Minimal gaming build. Minecraft and CSS.

milltown

I have an old Dell celeron machine under the desk here that I convinced my dad was no longer up to the job of his bits and pieces of office stuff, in conjunction with the rest of the family's itunes/media needs about a year ago. It occurred to me that if I could set it up with Minecraft, CSS & Gmod and Youtube, that I could have the good computer back, all to myself (and the wife).

Having put a fresh XP on it and installing Minecraft, and watching it stutter along at about 3fps I realise my plan was flawed.

The question now is; do I buy a 2nd hand mobo, processor and ram on Adverts to fit the box, that will be up to the job? Do I try and buy a 2 - 4 year old machine? (presuming that anything of relatively recent vintage will the above two games). Or is there any sense in stretching to a new bum-basic machine capable of running Win8 and either leave as is, or put Win7 on and get a bit extra out of it?

TIA.

yawhat!

What's your budget?

milltown

Say under €200 for upgrading the guts of what's there?
Maybe €3/400 for replacing it. I see a bread and butter HP box on Harvey Normans for €350 so it would need to be a decent 2nd hand machine to warrant more money. The problem is, people who buy a PC in a box tend to greatly over-estimate how much value their computer holds after a year or two. And the people who build their own either upgrade a bit at a time, or spec them way beyond what I need.

Initially, this beast will be powering a 17" monitor btw, until the kitty recharges itself again.

yawhat!

How does this look? I'd splash another 50 or so to get a 7870. Theres not really any point updating your PC cause you have old sockets

Item|Price
AMD FX-6300 Prozessor, Boxed, Sockel AM3+|€97.69
4GB G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9|€34.55
be quiet! SYSTEM POWER 7 400W - bulk -|€41.48
ASRock 960GC-GS FX, Sockel AM3+, mATX|€42.63
WD Blue 1TB 6Gb's|€51.18
Sharkoon VS3-Standard Rot, ohne Netzteil|€21.20
HIS HD 7790 iCooler GDDR5 1024MB DP/2xDVI/HDMI|€104.77
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€412.49

milltown

Wow! Good work, thanks.
Also, you've just reminded me that I have an Antec case and PSU in the attic that I had intended selling a while back, then forgot about. If memory serves, there's a 450w PSU in it. Would the 400w you specced there be up to the job these days? Once I stopped gaming on PCs I quickly lost track of speed and power trends.

milltown

Ordered most of those bits over the weekend, bar the case and PSU, which I had. Paid by Paypal and got a confirmation e-mail from Hardwareversand.

Out of curiosity, how long do they typically take to ship?

Jet Black

4-5 working days. I ordered Wednesday morning, arrived in Ireland Friday night. Getting my stuff today.

milltown

Jet Black wrote: »

4-5 working days. I ordered Wednesday morning, arrived in Ireland Friday night. Getting my stuff today.

Cool. I've Friday off so hopefully I can spend it building