I was bored so i decided to challenge myself and make the "most performance for dollar for the cheapest amount i could think of" pc build
so a lot of parts needed to be sourced from the cheapest parts from newegg.
for the pc case we went for this janky guy... 52 bucks and with cable managment options that would probably make a lot of people cry. However hey... lets thunder forth with this ridiculous idea of a build...
for parts we went the x79 board route. you can get so much performance per dollar and full setups for 120-150 bucks or so IF you happen to know what xeon processors are garbage and which ones are not. not to mention that some of the later boards that are still coming from china have Quad channel enabled (and yes it works like its supposed to!) so ddr3 can actually STILL be competitive with modern day ddr4 dual channel setups (atleast in the memory speed aspect).
behold the motherboard used: "the machinist" a no frills x79 board made in china with no frills but some ridiculous ram and cpu overclocking options!
at this point i thought this setup was going to be a complete jank nightmare but we thunder forth:
yep 35 bucks for 32gb of ram. WHY? because the x79 boards and xeons support SERVER RAM. this is the part where we abuse this fact to get as much memory bang for the buck as possible.
and here we have the sauce for this guy. behold the cheapest 8 core intel machine you can prolly buy today. 8 core 16 thread and it turbo boosts to 3.9 ghz. for 55 bucks im pretty sure you cant complain.
not the fastest but it will definitely pulverize any modern 4 core and trade blows with any modern 6 core. for the money, why not?
for the power supply i went to my local offerup and scored this guy for 35 bucks:
for the fans cuz why not we went for the "uphere" fans (the cheapest, trashiest rgb money can buy and its actually pwm controlled. XD)
3 fans for 20 bucks. LOL.
https://www.amazon.com/upHere-Wireless-Computer-Cooling
as for the video card... the 3 series got anounced. people lost their minds and i scored a 5700xt for 275.
but you know what. i have a small raspberry pi lcd screen laying around lets put it to some use to weeb this trash out!
the screen fit nicely within one of the fan mounting points of the frame.
at this point i grabbed a molex to pwm fan adapter and modified it. so the 12v pin would go to the 5v rail since our lcd screen requires 5v.
the cool part? it no soldering for this setup at all. literally its all plug and play:
from here we needed to modify a flat hdmi cable and trim the rugged rubber headers it so it could fit in front of the case which admittedly was getting crammed with everything at this point.
I should have taken pictures of the cable managment but to spare you the details.. experience can be a bit of help:
Not bad looking for a bunch of budget stuff put together.
now before someone grills me about the intel cooler. this is not an 11xx socket cooler. their 20xx socket coolers are actually good and they weigh a freaking ton but get the job done.
now if you want to see the final product. (and i have to install aida so i can get real time hardware statistics on the screen... (here is a preview of it more or less running. Also forgive the kitty she wanted to make a cameo)
ill be running benchmarks tomorrow but for tonight i kinda like how something so 2nd hand and a hosh posh of cheap parts turned out. fun times.
so a lot of parts needed to be sourced from the cheapest parts from newegg.
for the pc case we went for this janky guy... 52 bucks and with cable managment options that would probably make a lot of people cry. However hey... lets thunder forth with this ridiculous idea of a build...
for parts we went the x79 board route. you can get so much performance per dollar and full setups for 120-150 bucks or so IF you happen to know what xeon processors are garbage and which ones are not. not to mention that some of the later boards that are still coming from china have Quad channel enabled (and yes it works like its supposed to!) so ddr3 can actually STILL be competitive with modern day ddr4 dual channel setups (atleast in the memory speed aspect).
behold the motherboard used: "the machinist" a no frills x79 board made in china with no frills but some ridiculous ram and cpu overclocking options!
at this point i thought this setup was going to be a complete jank nightmare but we thunder forth:
yep 35 bucks for 32gb of ram. WHY? because the x79 boards and xeons support SERVER RAM. this is the part where we abuse this fact to get as much memory bang for the buck as possible.
and here we have the sauce for this guy. behold the cheapest 8 core intel machine you can prolly buy today. 8 core 16 thread and it turbo boosts to 3.9 ghz. for 55 bucks im pretty sure you cant complain.
not the fastest but it will definitely pulverize any modern 4 core and trade blows with any modern 6 core. for the money, why not?
for the power supply i went to my local offerup and scored this guy for 35 bucks:
for the fans cuz why not we went for the "uphere" fans (the cheapest, trashiest rgb money can buy and its actually pwm controlled. XD)
3 fans for 20 bucks. LOL.
https://www.amazon.com/upHere-Wireless-Computer-Cooling
as for the video card... the 3 series got anounced. people lost their minds and i scored a 5700xt for 275.
but you know what. i have a small raspberry pi lcd screen laying around lets put it to some use to weeb this trash out!
the screen fit nicely within one of the fan mounting points of the frame.
at this point i grabbed a molex to pwm fan adapter and modified it. so the 12v pin would go to the 5v rail since our lcd screen requires 5v.
the cool part? it no soldering for this setup at all. literally its all plug and play:
from here we needed to modify a flat hdmi cable and trim the rugged rubber headers it so it could fit in front of the case which admittedly was getting crammed with everything at this point.
I should have taken pictures of the cable managment but to spare you the details.. experience can be a bit of help:
Not bad looking for a bunch of budget stuff put together.
now before someone grills me about the intel cooler. this is not an 11xx socket cooler. their 20xx socket coolers are actually good and they weigh a freaking ton but get the job done.
now if you want to see the final product. (and i have to install aida so i can get real time hardware statistics on the screen... (here is a preview of it more or less running. Also forgive the kitty she wanted to make a cameo)
ill be running benchmarks tomorrow but for tonight i kinda like how something so 2nd hand and a hosh posh of cheap parts turned out. fun times.
