Hardware Turning Potatoes into Gaming Rigs

[LightyKD]

Someone once said that "you can't turn a hoe into a housewife" -but maybe you can turn a potato into a gaming PC? I enjoy watching people on YouTube push their potatoes so I wonder if anyone else is doing the same here. I recently made my wife a low end gaming rig out of a Dell Optiplex 755. -even spray painted the thing purple and white. I'll update this post with some pics later but I'm proud of what I was able to accomplish. All of that aside, lets go over specs

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 @ 2.83 GHz (LGA 775 socket)
8GB of DD2 2 RAM (4x 2GB)
Nvidia GT 730 GPU with 2GB of VRAM
1x 3.5" 250GB HDD for the Windows 10 install
1x 2.5" 1TB HDD for games (HDD ripped out of Toshiba Canvio casing, placed inside the PC with the USB cable going out the case and into a USB port)

Currently I'm getting games like Dirt 3, Sonic All Stars Racing Transformed, Life is Strange, and Yooka-Laylee (with some lag spikes) running on this machine. As for resolution I max the more optimized games at 720p with medium to high settings. The tougher games usually get 16:9 resolutions under 720p. If anyone have any constructive ideas for improvement (and not "get a new PC" because that takes away the challenge), feel free to drop them here.

Now that I'm at the end of this post, someone else take a turn. I'm interested to see the things people here come up with!

UPDATE 1

Because it was requested, here are some pics of my wife's gaming rig...

Spoiler

 

[sup3rgh0st]

HDD ripped out of Toshiba Canvio casing

What do you mean by this? Most external HDDs are just a 2.5" HDD in a case. You'd get better speeds if you took it all the way out and connected it via SATA.

 

[FAST6191]

Is it really a potato if you use one of the higher end core 2 era quad core processors?

That said it was only about a year after the release of the xbone and PS4 that processor wise things really started to depart from that (with the failure of vista DX9 also stuck around for a while) so you are probably sorted for quite a few things, especially if you are going for the lower end resolutions.

 

[LightyKD]

What do you mean by this? Most external HDDs are just a 2.5" HDD in a case. You'd get better speeds if you took it all the way out and connected it via SATA.

Last time I looked, there are only 2 SATA ports and the DVD drive is still on that port. The other issue is that there is no SATA connection on the HDD and the USB port on the HDD is not standard (Micro B data). I could probably find a proper cable for this but it wont be anytime soon.

 

[APartOfMe]

the title intrigues me...

 

[Skyshadow101]

I magically went to PCPartPicker and magically turned my potato laptop into a desktop (or a "rig") that can run games. [emoji4]

Boom. A potato is now a gaming rig.

 

[APartOfMe]

I magically went to PCPartPicker and magically turned my potato laptop into a desktop (or a "rig") that can run games. [emoji4]

Boom. A potato is now a gaming rig.

i turned my potato into a bitcoin mining rig. i'm now a millionare

 

[jDSX]

What form factor is the optiplex? Because if it's full size tower, you can add in a bigger GPU than you could in a SSF (super small form factor) case also pictures of the inside would be helpful

 

[Skyshadow101]

What form factor is the optiplex? Because if it's full size tower, you can add in a bigger GPU than you could in a SSF (super small form factor) case also pictures of the inside would be helpful

He's not asking for help, he is starting a challenge for other people to try.

 

[jDSX]

He's not asking for help, he is starting a challenge for other people to try.

I am offering improvements for his C2Q rig no point in using the gt 730 if you can use a full profile card in a full tower

Here is mine:

AMD athlon 64x 4400+
Asus M2N-SLI mobo
XFX Geforce 9800 (I think it's ddr3)
3 GB corsair Dominator xms2 DDR2 800mhz (had trouble with compatibility had to buy new sticks fixed)
Xigmatek HDT 1283 (cpu cooler lol)
320gb toshiba drive
windows xp
Cooler master haf 922

 

[Todderbert]

I have a Core2Quad also that can handle a 750Ti. But in the closet I have an old AMD Barton 3500 series from 2003, and a P4 with HT. Both slow as hell. Even an older Pentium III 733mhz, and a PII 350. Not sure but the wife wants me to toss them in the garbage. I'm thinking of turning the Quad into a Prime number hunting rig. The others are just a waste of power.

 

[DarthDub]

If your computer is a potato, then mine is a squash! I can run most games pretty decently.

 

[dAVID_]

Someone once said that "you can't turn a hoe into a housewife" -but maybe you can turn a potato into a gaming PC? I enjoy watching people on YouTube push their potatoes so I wonder if anyone else is doing the same here. I recently made my wife a low end gaming rig out of a Dell Optiplex 755. -even spray painted the thing purple and white. I'll update this post with some pics later but I'm proud of what I was able to accomplish. All of that aside, lets go over specs

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 @ 2.83 GHz (LGA 775 socket)
8GB of DD2 2 RAM (4x 2GB)
Nvidia GT 730 GPU with 2GB of VRAM
1x 3.5" 250GB HDD for the Windows 10 install
1x 2.5" 1TB HDD for games (HDD ripped out of Toshiba Canvio casing, placed inside the PC with the USB cable going out the case and into a USB port)

Currently I'm getting games like Dirt 3, Sonic All Stars Racing Transformed, Life is Strange, and Yooka-Laylee (with some lag spikes) running on this machine. As for resolution I max the more optimized games at 720p with medium to high settings. The tougher games usually get 16:9 resolutions under 720p. If anyone have any constructive ideas for improvement (and not "get a new PC" because that takes away the challenge), feel free to drop them here.

Now that I'm at the end of this post, someone else take a turn. I'm interested to see the things people here come up with!

That. Is. NOTHING.
This is a true potato:

Intel Core 2 Duo E2180 2.00 GHz
RADEON HD 5450 GFX Card
2.00 GB RAM
4K display

 

[Joe88]

I guess I technically did this when my 5820k rig died

Core 2 Duo E7300 @ 4ghz
4GB DDR2-800
R9 390 8GB (no point in going with the 4870 if the 390 works fine)
128GB SSD
6TB WD Black

ran that for a year and it was painful trying to play games due to the bottleneck, fallout 4 at 1080p was playable as long as you stay away from the city area's
doom at 1080p was unplayable with everything on low

any modern hardware intensive game will run like shit, the old cpu's just can't keep up anymore

 

[jDSX]

I guess I technically did this when my 5820k rig died

Core 2 Duo E7300 @ 4ghz
4GB DDR2-800
R9 390 8GB (no point in going with the 4870 if the 390 works fine)
128GB SSD
6TB WD Black

ran that for a year and it was painful trying to play games due to the bottleneck, fallout 4 at 1080p was playable as long as you stay away from the city area's
doom at 1080p was unplayable with everything on low

any modern hardware intensive game will run like shit, the old cpu's just can't keep up anymore

What happen to your 5820k rig?

 

[Joe88]

What happen to your 5820k rig?

More or less it just started boot looping one day, it was either the mobo (which it was a garbage low end mobo to begin with), ram, or cpu
I bought different x99 mobo, wouldnt boot and was reporting ram errors, bought a cheap 4GB stick and the same issue. So still wasnt sure if it was the mobo or cpu at that point.
rma'd the first x99 boards, ended up being damaged in the post and the rma was denied and the broken board was sent back

Then I got lazy and just stuck with the old hardware since I mainly only played TF2 anyway (for like a year) then finally decided to send the cpu in and intel accepted it and sent a new boxed one out and it works fine in the other x99 board I purchased
so back up and running

 

[Jayro]

Last time I looked, there are only 2 SATA ports and the DVD drive is still on that port. The other issue is that there is no SATA connection on the HDD and the USB port on the HDD is not standard (Micro B data). I could probably find a proper cable for this but it wont be anytime soon.

You can usually get an IDE DVD drive for those old LGA775 chipset motherboards, freeing up a SATA port. Or move the optical drive to a USB port, SATA to USB cables are under $20.

 

[LightyKD]

You can usually get an IDE DVD drive for those old LGA775 chipset motherboards, freeing up a SATA port. Or move the optical drive to a USB port, SATA to USB cables are under $20.

I have an extra Sata to USB cable but I'll need a USB extension cable for the HDD's power and then I'll also need a USB connector that's female on both ends to connect the HDD's cable to the SATA to USB cable. Remember, the only connection on my wife's games drive is a Data-B Micro port. Additionally, wouldnt the CPU still be an issue. I always thoughts that the immediate stuff you're playing with in a game is temporarily saved to RAM therefore a game wouldnt need to call on the HDD as often. -just a guess but also based on my experiences of being able to play games on some CD based consoles with the disc out of the system, until you need to load the next level.

EDIT: I updated the first post with pictures of my wife's gaming rig, that way some of you can see how I have the machine set up.

 

[kuwanger]

Not sure why you're calling such a system a potato. But, since we're having a little contest/challenge of it.. I got sick of not being able to run a lot of my Windows Steam games under WINE, so I decided to buy/build a gaming PC. I went with the HP Elite 8300 SFF (lucked out with an i5-3570), since it turns out to be rather good for that. Add in a 1050 TI low profile card, a 500GB SD (total price something like $515), and a 5TB external HD I had lying around, and I've got a pretty ridiculous gaming system.

My real potato? Probably a Pentium 100 with a few multi GB HDDs and something like 160MB of RAM with Windows 98SE. Haven't booted in a while, but every time I do I'm amazed at just how responsive the GUI is. One of those things that makes me want to see someone do a simple email/word processing test vs a medium or high end system today. In any case, got plenty of computers I don't use (but did) lying around. Life of a hoarder.

 

[LightyKD]

Not sure why you're calling such a system a potato. But, since we're having a little contest/challenge of it.. I got sick of not being able to run a lot of my Windows Steam games under WINE, so I decided to buy/build a gaming PC. I went with the HP Elite 8300 SFF (lucked out with an i5-3570), since it turns out to be rather good for that. Add in a 1050 TI low profile card, a 500GB SD (total price something like $515), and a 5TB external HD I had lying around, and I've got a pretty ridiculous gaming system.

My real potato? Probably a Pentium 100 with a few multi GB HDDs and something like 160MB of RAM with Windows 98SE. Haven't booted in a while, but every time I do I'm amazed at just how responsive the GUI is. One of those things that makes me want to see someone do a simple email/word processing test vs a medium or high end system today. In any case, got plenty of computers I don't use (but did) lying around. Life of a hoarder.

I work in an environment where there are a few HP 8300s. I always wondered how well they would perform as a gaming rig.