I’ve been resistant to the idea of building a gaming PC for the cost and time investment, but with the rise of AI and the “GPU rich” and “GPU poor” I figured now is the time to throw something together.
“Lain” treats building a computer as some sort of mystical journey
Asides from the AI factor, the release of several landmark titles in gaming have inspired me to get back into the hobby. But reasons aside, the act of putting a computer together alone sparked a worthwhile adventure and some thoughts on technology consumption. And when all was said and done, I ended up with a powerful computer for less than 500$.
I opted to buy used and upgrade. My logic was that a large portion of the cost of a gaming PC comes from peripherals and components that don’t have to be new. Things like the case, motherboard, RAM, and hard drive are much more resistant to technological improvement compared to the processor and graphics card. If I could find a solid “base” at a deal, and a couple upgrades, I could potentially halve the cost of my PC.
That’s what brought me to Craigslist, to hunt for computer deals. I scored the listings for hundrends of pages, two evenings in a row. Before long, I had found the first piece of my puzzle. A new, unused 12 GB Nvidia RTX 3060 for 250$, which is 50-100$ off list price.
With 12GB of VRAM, the Gigabyte NVIDIA 3060 is a top of its class mid-range Graphics card capable of running anything you throw at it. The next step up in tiering is the 4060 which will cost 1500-2000$.
With the graphics card tentatively secured, all I needed was a compatible base. The next day, I found the listing. Someone’s fully decked out Dell 8910 with a 500 GB SSD and 32 GB of RAM for only 190$. It’s a big enough computer to house the graphics card and has a Intel processor that is new enough to run modern games.
The Dell 8910 is a 5 year old prebuilt gaming PC. It is old but still has some life in it.
I arranged meetings with the sellers for that very weekend, and the next day I was off to buy a computer and the next a graphics card. The computer was clean, in great condition, and came with a clean install of Windows 10. The graphics card was shiny and had that new car smell to it.
Considering I already owned a mouse, keyboard, and had a monitor laying around the house, I only spent 440$ for a computer that can run the latest games on medium-high without an issue.
My successful build.
It only took a couple of days and some driving around to make shit happen, but I put together a gaming PC for under 500$. Well actually I ended up upgrading the power supply for another 100$ so the total cost was 540$. But still pretty good deal.
In the end I only ended up plugging a couple pieces together, but the real joy came from sniffing out the Craigslist listings, trying to discern scams from deals, and meeting people IRL to pick up parts. It wasn’t just me putting parts into an online shopping cart and pressing “buy”, each part has a story behind it that humanizes the computer.
The graphics card was sold to me by a man who originally bought it for his kid daughter. She wanted a laptop instead though, so he put it up for sale. We got to meet and talk about classic games and what we like. It was a nice exchange that left us both feeling good.
The Dell was sold to me by an old Asian guy out of his garage in the suburbs. It looked like it must have been his son’s or something, because someone clearly cared enough to upgrade it pretty well. I was happy to take it off his hands and give it a good home.
The only issue I had was that the power supply fan was really loud and distracting when I booted up a game, which is why I ended up replacing the power supply. Making sure all the components have more than enough power is a good way to ensure nothing burns out too fast.
Anyways, that’s my story of how I put together a gaming PC in one weekend for a super low price by running around the state of California. Obviously I got really lucky hitting the bullseye on the two things I needed. But still, buying used is a great way to reduce waste and score deals. It’s worth considering.