Take parts from dell laptop from gaming PC

Tim Robbins

Hi,

My son is mad to build a gaming PC. I am just concerned about overall price. So was thinking to use some parts from an existing dell latitude 3570 latop. For example, think I could use the CPU, RAM and / or the SSD.

So wondering, in general for a budget of say 500 euro's what is achievable here.

I need cabinet, motherboard, graphics card, power supply, cooler? What else?

Any tips appreciate.

Cordell

From a laptop you can only potentially reuse the SSD, laptop CPUs (even if they are removable) and laptop RAM cannot be used in desktops. And 500 euros is not quite enough for a gaming PC built from new parts, you're probably looking at about 700 for an entry level gaming PC.

smuggler.ie

I suspect your son might have more knowledge about how to build PC then you (sorry about that 🙂) , just hand your credit card....

Perhaps worth to have a look at prebuild gaming machines from Lenovo and Dell

minitrue

€500 is doable, even all new a couple of ways. You could go with something like an AMD Ryzen 5 5600G and use it's onboard graphics for now. They would be €50 more than the below but realistically they you should spend the full €500 by getting faster ram, nicer case and a 1TB ssd.

Going the other way and getting a graphics card it boils down to that ssd and if you are happy to take a used gpu from say CEX or if you want all new. My guess is your ssd is too small (like 120GB) to be worth breaking up the laptop for and that helps take new graphics cards out of the equation as you would be cutting every corner just to get something pretty bad in there and even if the SSD is fine you'll still won't be getting anything too great in as a new gpu.

So I'd probably say that something like the following with a 580 8GB for €150 used from CEX (with their warranty) would be what I'd do if you can stretch the extra €25ish and if you can't then a 570 4GB for €120. You could swap to an Intel 12100F and H610 board or even a 10105F and even cheaper board. The 5600 (not G) and faster ram would both be nicer but that's probably another €70. Likewise a nicer case and a bigger ssd would be great but €500 means luxuries are few and far between and it's more a very usable starter build you could upgrade while being good enough to actually use while they save and research enough to decide where and if they want to spend their own hard earned cash ;)

[b]CPU:[/b] [url=https://de.pcpartpicker.com/product/yq2WGX/amd-ryzen-5-5500-36-ghz-6-core-processor-100-100000457box]AMD Ryzen 5 5500 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor[/url]  (€103.90 @ Amazon Deutschland)

[b]Motherboard:[/b] [url=https://de.pcpartpicker.com/product/DYNxFT/asus-tuf-gaming-b450m-plus-ii-micro-atx-am4-motherboard-tuf-gaming-b450m-plus-ii]Asus TUF GAMING B450M-PLUS II Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard[/url]  (€100.43 @ Amazon Deutschland)

[b]Memory:[/b] [url=https://de.pcpartpicker.com/product/mpx2FT/corsair-vengeance-lpx-16-gb-2-x-8-gb-ddr4-3200-memory-cmk16gx4m2e3200c16]Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory[/url]  (€46.99 @ Amazon Deutschland)

[b]Storage:[/b] [url=https://de.pcpartpicker.com/product/4rbTwP/kioxia-exceria-480-gb-25-solid-state-drive-ltc10z480gg8]KIOXIA EXCERIA 480 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive[/url]  (€31.90 @ Amazon Deutschland)

[b]Case:[/b] [url=https://de.pcpartpicker.com/product/nbgQzy/aerocool-cs-1102-atx-mid-tower-case-cs-1102]Aerocool CS-1102 ATX Mid Tower Case[/url]  (€39.85 @ Computeruniverse)

[b]Power Supply:[/b] [url=https://de.pcpartpicker.com/product/8RvZxr/evga-650-bq-650-w-80-bronze-certified-semi-modular-atx-power-supply-110-bq-0650-v1]EVGA 650 BQ 650 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply[/url]  (€50.56 @ Amazon Deutschland)

[b]Total:[/b] €373.63

I haven't bothered trying to work out the exact final price with Irish VAT and delivery but it's close enough.

Motherboard is the cheapest from where I was looking that had bios flashback so you could get a Zen 3 chip in there. If you had access to a suitable chip to flash the bios you could shave a useful bit more off there.

Cordell

Maybe it's better to know what kind of games does he want to play and what are the expectations?

Tim Robbins

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119916818#Comment_119916818

Amazing post. Thanks so much. Is there any reason why you went with AMD over intel for processor? I was thinking Intel i3.

I got a Nvidia 1060 3 gig this morning for 130 from CeX.

A pile of other things to get next.

Homelander

I think it's important to know what games are being played in general. Playing Fortnite and playing Warzone 2.0 are massively different things for example, and at this stage the GTX1060 3GB is not a very good card.

With a budget like that 2nd hand is always a decent option if you know what to look for. I see machines on Adverts that are roughly Ryzen 2nd Gen + GTX1060 6GB/RX580 for around the 400 mark.

Tim Robbins

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119947392#Comment_119947392

We ended up going for Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 4GB GDDR5 - Graphics Cards - PCI-E. 160 on CeX.

minitrue

Ooooops, guess I never replied, I went AMD there just because on the day with trying to meet that budget it looked like the best choice in terms of what sort of motherboard you would end up with and hence what sort of upgrades you could do without having to replace extra things.

Thinking about it right now, but without looking at prices again maybe I'd have picked something with onboard graphics to go with a CeX gpu so you could test a little and use it at least as a basic PC if you found yourself between graphics cards.

It was all a bit artificial to hit the €500 mark with a "no matter what it's not utterly stupid" build but the post as a whole was just meant to offer some advice on ways you could go about making that sort of money enough without things being bad, except the case probably where personally I've always cheaped out on the case as far as isn't insane if it meant any other worthwhile upgrade fit into budget instead ;)

Tim Robbins

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119956442#Comment_119956442

It will come in at around 600. The only way you could hit 500 is to buy more stuff second hand or else go really low spec.