Refurbishing an Old PC

[aeria.]

Tell me your build right now and I'll give you my opinion on what to salvage. Approved by a microcenter employee!

As far as BF4 goes, I would say minimum an AMD 260X. I wouldn't get a GPU any worse than that. And that's just to play on modest settings.

While it's more ideal to grab an FX chip or an Intel i5/i7, the APU isn't the worst idea as a starting point. You can start without the graphics card and play on its integrated graphics and then eventually add a discrete video card when you have the money. If you do go the APU route, getting 1866MHz ram is a nice way to increase the gaming performance while not overspending.

Do build it from scratch though. You'll save money versus getting it prebuilt.

[Gold Man]

Tell me your build right now and I'll give you my opinion on what to salvage. Approved by a microcenter employee!

As far as BF4 goes, I would say minimum an AMD 260X. I wouldn't get a GPU any worse than that. And that's just to play on modest settings.

While it's more ideal to grab an FX chip or an Intel i5/i7, the APU isn't the worst idea as a starting point. You can start without the graphics card and play on its integrated graphics and then eventually add a discrete video card when you have the money. If you do go the APU route, getting 1866MHz ram is a nice way to increase the gaming performance while not overspending.

Do build it from scratch though. You'll save money versus getting it prebuilt.

Well, the build I have is the same as last time (refer to first post again), only now it has 2GB of RAM. I've been considering an APU actually (my current laptop has an A10-5745M with Radeon 8610G graphics, and it handles well with the games I have).

I'm even planning on selling some of the parts I'm not salvaging, so I can have more of a money pool to draw from to buy parts with. I know I can make a killing with some Crucial 8GB RAM from my older laptop, but the rest of the parts may prove a tough sell from my desktop.

Also, before you start giving me options, remember I'm Canadian, meaning the prices on parts will be highly inflated for me compared to the US market.

[aeria.]

Keep the card reader, the DVD player, the hard drive, and power supply if you upgraded it to the 500W IIRC.

Everything else you'll definitely want to get new as it's too old to work with.

Here's a budget i5 build. I tried my best to make it sub 500 without making poor part decisions.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($222.50 @ shopRBC)
Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($58.25 @ Vuugo)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1333 Memory  ($64.05 @ DirectCanada)
Video Card: Club 3D Radeon R9 270 2GB '14Series Video Card  ($179.99 @ NCIX)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1500 MicroATX Mini Tower Case  ($39.99 @ NCIX)
Other: salvaged hard drive
Other: salvaged dvd drive
Other: salvaged psu
Total: $564.78
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-04-23 15:51 EDT-0400

For a long term computer, you're better off spending the money on the i5 now instead of compromising with an APU that will bottleneck modern games. But switching to an AMD FX 6-core or an AMD APU+removing GPU are your two options to make it cheaper.

The i5 is a fantastic chip. I have a 4 year old i5 on an second computer and it runs like a champ in games.

If you want to compromise on the GPU, drop it to a 260X.

[Gold Man]

Keep the card reader, the DVD player, the hard drive, and power supply if you upgraded it to the 500W IIRC.

Everything else you'll definitely want to get new as it's too old to work with.

Here's a budget i5 build. I tried my best to make it sub 500 without making poor part decisions.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($222.50 @ shopRBC)
Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($58.25 @ Vuugo)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1333 Memory  ($64.05 @ DirectCanada)
Video Card: Club 3D Radeon R9 270 2GB '14Series Video Card  ($179.99 @ NCIX)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1500 MicroATX Mini Tower Case  ($39.99 @ NCIX)
Other: salvaged hard drive
Other: salvaged dvd drive
Other: salvaged psu
Total: $564.78
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-04-23 15:51 EDT-0400

For a long term computer, you're better off spending the money on the i5 now instead of compromising with an APU that will bottleneck modern games. But switching to an AMD FX 6-core or an AMD APU+removing GPU are your two options to make it cheaper.

The i5 is a fantastic chip. I have a 4 year old i5 on an second computer and it runs like a champ in games.

If you want to compromise on the GPU, drop it to a 260X.

Hmm, I see. The parts list looks decent enough. Now I gotta get selling my parts!

I know there's money to be made off the RAM from both my old laptop and the desktop, the motherboard and CPU might be harder to auction off though, alongside the cases, OS product keys.

I've seen the Crucial DDR2 laptop RAM sell for a good price, the older stuff might also get me some good money too. The only roadblock will be a way to sell my Vista product key (no disc included). I can sell the XP MCE OS with a disc and key, the motherboard might be tougher, as might the CPU be.

The laptop case is really nothing more than a husk of a computer (only has the CPU and GPU in it, and I'm not about to rip that case up to get them out of there), so I doubt I could effectively sell it without the hard drive or RAM. The desktop case might be worth some money though as is, though I thought perhaps my current case might be able to complement the newer hardware. If not, I'm perfectly content with buying the newer one and trying to sell my old one.

[{PLA} Van STING]

When your on a budget the fx-6300 is probably best http://www.ncix.com/detail/amd-fx-6300-six-core-3-5-4-1ghz-c1-76934-1611.htm http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/361/AMD_FX-Series_FX-6300_vs_Intel_Core_i5_i5-4460.html http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-4460-vs-AMD-FX-6300 . Plus The i5 performs slightly better but it's like $100 more, and the i5 is definitely better when using a single thread.