Budget Gaming PC Build - M91 SUCCESS!

Communities Gaming
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In an attempt to get a friend into gaming I set about bulding the cheapest system I could.

Thanks to some bin saved systems I picked up at an old work I have a couple of old Lenovo M91 systems fitted with i5-2500s waiting to be upgraded.
A bit of googleing later and I found that the best bang for buck GPU for a system like this is the 1660 super , so I went ahead and ordered a new case (thermaltake versa H15) with a 450w PSU already installed and a zotac gaming 1660 super. Adding a 500GB WD blue SSD to finish the job I was able to use the windows 7 pro key to activate windows 10 pro. As I had 2 machines to work with I went and pilfered the RAM from one machine bringing up the main units total installed RAM to 16GB.

Some issues I ran into during the setup were firstly the MBs video settings needed to be changed to support both the internal GPU as well as the GeForce. This was easy enough after a quick google. After that I found I needed to set the hard drive mode to raid otherwise windows had issues booting/rebooting. Finally, the system fans spun up at 100% until I removed the thermal sensor from the old cases air intake and installed it in the new case. Once this was done the system runs almost silent.

Now that it is all setup I am super happy with the result.
The total build cost was about $350 (AUD) for the SSD, GPU, Case & PSU.

The system runs GTA5, Sea of Thieves etc at 60+ FPS with high settings all day long and thanks to the SSD is a snappy desktop for everyday PC use as well.

For anyone out there wanting to up their ‘game’ on a mega budget, I can not recommend enough using some recycled parts as a solid foundation.

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Hey, I’m have exactly this. I used an old M91p system and added some ram and a gtx 570 and slapped it inside a bigger case. Works great, but its starting to show its age.

Took me a whole 3 days to find out about that thermal sensor, i thought i borked something

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I’ve done this same thing with an M91, M93, as well as many HP systems

What I also did for the M93 was re-pinned the front panel connections so that I can turn on/off the system, as well as have indicator LED’s, from my “third party” case.

Been doing this for years. Even reused parts from OEM systems (Dell, HP, Lenovo) can be used when you research the item enough.