzical said:
    Does "here is what I have" mean salvaged from a different build?  Or are you buying parts piecemeal?
    Here is what I am thinking about getting this weekend, as that was the agreement that we had.  I will fix text to make it more clear.

    “It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”

    --John Ruskin







  • MMOman101MMOman101 Member UncommonPosts: 1,786
    I also came up with:

    Does anyone know much about MSI Armor 580:

    or

    XFX 580

    They seem to have temp issues. 

    I see open box of these and sometimes near $200.



    “It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”

    --John Ruskin







  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,351
    If it's just for Fortnite, you could save some money and go with integrated graphics:

    http://www.microcenter.com/product/503184/ryzen-5-2400g-quad-core-am4-boxed-processor-with-wraith-stealth-cooler

    Or, bundled with a cheap motherboard:

    http://www.microcenter.com/product/5002052/amd-ryzen-5-2400g-with-wraith-stealth-cooler,-gigabyte-ga-a320m-s2h,-cpu-motherboard-bundle

    You'd want higher clocked memory if you go that route.  But that will offer several times the GPU performance of the minimum system requirements.  It's also easy to add a discrete video card later if that becomes necessary, after the price it costs for a given level of performance drops considerably.

    I'm not saying that you should go with an integrated GPU, or with a used video card.  I'm just saying that they're options, and ways to fit a small budget.

    What makes you say that the RX 580 options have temperature issues?  The coolers linked look to me like they'd be fine if you have plenty of case airflow.  If you don't like the temperatures you end up with, you can throttle back the turbo a little and bring peak power consumption way down that way.  I'm not 100% certain that Polaris cards have the same Radeon WattMan features as Vega cards, but in the latter, it's easy to reduce your max clock speeds and bring max power consumption way down, without affecting what the card does other than under heavy loads.

    The reason I brought up the Polaris 10/20 cards (Radeon RX 470/480/570/580) is that they were a favorite of miners, and so there are a lot of them available used now.  A GeForce GTX 1060 will offer performance in that ballpark, too, and could be cheaper or more expensive on a given day as prices bounce around.
    [Deleted User]
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,351
    While the integrated GPU in the chip I linked above isn't competitive with any of the discrete GPUs we've been discussing, it's a lot more capable than you might expect.  It would be competitive with or faster than pretty much any discrete GPU you could get new for under $100.  Getting that plus a decently capable quad core CPU and motherboard all for $170 is a way to save a lot of money if your friend really doesn't have much available to spend.  
  • MMOman101MMOman101 Member UncommonPosts: 1,786
    The only problem I have the 2xxx Ryzen CPUs is the 4xx MB are more expensive.  I honestly want to limit time investment somewhat on the build and don't want to introduce variables that may cause me to spent time troubleshooting.  I have read some stories of real issues when mixing the 3xx MB with the 2xxx CPUs.

    “It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”

    --John Ruskin







  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,351
    MMOman101 said:
    The only problem I have the 2xxx Ryzen CPUs is the 4xx MB are more expensive.  I honestly want to limit time investment somewhat on the build and don't want to introduce variables that may cause me to spent time troubleshooting.  I have read some stories of real issues when mixing the 3xx MB with the 2xxx CPUs.
    The potential problem with mixing an 3xx chipset motherboard with a newer CPU is that the motherboard's initial BIOS didn't support the newer CPU, so you'd need a newer BIOS.  But updating the BIOS requires having a CPU that the older BIOS supports.

    Micro Center probably wouldn't be dumb enough to bundle a CPU with a motherboard that can't support it out of the box.  And if they do, then you have a pretty good excuse to yell at them.  In the case of the particular motherboard I linked, Gigabyte issued the relevant BIOS update last December, and it was less than a month after their first BIOS.

    I'd be really surprised if they didn't move to shipping motherboards with the newer BIOS that supports the CPUs that most people would buy for that motherboard, as they surely wouldn't enjoy the product return rates if they didn't.  But I don't know for certain what they did.  Buying exactly the same motherboard model early this year might have been a problem, but it's much less likely to be a problem today.  A motherboard with three monitor ports isn't targeted mainly at first generation Ryzen (which had no integrated GPU), and while it could support the older Bristol Ridge APUs, those were a minor niche product that even AMD didn't seem to care much about.

    Still, I'm not trying to say that you definitely should do this or that.  A lot depends on your budget, and as you said, potential issues with reliability.  I'm just trying to bring up some reasonable possibilities.
  • VrikaVrika Member LegendaryPosts: 7,888
    edited September 2018
    How about buying PS4 or XBox? If you build a PC as cheap as possible, then you're in a situation where many modern games have trouble running, whereas a gaming console is cheap and will run all the games for you.

    Though it depends on if the kid wants to play Fortnite with a controller. A PC with keyboard + mouse is better for FPS games.
    [Deleted User]
     
  • RemyVorenderRemyVorender Member RarePosts: 3,991
    Graphics card prices are outrageous, and will kill the target price of any budget build. Crypto currency be damned. 

    Joined - July 2004

  • MMOman101MMOman101 Member UncommonPosts: 1,786
    Vrika said:
    How about buying PS4 or XBox? If you build a PC as cheap as possible, then you're in a situation where many modern games have trouble running, whereas a gaming console is cheap and will run all the games for you.

    Though it depends on if the kid wants to play Fortnite with a controller. A PC with keyboard + mouse is better for FPS games.
    I think my friend would like to have an operational PC in the house.  If he is going to get one, he would rather get one that he can also let his kids play on.  Especially if the it only cost a few hundred more and can last 4-5 years. 

    I know for a lot of people on this site it seems insane not to have an operational PC for over a year. 

    “It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”

    --John Ruskin







  • MMOman101MMOman101 Member UncommonPosts: 1,786
    Quizzical said:
    MMOman101 said:
    The only problem I have the 2xxx Ryzen CPUs is the 4xx MB are more expensive.  I honestly want to limit time investment somewhat on the build and don't want to introduce variables that may cause me to spent time troubleshooting.  I have read some stories of real issues when mixing the 3xx MB with the 2xxx CPUs.
    The potential problem with mixing an 3xx chipset motherboard with a newer CPU is that the motherboard's initial BIOS didn't support the newer CPU, so you'd need a newer BIOS.  But updating the BIOS requires having a CPU that the older BIOS supports.

    Micro Center probably wouldn't be dumb enough to bundle a CPU with a motherboard that can't support it out of the box.  And if they do, then you have a pretty good excuse to yell at them.  In the case of the particular motherboard I linked, Gigabyte issued the relevant BIOS update last December, and it was less than a month after their first BIOS.

    I'd be really surprised if they didn't move to shipping motherboards with the newer BIOS that supports the CPUs that most people would buy for that motherboard, as they surely wouldn't enjoy the product return rates if they didn't.  But I don't know for certain what they did.  Buying exactly the same motherboard model early this year might have been a problem, but it's much less likely to be a problem today.  A motherboard with three monitor ports isn't targeted mainly at first generation Ryzen (which had no integrated GPU), and while it could support the older Bristol Ridge APUs, those were a minor niche product that even AMD didn't seem to care much about.

    Still, I'm not trying to say that you definitely should do this or that.  A lot depends on your budget, and as you said, potential issues with reliability.  I'm just trying to bring up some reasonable possibilities.
    The Bold:  I am not so sure about that.  Who knows how long some of these MB have been sitting in a warehouse.

    I really don't want to have to flash the BIOS.  There is no easy way for me to do that.  I just don't want to get into a situation where I have to return a bunch of parts and pick new parts.  I am not getting paid for the build, and don't really want to waste an entire day dicking with it. 

    I like my friend and want to help him out.  I just don't want to push myself into a time sink to save him ~40 bucks.

    I may have to just hit him up and see if he is willing to scrape a little more together.

    “It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”

    --John Ruskin







  • VrikaVrika Member LegendaryPosts: 7,888
    edited September 2018
    MMOman101 said:
    Vrika said:
    How about buying PS4 or XBox? If you build a PC as cheap as possible, then you're in a situation where many modern games have trouble running, whereas a gaming console is cheap and will run all the games for you.

    Though it depends on if the kid wants to play Fortnite with a controller. A PC with keyboard + mouse is better for FPS games.
    I think my friend would like to have an operational PC in the house.  If he is going to get one, he would rather get one that he can also let his kids play on.  Especially if the it only cost a few hundred more and can last 4-5 years. 

    I know for a lot of people on this site it seems insane not to have an operational PC for over a year. 
    Yes, in that case a PC is better.

    Though if getting a new machine is more about getting operational PC, then there are $100 devices like:
      https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834268947R&cm_re=chromebook-_-34-268-947R-_-Product
     
  • OzmodanOzmodan Member EpicPosts: 9,726
    MMOman101 said:
    Quizzical said:
    MMOman101 said:
    The only problem I have the 2xxx Ryzen CPUs is the 4xx MB are more expensive.  I honestly want to limit time investment somewhat on the build and don't want to introduce variables that may cause me to spent time troubleshooting.  I have read some stories of real issues when mixing the 3xx MB with the 2xxx CPUs.
    The potential problem with mixing an 3xx chipset motherboard with a newer CPU is that the motherboard's initial BIOS didn't support the newer CPU, so you'd need a newer BIOS.  But updating the BIOS requires having a CPU that the older BIOS supports.

    Micro Center probably wouldn't be dumb enough to bundle a CPU with a motherboard that can't support it out of the box.  And if they do, then you have a pretty good excuse to yell at them.  In the case of the particular motherboard I linked, Gigabyte issued the relevant BIOS update last December, and it was less than a month after their first BIOS.

    I'd be really surprised if they didn't move to shipping motherboards with the newer BIOS that supports the CPUs that most people would buy for that motherboard, as they surely wouldn't enjoy the product return rates if they didn't.  But I don't know for certain what they did.  Buying exactly the same motherboard model early this year might have been a problem, but it's much less likely to be a problem today.  A motherboard with three monitor ports isn't targeted mainly at first generation Ryzen (which had no integrated GPU), and while it could support the older Bristol Ridge APUs, those were a minor niche product that even AMD didn't seem to care much about.

    Still, I'm not trying to say that you definitely should do this or that.  A lot depends on your budget, and as you said, potential issues with reliability.  I'm just trying to bring up some reasonable possibilities.
    The Bold:  I am not so sure about that.  Who knows how long some of these MB have been sitting in a warehouse.

    I really don't want to have to flash the BIOS.  There is no easy way for me to do that.  I just don't want to get into a situation where I have to return a bunch of parts and pick new parts.  I am not getting paid for the build, and don't really want to waste an entire day dicking with it. 

    I like my friend and want to help him out.  I just don't want to push myself into a time sink to save him ~40 bucks.

    I may have to just hit him up and see if he is willing to scrape a little more together.
    I shop at Microcenter all the time, if you buy a CPU with integrated graphics they will make sure you get a motherboard that supports it out of the box.  That is your cheapest solution. 

    As to graphics card prices, they have all come down lately, especially Nvidia ones.  Go look at Ebay, dealers are dumping Nvidia inventory and you can get some great prices on new cards.
     
  • WellspringWellspring Member EpicPosts: 1,464
    I would just get the kid a Nintendo switch + tv or computer monitor. He can play fortnite on that, plus a bunch of other family friendly games. 
    Ozmodan
    --------------------------------------------
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,351
    Wellspring said:
    I would just get the kid a Nintendo switch + tv or computer monitor. He can play fortnite on that, plus a bunch of other family friendly games. 
    While that is cheaper, you should also be aware that a Switch is a much lower performance device than even the integrated GPU that I linked above, let alone the discrete cards.  Game consoles also don't allow you to do a lot of the things that you can do on a real computer.  Games for a given console also tend to stop releasing after a while, while a PC can have a much longer lifespan.
    Ozmodan
  • MMOman101MMOman101 Member UncommonPosts: 1,786
    I think I might try to talk him into holding off to closer to the holiday sales.  This does not seem like the best time to buy. 

    “It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”

    --John Ruskin







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