No more upgrades possible

"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
08/23/2018 at 00:50 • Filed to: None

I never thought I’d have a machine like this. Thanks to a friend of mine who manages to score all sorts of great deals on used late-model computer parts, usually by buying up people’s unwanted or unaffordable builds, the Hackintosh in its current form has probably reached its pinnacle. It started out as a $200 HP 8300 CMT with an i7-3770 with 8gb of RAM and a 2TB HD. Over the last few weeks, thanks to my friend’s dealmaking I’ve added this 1000W power supply (not exactly an easy install thanks to HP’s non-standard wiring ), a Blu-ray burner, 32gb of RAM, and a 4TB HD, all for the princely sum of $185 plus an Acer Ferrari monitor (see, there was automotive content included).

Combined with the GTX 1080 found on clearance at Micro Center and the 500gb SSD picked up on a one-day sale I’m good to go for a little while. Yeah, the CPU is a little old and the RAM slow by today’s standards, but it’ll do for now. And when it comes time for a new build most of this stuff can easily go into the new machine. I’ll consider doing the upgrade once RAM prices return to normal, which I understand should happen in early 2019, or whenever my friend scores another motherboard/CPU/RAM combo he doesn’t want.

Now to load up Project Cars, Assetto Corsa, and all those other sims I couldn’t run properly before. With that in mind, I’m a little disappointed that my vacation will actually be spent traveling instead of geeking out in front of the computer...

DISCUSSION (4)

facw > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
08/23/2018 at 01:25

Sounds like you got an excellent deal on the RAM, even if it is slow. Intel’s chips aren’t super bandwidth sensitive anyway.

Even for a GTX1080, that power supply is hilariously over-provisioned. You’d be fine with half of that. Doesn’t really hurt anything though, it’s probably just a bit less efficient when the computer isn’t using much power.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > facw
08/23/2018 at 01:44

I was using a secondary 250W power supply to supplement the stock 320W HP unit but couldn’t find a way to incorporate it into the case, so the side panel was always off and computer guts spilling out onto the floor. The 1080 uses less power than the 670 it replaced so yeah, 1000W is complete and total overkill, but hey, it’s what he had and the price was right ($35 plus the monitor). At least I’ll never have to worry about being short on power again. I’ve been there before with a previous build and had to scale things back to make the system work, but even if I stuff this thing full of HDs I know I won’t be in that position again.

Echo51 > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
08/23/2018 at 05:02

I also netted myself an i7-3770K with 8GB ram(so now 16 cuz combined with other set) out of an old HP Desktop , and an GTX970 i bought secondhand off a friend. The system should still be plenty good for a while yet!

Nom De Plume > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
08/23/2018 at 12:55

I very nearly took a similar route due to the build quality of HP business/workstation computers. That sounds like a very nice deal you got and should be lots of fun.

Sold my 8200 SFF with an i5-2400 and put together an i5-8400 mATX system for not much more than you are into this for sans GPU (Micro Center sales and rebates aligned perfectly for two days). The ridiculously named USB 3.1 v2 and USB C with same speeds was the kicker coming from USB 2.0. New processor is twice as powerful. Just something to keep in mind while that 8300 is still holding enough value to sell it.

Edit: No way could you get 32GB of RAM for anywhere near a reasonable price. It is only getting more expensive.