It started about 2 months ago, I browsed craigslist looking for a place to just hangout and pay a low amount of rent at. Just have a little bit of privacy away from my parents. After calling all of the craigslist ads for renting out rooms, all of them told me “You don’t want to live here? You just want to hangout? That makes no sense”. Then I got to thinking, why don’t I just rent an office space.
After looking at extremely overpriced office spaces I eventually found one in the town over for 190 a month. This included all utilities and air conditioning. After convincing them that I did design work, I signed the lease and here I am with full privacy and air conditioning.
My computer and really everything is here, even a casting couch futon and a mini fridge.
I haven’t spent much time away from my office and my dad is getting a bit of empty nest syndrome so I promised him I would either build or buy a computer for home.
Stuck with a 150 dollar budget my options were limited, I looked all over craigslist and all I could find were overpriced computer builds and outdated hardware.
Then I focused my attention on Ebay and I eventually found a Optiplex machine for $80 with a i5 3470, 4gb of ram. No HDD or GPU though.
Once I received the machine, I put 8gb from my main machine into it and an extra hdd I had lying around, called a few friends and ended up getting some hand me down parts. Alex’s cousin had an extra GPU (560 ti) and my friend ernest gave me a PSU he had lying around 500w.
The only problem at this point is that the GPU does not have enough power pins to power the GTX 560. After hunting around for hours, calling countless people and looking all over my house, shed, etc. I could not find one. Tomorrow, I’ll go to microcenter and get one.
But the moral of the story is that if you hunt enough and if you play your cards right you can get an extremely capable machine for cheap. These Optiplex machines make great budget gaming rigs and I suggest them to anyone on a tight budget.
Here is a little video I made to go along with my experience. It’s a terrible video, only watch it if your bored enough. My entire youtube channel is one big shitpost.
