Backstory: My laptop had a broken hard drive that I managed to get the money for replacing after a while. I put the hard drive in, booted it up, had a good time setting it up for 2 hours when I noticed that it was plugged in but not registering as being plugged in or charging.
Off to the repair shop it went, because I wasn't about to fiddle with my motherboard to get to the power jack to see what was wrong. (This was an ASUS Q400A Laptop).
After a week, they told me that a resistor was blown and they would need to buy a new motherboard, and that motherboard would cost $180, plus they'd charge $100 for installation. I'm not sure how honest these guys are, as my father has already told me that a resistor is an easy fix, but I'm going to assume that these guys aren't trying to con me out of my money until someone can confirm otherwise, to which I'd be intent on having a talk with them about their ethics.
I have about $40 in the bank and, ideally, I can return my HDD back to Newegg for a refund since I haven't had it more than about a week, netting me an additional $80. My parents (I'm 18) are okay with spending $280 in combination with my $120 for a replacement desktop. Therefore, I have $400 to spend on a new desktop.
These two points are my first and second priorities.
Getting a computer that I can upgrade very easily in the future.
Getting a computer that I can adequately game with.
Any and all suggestions, or professional insight regarding my situation would be much appreciated.
I understand that $400 won't net me that decent of a computer, but I simply don't have an additional $300 to spend, so I'm going with what I got.
You could drop the monitor and 8 gigs of the memory.
I scavanged the rest of the build using my old Piece of junk Antec that came in on the mayflower.
Edit I have no problems playing games at 1080p with some having to lower the graphics down a bit. I have been burning up lichdom, bf4, Thief, Landmark, EQ, Max Payne, Photoshop, Maya, UE4, Mudbox, Zbrush.
Oh and I was able to OC the Asus to 1200Mhz and 5300Mhz memory without messing with voltage and it stays below 72c at full load. I am still working on the CPU. I have been able to get it to 4.2Ghz but I have 80c at full load using HWmonitor and CPUTIN shows only 49c I am not sure what the true temp is so I left it at that. if it is truely running at 49c I would try to boost it so more. I am just scared 80c is my end of the line on temps
nothing. the stock cooler can handle the CPU fine. you won't run into trouble unless you overclock. which for now for a system in this budget. you don't really need to do much. you can buy a Cooler-Master Hyper 212-EVO for 20 bucks when you get money again.
I'd try and find a good second hand ex-business (older i5/i7 even xeon) Dell or HP (full width and not the slim ones) then chuck in something like a gtx960.
You're probably going to want to go with intel so you have somewhere to upgrade to, or you could just get an 860k and upgrade within the next year when zen comes out, though you'd need a new motherboard at that point.
Or you could just get an APU, which won't be the fastest thing ever, but it'll be cheap, and you can just throw in a GPU later.
Check local listings for used stuff, though old Intel stuff is pretty easy to come buy on ebay. Older AMD cards that came from mining rigs are also pretty common if you want to go that route.
So here's my recommendation. CPU is an A8 7650k, which is a quad core that should do around 30fps@1080p with newerish games on lower settings, even a bit better with overclocking and the fast memory included. Or there's the 7850K which would be about on average 5fps higher, for 20ish more dollars
Getting the APU saves a bit of cash, which is enough for a nice fully modular power supply, as well as an SSD+1TB for storage. There's also some space if you can squeeze out the money for a CPU cooler like the Hyper 212 Evo, which should fit in the N200, probably, but double check on that.
Then later on just throw in a higher end GPU that goes on a good sale and you'll be set, course by that time zen APUs may be out.
First thing to upgrade here would be the CPU to an 4690k or an ssd if its on a super sale (partition your hard drive when you get it to make transfer easier). Then I would get a CPU all in one cooler. The Pentium should handle the 380 4GB fine but a 4690K upgrade would be worth it (DONT get an i3, overclocking your Pentium would gain you more performance and more money.)
The PSU is a steal. Just grab it. its Corsair, 750Watt 80+Bronze for $40. Just impulse that crap. Get a second one and sell it later when prices go up and make profit.
yeah that's not $400 bucks. and the problem with investing onto the Dual-Core is games are starting to lock their games from reading dual-cores. which is getting worse as games get released.
That is true, thats why the next upgrade would be to an i5 or an i7. I ussually hate recommending dual cores. But in this case your going to be upgrading soon and your on a budget right now and most games right now arn't locking out dual cores. So when its obvious that more games are locking out dual cores, get a 4690K, it'll be a lot cheaper down the road with skylake coming out too.
If you want to go with the FX route I would recommend that too since there is an upgrade path. though, the initial cost would be a lot higher for a 6300
So long as you pirate the games I think cracks usually fix that like they did with Far Cry 4. Just be sure to buy it on steam or whatever first of course.
The G3528 is nice if you overclock it, but I'll stick to recommending the 860k, mainly because it comes within firing range of an i5 in games, and you won't be limited to a dual core, that way there's not much need to upgrade for the coming year or so as zen and whatever intel is working on comes out when an upgrade from an 860k is going to really be worth it.
I think the hard drive of your laptop still works. You can use it until you find some cash to upgrade that. That gets you from the 150$ GPU out of the offers here to a 200$ GPU.
I am an AMD fanboy but if you are planning on upgrading within the year I would get the Pentium build. get an i5 or i7 and it would be solid but if you are planning on upgrading in 2 years or more then I would go with the FM2 socket AMD. After 2 years I doubt the Pentium holding up to new releases, but right now it would be fine.
Don't hold me to this but, I think broad well is the last release on the 1150 socket. After that there will be a new socket type. The same is going to be with AMD. Zen will most likely be on a fm3 socket. so you are going to be limited on upgrading potential until these are released.
You can bring down the price real nice if you are willing to accept on-CPU graphics, as suggested by @Streetguru . I would even consider going for the SSD alone, and saving some money to either improve the choice of motherboard, case, or power-supply power (these three I personally never upgrade within the 3-5 years lifetime of a setup), or just keep that money for a rainy day.
Consider that you can bring down the price of the other guys' suggestions as well if you go for on-CPU graphics just to begin with.