New Gaming PC Options

Alright guys I might sound like a broken record on the forms but I have some questions. This is going to be my first pc build. I am going to be using this pc to mostly game. I am on a pretty tight budget but want this to be able to play games for a couple years from now. Here is the twist, my friend from work is going to sell me his old pc that his friend built when they were in college (2006). I have no idea what is in it or what is included. The reason I am going to buy this pc off of him is because I will use this case and hopefully the power supply. If I get really lucky it will have a decent cpu and motherboard. Hopefully in the long run it will save me money. If not I was thinking about the AMD Athlon X4 860K Black Edition. I have no idea about this cpu. I just want something that I can overclock to help with overall performance. With the ram I am going to get the basic x2 4 gb sticks. The motherboard is something I’m not sure about. Maybe (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00I6DLJHQ/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER). It will need to be able to be overclocked and ii would like surround sound compatible. Will I need an aftermarket CPU fan for a mild overlook? For power I was thinking 500 watts should be efficient. Now the most important part would be the graphics card. I was looking at the radeon sapphire 270x. Thanks for all your guys help!

Budget?

What are you paying the guy for his old PC?

You better find out what you're buying. You could end up with a BTX case, etc.

Budget will be in the 400. I'm going to try to get the old one fairly cheep. Hopefully under a hundred. It doesn't have a hard drive but i have a spare laying around. I'm going to go for around 60. Before I buy it I'm going to look it over really good and come up with a price. Should i look for something specific? Thanks guys.

I'm guessing BTX is bad?

Actually it is better, but like betamax it lost the race to ATX. I have a Dell XPS 720 case from 2007 which would be awesome to do a new build in, alas modern components won't fit without heavily modding it. Basically, BTX is everything flipped upside down. ATX is why they make backplates for GPUs.

2006 - that's getting very old in my book.

Not sure if you need peripherals or an OS, but here's hardware for the tower.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2dZz99

Bout $450, not counting mail in rebates or tax.

Thanks for the advice, and thank you for the parts list. I have a couple of questions for you. Is this motherboard an easy overclocking one? I read the reviews on that graphics card and it looks really good for that price. I'm glad you can overclock it and a reviewer said it wasn't far behind the gtx670 and can be overclocked to the 270x easily.  I'm very new to this and want to get good products.  

So after some reaserch I want to go with another mother board. Maybe a bigger one. Does anyone have one that they would recommend that will work with my And athlon x4 860k right out of the box? Thanks in advance. 

Ya 2006 is very old dude, I would just spend the $500 total on your rig instead. you might be able to squeeze a 6300, 270 or 270x, and 8 gb in there

So this is what I've gotten so far.

Western digital blue 1tb hard drive 

And athlon x4 860k 

Asus A-78ME micro atx motherboard 

G. Skills Ripjaws X Series 8gb ram set

I'm going to use the case and power supply that I got from my friend. I will be upgrading the power supply the next paycheck I get. Then the case. Does this look good to you guys?

Well, you'll need a GPU to get a display out of that.

What's the power supply that you're getting from your friend?  If it's old, it may not work at all since some of the older stuff used to run on +5v, when today's stuff uses mostly +12v.  A picture, or make & model would be very helpful.

Haha. Noob moment! Saphire radeon r9 270x oc 2GB. The power supply is Okia 550 ATX. 

That's pretty damn old - more amperage on the 5v than the 12v.

I'd be really wary - using a power supply like that can harm components if it's too old or not suited.

If you can spend about 30 bucks, get the EVGA 80+ 430w I've chosen in my build above.

Old power supplies are terrible on average. Aside from bad original output, bad age (caps) and problematics like rails, distribution, avr, etc. Not worth the risk or hassle. I'll be using an old one to run controlled fans on a smoker for sweet grub, but nothing critical and unmonitored.

Alright. I ordered the new power supply. Overall I'm happy with the parts I ordered. The only thing that scares me is the motherboard. I read a review about a guy that was trying to use the same CPU as mine bit the bios wasn't supporting it so he had to buy a different CPU to update it. Can anyone shed some light on this?

This may or may not be true, depending on your motherboard's manufacturing date and if it's updated to a bios that supports the CPU.  That's why I went with the A88X chipset - to avoid this issue.

Basically, the A78 chipset is an older chipset, that with a bios update, can support the new FM2+ CPUs.  The FM2+ socket is still kind of new, and therefore there are some boards floating around that haven't been updated to support some of the CPUs.  As a result, the system doesn't boot.  You need an old FM2 CPU to put into the board, and then update the bios using something like a USB stick.

I read a review about the motherboard you recommended that said the same thing. If this one doesn't work I'll return it and try yours. 

Got all my parts in! The motherboard works with my CPU. I put it in an old case with the new power supply. I got windows loaded and started downloading all the programs I need. But I encountered a problem. Every once in a while it will freeze and when I restart it it gives me an error message that my motherboard encou trred a power surge. This motherboard has surge protection. I tried to look for a setting that would change this but couldn't. I bought a replacement power supply that I will put it n tonight and see if it changes anything. Any insight on this will need helpful. 

Go to the UEFI/Bios and see what version its running on.  Then go to the Asus website for the motherboard and see what the latest bios version is.

I have had plenty of friends who have used the same power supply you're using with no problems.  Of course, a chance of getting a lemon is always there.

Also make sure that all connections are properly made.