u/RandomizedUsername42

I had so much fun building my first computer that I wanted to do it again. So I set myself a budget of $150, and set out to see what I could build, with the idea that I’d sell it when I finished. Several months later, I’ve had my fun building the thing and I haven’t worked up the courage to make it actually sellable. I also went over budget after the board I planned to use had a pin snap off at the last minute after booting to the OS. I purchased another computer and took its motherboard, processor, cooler and RAM instead. I hope to get $250 for the computer, but I’d settle for $200 just to get most of my money back.

Here’s a list of the parts and what I paid for them:

Segotep 650w - $23
1TB WD Green HDD - $15
240GB SATA SSD - $20
i7-3820 + Asus P9x79 + AIO cooler + 32GB DDDR3 1600 - $80
Zalman Z3 Plus case - $10
Failed motherboard + i3-3160 - $30-$10 (resold).
Extra 16GB DDR3, DVD drive, i5-4440 - $20
Extra i7-4790 - $30
Extra 430w power supply
Extra 2000s full tower pc case
Extra 750GB HDD
Extra HD 7950 (untested)

The hardest part for me is getting everything working and usable. Right now, it’s finicky and takes a while to boot up despite having an SSD. I know I should probably install Windows 11, but I’m not sure how to install drivers, activate the install and access STEAM to benchmark it without accessing the internet, signing into STEAM, etc. and ruining the fresh install. For context, this install of Linux Mint was my first time ever installing an operating system, and it apparently came with AMD drivers included.

Also, I’ve acquired a bunch of peripherals for free or very cheap over these past several months in the process of upgrading my own setup, and I was wondering if I could bundle them with the computer to maybe increase the value? This would be cheap gaming keyboards, 1080p 60hz monitors, stuff like you see in the picture. I don’t know if people like to get that stuff when they buy computers off Marketplace or not.

I bought an LGA 1700 mother board that was apparently functional except for two RAM slots for $40 off Marketplace, with the intention of fixing the pins. I took the gamble because I had some experience bending back pins, and imagined the worst case scenario was a working motherboard down two slots. The perfect storm of socket type, DDR4 compatibility, size, color and local deal felt like too much to pass up on. The guy said it had a couple bent pins, but upon further inspection it kind of rough shape and had more like 5 or 6 pins. They were way smaller than I thought they would be, but I managed to bend back all except the two most mangled ones, which I checked on the pin diagram and one was a reserve pin, the other a ground pin.

Fast forward to today, my i5-13600k arrived from EBay and I took advantage of my sick day to get the new processor and board installed. No matter what slot I put a single 8GB stick of known working RAM in, it gets stuck on the DRAM light and won’t post. I took the processor off, and one of the pins I’d previously bent back had the tip snapped off. I think the middle one might be the reason it’s no longer working. I want to know if this is true or not but don’t know what the labels for each pin mean, and most images of the pin diagram online are too low resolution to make out the designation number for this most recent pin.

I just want to confirm if the issue is the socket pins or not so I can move on, and if needed order a $70 working one with returns off EBay and be done with this. This is the second time I’ve tried to fix pins, and had a critical pin and only that one snap off when I put the processor in.

It’s easy to bend back most of the pins, pick out dust, paste and make the socket look a lot better, but all it takes is one snapped tip to make the entire board useless. I’m finally starting to see why people avoid messing with bent pins like the plague, and won’t be attempting to bend back pins again until I get equipment more advanced than an overhead light and a push pin. Which will probably be never.

I just got a new motherboard, but it doesn’t have a screw hole that’s placed at the right size for the SSD I’m bringing over that has my operating system and everything on it. They’re all either ridiculously long or absurdly short, and it seems to have every possible size except the one I have. Is there a way I’m supposed to install this that I’m missing?

I put the other end of the piece of duct tape directly in the motherboard instead of the standoff after I took the picture. It seems to stay in place better there.

Edit: It came off again.

Edit 2: Never mind, none of this matters anymore because the critical pin that controls the DRAM and only that pin’s tip snapped off when I tightened down the cooler, so now instead of two slots working, the PC just gets stuck at a DRAM error no matter what slot I put a RAM stick in. This is the second time I’ve had a critical pin be the only one to snap off when I’ve tightened down the cooler on a motherboard I bought to fix the pins on. I’m starting to see why people are too scared to touch bent pins, because while it’s easy to bend most of them back, and you can quickly make the socket look so much better than it did before, all it takes is one pin.

Fuck my life, there goes $40 down the drain. The drive will be going back into my old board, problem solved.

I turned my PC on just now, and my hard drive started beeping at me. It didn’t do this yesterday, or this morning, it just spun up and decided to start beeping. It was really annoying, so I unplugged it.

I’m really pissed, because this would be the second hard drive I’ve gone through since getting this computer. The first one I paid like $25 for a 1TB HDD, and it died within a week or two after I hauled the computer up and down the stairs a couple times to test out connecting the computer to the router. Luckily I didn’t have anything installed on it at that point, and I replaced it with this one I pulled from an old laptop soon after.

But now this one too has something wrong with it after a few months of use. I tipped the computer on its side to install a new graphics card, and it was fine for a couple days until it started beeping just now. I unplugged it so it would stop, but I’m kind of concerned because it’s my game storage drive.

I can easily go pull another 500GB drive from one of the numerous old machines in my town’s ewaste bin, plug it in and reformat it, but this one has my games on it, and I’d prefer to fix it if possible.

I’m getting a Marketplace deal on a decent LGA 1700 DDR4 board for $40 with 2 bent pins I can probably fix like I’ve almost done before. (The board posts but 2 memory slots don’t work.) I wanted to go with LGA 1700 DDR4 because the platform has processors much more powerful than anything AM4 has to offer, and it allows me to reuse my 32GB DDR4 3000 at full speed instead of spending $300 extra on 32GB of used DDR5 on top of a $100 motherboard and $125 processor (EBay board, 7700X local deal).

I’m looking for the most powerful processor within about $150, that will keep up in 1440p gaming with my new RX 9070 16GB OC. Based on a bunch quick comparisons from a couple of websites, (Technical City and Passmark,) it seems that the i5-13600T is the most powerful processor I can get for the socket for that price. It’s still twice as powerful as my current CPU, the i7-9700, with more cores, twice the cache and twice the threads. Plus, the low wattage means I don’t have to worry as much about the processor having cooked itself, which I hear is a risk with used 13th and 14th gen Intel processors.

The best I can tell, this seems like a good plan and a great deal. The only thing I’m unsure about is whether I should spend $50 more for the i5-13600K, but it’s got all the same cache and architecture, so I don’t know if it’s really worth paying 33% more for.

Something is telling me that I might be making a big mistake with the CPU choice, so I came here. I spent hours researching, and the i5-13600F seems like the best option, but I could be wrong.

With this plan, I might upgrade to a 14th gen i7 or AM5 down the line if I need to and/or they get older and cheaper.

Budget: $160(original set budget)-250(only if it’s really really worth it) USD
Country: United States
Resolution: 1440p, maybe 4K eventually in the future.

I have a very generous family, and this year for my birthday, my parents and grandparents want to give me a combined $600 in gifts. I don’t usually want a whole lot, and if I do want something I’ll usually buy it myself, but in the past six months I got into PC building and gaming, and built myself a $460 rig.

I recently upgraded to a 144hz 1440p monitor, so now the GTX 1070 is now the limiting factor in the computer. I’ve been contemplating upgrading it for a bit now, and was thinking I’d take this opportunity to get a graphics card that would be capable of PCVR and last me at least the next 5 years, as well as a platform upgrade. They want to get me something they can wrap up and hand to me, and that can be returned in case it doesn’t work, so this seemed like the best option. I want the fun of upgrading the more interesting parts of the PC myself.

It seems that this is the best card available from a reputable website at that price point, but there are two versions to choose from. I just don’t know which one is the better card. The reviews on Newegg are compiled from a bunch of different cards, so I don’t know which ones are for the exact card I’d be getting in either scenario. I’m currently leaning towards the XFX card because it’s the overlocked edition and has good reviews, but I don’t know for sure, and thought I’d ask people who might know more about different versions of graphics cards.

Just to clarify, I’m looking for performance and style is a secondary consideration, but my current rig is a nice blackout build. I’d turn off the RGB on the Asrock card.

Edit: There’s also the PowerColor Reaper version on Amazon for $580.

I recently sent an online friend some left over parts I had so that he could upgrade his system. I sent him an HD 7750, and an i5-4440 because I had no use for them, and his i3-4160 with integrated graphics was struggling with the fairly basic set of games and tasks he runs regularly. However, I didn’t have any thermal paste to send with the package. The past couple builds I’ve done for fun, I just used the tiny tube of grease that came with my cooler, and I hadn’t bothered buying more yet at the time when I packed up the box to send to him.

Fast forwards to earlier today, and he’s improvising thermal paste with what he can find the house. He’s using an OEM cooler in an OEM case, and I don’t know that this will end well. Is there anything I need to warn him about, or will this work out fine?