It’s a bit long in the tooth, but you’d be surprised what you can get away with playing on a card this affordable-titles like CS:GO, League of Legends, and Dota 2 should run beautifully at 1080p, while games like Fortnite, Overwatch, and Rocket League may require ratcheting down the resolution a bit to stay at 60 frames per second. On the low end, you can probably find an NVIDIA GTX 650 for cheap, as they usually sell for around $35 on eBay. Again, you’ll want to hunt the used market for the best deals, and this is one area where e-waste centers probably don’t have what you need-but eBay just might.
SITES WITH SUPER CHEAP STEAM GAMES PC
Whitson GordonĪn office PC can handle day-to-day tasks just fine, but we’re gunning for a gaming rig here, which means you’ll need to pop in a dedicated graphics card.
The graphics card For little money, the NVIDIA GTX 650 can get you a long way. It didn’t have a hard drive, but even with that caveat, it was the best deal I could find-a hard drive is a pretty cheap addition. I found a few contenders here in the San Diego area where I live, but eventually went with a Craigslisted Dell Optiplex 9010 that hit all my requirements for only $50.
That sounds like a lot of caveats, but as you browse through the shelves at the e-waste center (or through photos on Craigslist), you’ll be able to spot these things pretty quickly. (There are 8-pin to 24-pin adapters out there, but I’m hesitant to use power supply adapters like these since many are cheaply or incorrectly made.) It isn’t strictly necessary-many people will be just fine with the included power supply and a low-power graphics card like I’ll be using here-but it’s nice to have the option in the future.
SITES WITH SUPER CHEAP STEAM GAMES UPGRADE
Some of these office PCs use a smaller, non-standard 8-pin power connector, which means you won’t be able to upgrade your power supply in the future. But if you’re planning on adding a bit more power to this build, you may want to narrow your search to models that use a standard 24-pin power socket on the motherboard. If you’re just building a cheap PC to get you by until you can build a new, high-end rig in a few months, you don’t need to worry too much about compatibility with future upgrades. You’re looking for something that, ideally, has a second-generation Intel Core i5 processor (in which the four-digit number after i5 starts with a 2) or newer processor-an i3 might get you by, but avoid Core 2 Quads and other lower-end CPUs if you can.įinally, think about your upgrade plans for this machine. If you can find a Lenovo, HP, or Compaq machine with similar specs for a good price, you can use those too, but they’re a bit harder to come by. There are a few different types of office-oriented PCs out there, but the Dell Optiplex is one of the more common and the one I’d recommend for this conversion. The tower You’ve basically saved this poor PC tower from endlessly running Excel. My goal was to build something for only $100 (because hey, I like a challenge), but I’ll lay out parts in a few different price ranges for those who have more to spend. (We’re assuming you already have a general idea of what goes into building a gaming PC-if you don’t, you should definitely become acquainted with our PC building guide first.) Lay out your budget, figure out which computer parts will fit into it, then start your hunt. And since “Gaming” doesn’t just mean playing the latest graphical behemoths on launch day, you can also dig further back to classic masterpieces on stores like GOG.com.Īs with any PC build, it helps to plan things out before you actually go shopping. Of course, you’ll also be able to grab games from a couple years ago during a Steam sale and play them without much issue, for super cheap.
(If you run into any trouble, though, YouTube channel LowSpecGamer has a lot of tricks for playing newer games below the minimum system requirements.) It doesn’t look like much now, but with a little love, this baby will help you win hundreds of battles. Depending on the upgrades you make, higher-end games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider might be playable if you’re willing to turn the resolution down to 720p. It will, however, handle a lot of lower-requirement esports titles like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, League of Legends, Fortnite, Overwatch, and Rocket League. Even with a few upgrades, a low-end PC such as the Dell Optiplex I found won’t be playing all the latest triple-A titles at high resolutions with beautiful, ray-traced graphics. Before you start hunting for hardware, you’ll need to set your expectations.
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