ignored my own advice. Perhaps you built a new PC from scratch. worst financial environment What an expensive adventure. It took me months of scouring eBay listings, begging, and moaning to build a PC on a meager budget. Was it worth it? Well, let’s break it down.

A few months ago, this same build I made might have totaled less than $1,000 in parts cost. Now, if we calculate this build, All components at current prices Using comparable parts for unavailable components, a mid-size tower with 1440p resolution can cost nearly $1,300 (if you buy an equivalent AM4 motherboard and CPU cooler). In total, I spent about $500 of my own money. The whole process was even more cumbersome than it would have been with new, off-the-shelf components. If I had done that, this PC would have exceeded my self-imposed budget by a bit.

scavenge for parts

Since the valve Announcing the new Steam Machine Late last year, I had my eye on building my own slimmed-down PC for Linux-based gaming. My job is to review PCs, so of course I’m in a privileged position. So I was digging through my old office equipment stock and found an old MSI MEG X570 Godlike motherboard and a NZXT Kraken X62 280mm liquid cooler. These parts are so old that you won’t be able to find new ones outside of bargain bins. At first I thought they were old-fashioned, but when the price of DDR5 RAM started rising, these parts became the framework for the first personal desktop PC I built in years.

This cooler is very old and uses a mini USB to connect to the motherboard. The “godlike” MSI motherboard was launched in 2019 for the Ryzen 3000 series of AM4 CPUs (an older socket built for AMD processors before the current AM5). To work with the latest Ryzen 5000 series, you will need to update the BIOS before doing anything. This caused the problem because the motherboard does not have its own video output.

i had in hand AMD Radeon RX 9060XT Sent to me for review. When I first got this card, the suggested retail price for this card was $350. in spite of AMD’s promise to keep GPU prices lowthis card can only be found new for nearly $450. I originally planned to use the ancient full-sized tower that housed the last hand-me-down PC. It was too big, too noisy, and too uncomfortable. I asked my Hyte contact. Latest $150 X50 Medium Tower It features smooth curves and a modern design. I’m very happy. As for power, I was lucky enough to get a Corsair CX750M for about $60. This was the least painful purchase of this entire process.

The end result is a Frankenstein’s monster of a PC, a hodgepodge of modern and venerable components that somehow manages to work even when running a Linux-based operating system. It’s the square pegs and round holes of the game console, a fledgling child who is already outdated before he even crawls.

My motherboard is too old to recognize my old CPU

The ongoing memory shortage is impacting the price of all components, not just those with some memory. PC manufacturers started stocking up on older, slower DDR4 RAM as DDR5 memory manufacturers increased the price of their sticks by 500%. As DDR4 became more expensive to resell, so did the older AM4 platforms that supported that memory type. My original intention was to buy an older AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU, or failing that, a Ryzen 7 5700X3D with slightly less performance.

These CPUs were notoriously strong contenders and were so powerful that resellers were jacking up the prices of these chips across the board. I scoured reseller listings for weeks and refused to pay about $450 for a 3 year old processor. Instead, I saw a Ryzen 7 5800XT on sale at Microcenter for $180 and snapped it up. The performance is clearly lower than the famous gaming 3D cache CPU. If you wanted this PC to stay within your budget, there was no other choice.

Then came the memory challenge. I purchased two used sticks of 16GB G.Skill Ripjaws DDR4-4400 memory from eBay for about $140. Prices have fluctuated in recent weeks, but most products are selling at a similar rate for used sticks for $100 or more. SSDs are also becoming more expensive. Luckily, I had a 1TB Samsung 870 Evo SATA drive that I had saved from a planned build over two years ago. I bought the drive on sale for less than $80. The same drive currently costs $150. Amazon. It will sell for much more elsewhere.

With all these compiled components, the challenge was making sure they all ran. AM4 socket MSI motherboards do not support Ryzen 5000 series without a BIOS update. Fortunately, the board includes its own on/off button (modern boards don’t have one) and a small screen that lets you know if an update is complete (during normal use, it primarily serves as a playful screen displaying MSI’s mascot, the Lucky Karate Chopping Ninja).

I have tried many times to get the MSI BIOS file. After a good deal of searching online, I found that I needed to rename the .A10 file to MSI.ROM before the board would accept it. This may be self-evident to long-time PC builders, but for me it brought teeth-gnashing levels of madness. After successfully flashing the BIOS and finally seeing my XFX Radeon RX 9060 XT’s fan begin to hum, I felt more than relieved, but less satisfied.

Hyte’s X50 case was a breath of fresh air

The cooler was also a place of confusion. There are three separate wires coming out of the top for the pump, the fan, and the Infinity Mirror Light, which uses a mini USB port that I haven’t seen in a while. Hyte cases are not technically spec’d for 280mm radiators. It fit onto the front panel without too much effort and left some space in case you needed an additional fan.

After testing everything on the outside of the case, I was able to cram everything inside Hyte’s X50 tower. In this regard, having at least the latest components is very welcome. Although Hyte’s case is designed for high airflow, it does not support a top-mounted fan to ensure that rising heat escapes through the top. The case maker also sent me a bunch of fans to stick into all the remaining cavities ($40 extra for a pack of 4). This case has plenty of ways to route cables under and behind the motherboard. Both side panels come off by simply lifting them off, but doing so inevitably leaves finger stains on the glass panels, requiring fine fingers or gloves to keep the machine clean.

The entire case is designed to push airflow from the bottom up through the back and sides, creating a medium pressure environment. This means that the amount of cold air coming in is equal to the amount of hot air leaving. We were able to create an environment where cool air passes through the radiator and exits through the side and back panels. For optimal performance, you will need to access the BIOS and adjust the fan speed. Cable management will also need to be revisited. The good news is that Hyte offers a plethora of Velcro strips to play with. Some products include a built-in bracket for storing power and connection cables. The box also comes with another pack for the remaining free-floating cables.

My big complaint is that the stock fans Hyte sent me aren’t as easy as I imagined them to be. The included genuine screws tend to cross each other. Other fans of this kind also snap together with magnets for easy installation. I would also like to use contrasting colors for these fans. The case is made to look stylish, not for gamers. However, I’m going to rack this up with some RGB strips if I can.

Buying old parts means ruining your future self

The end result is the bare minimum PC you need to reach your full gaming potential at 1440p resolution. At 4K, if you want to push ray tracing in some games for more realistic lighting, the 9060 XT and 5800XT don’t have what you need to reach close to 60 fps.

The bigger problem is that the upgrade path for this PC is necessarily limited. I hope to be able to install two more 16GB DDR4 RAMs and eventually upgrade to a Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU. Other than installing a more modern GPU (hopefully not bottlenecked by the CPU) in the slot, that’s it. This is the end of what you can do with a machine like this. If you want to upgrade everything after 3 years, you’ll have to delete everything and start over, depending on your socket and RAM choices.

The longer you wait to upgrade, the more expensive the components will be. This device only has 1TB of SSD storage. My plan was to shove another SSD into the Hyte’s convenient rear SATA compartment and install Microsoft’s OS so I could dual-boot Bazzite and Windows 11. While I was writing this article, the 1TB SSD I was considering increased from $100 to $125. The longer you wait, the worse prices will get.

You can spend $2,000 or more on a preconfigured machine like iBuyPower or Maingear, but you’ll still end up with a hefty price tag for DDR5. Pricing for Valve’s Steam Machine is not yet known. The makers of Steam are PC/console hybridization delayed While they are trying to solve the memory dilemma. Their device is still in the same location as my current PC, but the upgrade possibilities are limited.

All I can say is that the experience of building and owning a PC is still worth the effort. Would you like to change your original advice? No, it’s still an absolutely terrible time to build a PC.