Looking for advice on building a low budget SteamBox with some spare parts.

[AristaWarrior]

Hello All,

I'm very new to the PC gaming world. It's something I wanted to get into, but never really had the time.

My goal is to put together a low budget SteamBox. I figured I'll start off small and then go from there.

I have some spare parts laying around which I will list below. Ultimately what I want to do is pair up the components that will give me the best performance. I would need suggestions on a motherboard, case, and GPU.

2x Intel Core i7-3820
1x Intel Core i7-4790S
2x Intel Xeon E5-2430
1x EVGA 500 Watt PSU
6x Transcend 2G 1Rx8 DDR3 1600 ECC RAM
1x Corsair 250 SSD
1x 1TB Western Digital Caviar HDD
1x 860 EMO mSATA SSD - 500GB

I'm aware that most of these components may be legacy, but as mentioned before I don't want to spend too much money on my first build. If possible I would like to spend around $100.00 US.

Thank you in advance for your feedback.

AristaWarrior

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

At a glance I think the motherboard is going to be your biggest problem. They tend to break before CPU's and RAM so prices aren't normally as cheap as you might hope as people look to replace their own broken ones.

I'd look to go with the I7 4790s as its faster and the motherboards seem to be slightly cheaper. The Xeons and 3820K are an older architecture and are very low clocked although the Xeons are hex cores. Still they would be slower overall for most games. Sandy Bridge would also need an X79 motherboard, and a glance at Ebay shows they aren't cheap unless you buy something off brand thats likely to explode..

For the 4790s you would want a z97 or H97 board. Its technically compatible with Z87/H87 but they would need a BIOS update that you wouldn't be able to do yourself without a compatible chip. They aren't all that cheap on Ebay either.

Sorry to say then if your very lucky and manage to score a cheap H97 mobo for $50 that leaves you needing a case and GPU for $50..

One solution would be to keep 4 sticks of RAM, the 4790s, the 250GB SSD, the PSU and the 1TB hdd and sell the rest. See how much you get and put that money back into the build.

Another would be to use the integrated graphics on the 4790s for now and just buy a case and motherboard. But you wont be playing many games on that.

 

[AristaWarrior]

At a glance I think the motherboard is going to be your biggest problem. They tend to break before CPU's and RAM so prices aren't normally as cheap as you might hope as people look to replace their own broken ones.

I'd look to go with the I7 4790s as its faster and the motherboards seem to be slightly cheaper. The Xeons and 3820K are an older architecture and are very low clocked although the Xeons are hex cores. Still they would be slower overall for most games. Sandy Bridge would also need an X79 motherboard, and a glance at Ebay shows they aren't cheap unless you buy something off brand thats likely to explode..

For the 4790s you would want a z97 or H97 board. Its technically compatible with Z87/H87 but they would need a BIOS update that you wouldn't be able to do yourself without a compatible chip. They aren't all that cheap on Ebay either.

Sorry to say then if your very lucky and manage to score a cheap H97 mobo for $50 that leaves you needing a case and GPU for $50..

One solution would be to keep 4 sticks of RAM, the 4790s, the 250GB SSD, the PSU and the 1TB hdd and sell the rest. See how much you get and put that money back into the build.

Another would be to use the integrated graphics on the 4790s for now and just buy a case and motherboard. But you wont be playing many games on that.

Hi Kaamos_Llama,

Thank you so much for your feedback.

I was wondering about those Chinese motherboards. I was looking on AliExpress, but don't want anything exploding on me. As far as a GPU, do you have any recommendations for a decent entry level one?

I'll do some research on Craig's List based on your recommendations and see what I can find as far as motherboard. Should I look for something that has support for the mSATA or is this something I will not be able to use due to CPU limitations if went I with the 4790S? I was thinking of using the 250 SDD for the OS and the mSATA 500 GB for the storage.

AristaWarrior

 

[Oussebon]

If the motherboard has an mSata slot, great. If it doesn't, just use an mSata to sata adapter cable/caddy.

When you say Steambox, what are you expecting to be able to do on it?

 

[AristaWarrior]

Hi,

Play games from my Steam library. Also play games from Microsoft Game Pass.

AW

 

[Oussebon]

And what games might those be?

Matters quite a bit WRT GPU and other components.

 

[AristaWarrior]

Hi Oussebon,

Yeah sorry for my ignorance on the topic. I'm a bit new at this. Mortal Kombat , Civilization, Hunt: Showdown, NBA 2K, Plague Tale, Halo. So basically I don't want buy an Xbox or PS4. I'm trying build my own game console with the parts I do have. I will mostly have to buy a controller for the Steam games....I would assume. I've never played with keyboard and mouse.

I plan to play the games on a 55" 4K TLC TV. Probably not ideal, but that's what I can afford at the moment. ;-)

 

[AristaWarrior]

I've been looking at this mobo:

B85M-G/CSM/SI Micro ATX DDR3 LGA 1150 Motherboard I/O Shield For Asus | eBay

1 Asus B85M-G Motherboard. ASUS: B85M-G. Due to the light and screen setting difference, the item's color may be slightly different from the pictures. Fit for: Desktop. USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Austrilia, France, Germany, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Others.

www.ebay.com

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Hi again. B85 would also require a BIOS update to support a 4790s. The 4X90 chips came out later than the 4X70 ones and had some small changes. It may be you can contact the seller and ask if they can do it for you.

Be careful with buying 7 year old super budget motherboards! I dont have time now but I can have a look later and see if I can find something half decent, or someone else might be able to help before that

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

This is a difficult one. Motherboards arent as cheap as you would hope, and if you are saying you only want to spend $100 its just not possible to get everything. I strongly suggest you try and sell all your odd parts and add that to the budget and you'll have more options. That CPU is still decent and would be a good base for a system IMO.

I hope I don't sound elitist elitist but I'd say $100 budget for the GPU alone is almost minimum. Plague Tale Innocence for example requires at least a GTX 660 or a Radeon 7870 from 2012. A quick glance at Ebay shows that the cheapest of those are going for $50 and its anybodies guess how much more mileage you can get out of an 8 year old card.

At the same time, if you stretched the GPU budget to $120 you can get a brand new RX570. Which will be far superior to any of the second hand cards you can get for not actually much more.

In short I think the best way overall is to sell everything you have surplus, and then:

-Buy a H97 motherboard, to ensure compatibility. Try and get one like this or this with heatsinks on the VRM would be my tip. I don't like the look of those extra cheap Asrock Anniversary boards at all.

-Buy a new RX570.

-Buy whatever ATX mid tower case you can put up with, save your money here.

I'd estimate that will run you $200 to $250, depending on your choice of case and motherboard. Looks like the 3820s are going for around $60 each so selling those alone should get you close.

 

[AristaWarrior]

Dude you're awesome!

Thank you so much for taking the time an researching this. I've never sold anything on eBay, but will definitely give this try.

I actually came across two more 3820s. Don't know much of a market there is for this it's worth a try.

I think I'll increase my budget and purchase the new RX570. For a little more I guess I should get the 8GB model.

Thanks again.

Armando

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

No problem. 8GB is better than 4 GB on the same model, but if you want to play the little bit more game then an 8GB RX580 is only a little bit more then that with the rebate.

I'm not sure how much of a market for the 3820 there is either tbh, but if youre finding them down the back of your sofa you might as well try and sell them. They're a bit of an odd duck CPU, basically a 2600K but for X79 motherboards.

Its usually quite hard to sell stuff on Ebay without a history, but you have to start somewhere I guess. Maybe you could try Craigslist and some other local sites too.

Good luck Let us know how it goes

 

[AristaWarrior]

uggghhh. I can't believe how expensive these motherboards are. I could get my hands on a Supermicro X9DAL-3 Motherboard for free and two 3820's, but don't know if that would be ideal for gaming. Obviously I would need to put money towards a GPU. Any thoughts.?

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I'm afraid there's a lot I don't know about server boards.

I'm sure that ECC RAM combined with a low clocked dual Xeon CPU setup is not going to be optimized for gaming. I'm also not sure what size that board is and whether it would be easy to find a case to fit it. It is possible to run things without a case though if needs be.

On the other hand, you can get it for free, and you didn't want to spend any money. So what have you got to lose?

 

[AristaWarrior]

Hi Guys,

So I think I'm going I need to increase my budget. I'm now thinking $500.00 is what I want to spend.

I was looking at this motherboard.

https://www.amazon.com/MSI-Performance-Crossfire-Motherboard-B450/dp/B07XHH4YG4?th=1

Could you explain what does this mean?

Storage Devices
SATA 6Gb/sAMD B450 Chipset
4 x SATA 6Gb/s ports

AMD CPU
2 x SATA 6Gb/s ports*
* SATA5 and SATA6 ports will be unavailable when installing a M.2 device in M.2 slot.M.21 x M.2 slot (Key M)*
Supports PCIe 3.0 x4 (1st, 2nd and 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen / Ryzen with Radeon Vega Graphics and 2nd Gen AMD Ryzen with Radeon Graphics) or PCIe 3.0 x2 (Athlon with Radeon Vega Graphics) and SATA 6Gb/s standards 2242/2260/2280/22110 storage device

* SATA5 and SATA6 ports will be unavailable when installing a M.2 device in M.2 slot.SATA RAID0/1/10

I'm confused as to what SATA5 and SATA6 will be unavailable when install a M.2 device. Does mean I can't use any additional drives? I mentioned before I have 2x 250 SDD that I was planing to use in a RAID 1 configuration for the OS.

There is only one motherboard left so I have to act fast.

Any recommendations on a CPU?
I was thinking AMD Ryzen CPU.

https://www.amazon.com/AMD-Ryzen-Processor-Radeon-Graphics/dp/B079D3DBNM/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=AMD+Ryzen+3&qid=1591315337&s=electronics&sr=1-4

What are your thoughts?

Any recommendations on a GPU?

I use to work Micro Center so I went to my storage unit and found a case that I bought a few years ago, which I'm going to use.

So.....I have a
1x ATX case
1x EVGA 500 Watt PSU
1x 860 EMO mSATA SSD - 500GB
2x 16GB of what looks like server memory. (Not sure if this will work on this mono) Link to specs below.
https://www.serversupply.com/MEMORY/PC4-19200/16GB/SAMSUNG/M393A2G40EB1-CRC0Q.htm
2x 1x Corsair 250 SSDs

$500 Budget for:
CPU
Motherboard
GPU

Looking to play the following games:
Mortal Kombat , Civilization, Hunt: Showdown, NBA 2K, Plague Tale, Halo, and Resident Evil

Thanks again guys.

A.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Hey I'm sorry I came late, had a lot going on. I'm honestly not sure whether the ECC memory will work in every B450 motherboard. It might but youll have to check the support page from whichever manufacturer you buy from. It's not the best option but if youre getting it free then sure, as long as it works.

If the RAM works you could pick up something like this

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor ($166.89 @ Walmart)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B450 AORUS ELITE ATX AM4 Motherboard ($109.99 @ Best Buy)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER 6 GB TUF GAMING OC Video Card ($229.99 @ Best Buy)
Total: $506.87
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-06-08 15:05 EDT-0400

If the memory you have wont work, this would also be a good option.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1600 (12nm) 3.2 GHz 6-Core Processor ($104.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B450 AORUS ELITE ATX AM4 Motherboard ($109.99 @ Best Buy)
Memory: GeIL EVO SPEAR 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 CL16 Memory ($57.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER 6 GB TUF GAMING OC Video Card ($229.99 @ Best Buy)
Total: $502.96
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-06-08 14:58 EDT-0400

I'm sorry if I'm too late.

EDIT. Also if the SATA ports 5 and 6 are unavailable when using the M2 slots, AFAIK that still leaves 4 SATA ports available for other storage.