The Art Of The (Stupid) Deal

"Mercedes Streeter" (smart) 01/21/2018 at 13:38 • Filed to: Computers

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So, I recently decided to build a second PC. Why? If you’ve ever built a PC before you probably know the euphoria of LEGO-ing the thing together and seeing it come to life. Once you do it once, all you can think about is when you can do it again.

This second build is meant to be a budget build. It has a GTX 750 that I found at Goodwill, a HDD from another computer in the house (I swapped the 1tb drive in my mum’s new all-in-one pc with the 500gb unit in my 11 year old MacBook), and cheap parts like a Pentium G4400. Total cost came to something like $200 (before I jacked up the motherboard). Keeping with my aircraft/GPU themed nomenclature: This one will be called the “CRJ750”. A combination of CRJ700 (regional passenger airliner) and GTX 750 (GPU).

This build is unique in that it’s a Mini-Itx. It’ll sleep in an adorable Silverstone SG05-Lite.

Hand for scale:

DC-10-50TI (mATX case) for scale:

I got it mostly put together last night, testing a mod for three case fans despite the tiny form factor:

This is where I screwed up. I tried saving on cost by getting an “open box - as is” motherboard. That was a bad decision. Upon opening the box, I discovered the LGA 1151 socket cover was missing and two pins were bent. I imagine they bent during shipping. I tried to fix the pins and just bent more of them. It just won’t post.

At any rate, the seller agreed to a half-refund. That’s going to go towards a new mobo. Lesson learned: Don’t get not-new mobos!

While getting parts for the CRJ750, I noticed that someone was selling a GTX 1060 on eBay at a price not inflated by cryptocurrency mining. It was only a 3GB unit, however the $230 NIB price was enticing. This card does much better than my 1050 TI in every benchmark too.

I also noticed that GTX 1050 TI cards now cost something like $230 because of crypto mining. I paid $130 for mine on Black Friday 2017! A $100 jump in two months is insane! I guess that’s what happens when ASIC mining hemorrhages in popularity because BTC crashed.

Anyway, I sold my 1050 TI for $210, making that sweet 1060 only $20.

My testing? FSX plays at an even higher frame rate and can even use anti-aliasing, train sim also now hits a solid 60 rather than 45 with awful hitching. 10/10, good buy. My DC-10-50TI is now the “DC-10-60”. :)

If you have a gaming PC, now is the best time to sell your GPU. You will likely get more than you paid for...however unless you luck out with a “cheap” replacement card, you will lose those gains in the new card.

ETA: The CRJ750 build is technically free. I sold an iPad 2 and an iMac G3 slot loader for funding. :)

TheTurbochargedSquirrel > Mercedes Streeter 01/21/2018 at 13:42

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The cryptocurrency market needs to crash already so I can build a gaming PC.

Rico > Mercedes Streeter 01/21/2018 at 13:43

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I want to build or buy a small PC like that to use Dolphin on.

Steve in Manhattan > Mercedes Streeter 01/21/2018 at 13:47

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Hackintosh?

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > Mercedes Streeter 01/21/2018 at 13:52

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My video card in my main Win10 system (Core i7 3770 @ 3.4GHZ, 8GB DDR3) is getting a little outdated now....Radeon HD7870, but it still plays the games I frequent (when I have time) on high and I’m happy with it. :)

I have a spare, second desktop as well (along with my laptop - an HP Pavilion Touchsmart 14) - both running Linux Mint 18.3 MATE 64-bit. My spare desktop is my old main desktop, so it’s only a Core 2 Duo 3ghz, 6GB RAM, Radeon HD3850, but for a spare ‘surfing the web, watching Netflix, etc’ machine, it’s perfectly fine! It can do some light gaming as well...Stardew Valley, Jalopy, etc, so it’s not a bad spare. :)

I’ve never been good at flight sims, but I play a lot of Mechwarrior Online ...somewhat of an arcade-y sim, ish, but I’ve been a fan of the series/Battletech universe since I was a kid, so I thoroughly enjoy it. If you ever try it, add me! The more Oppos the merrier! :D

Mercedes Streeter > Steve in Manhattan 01/21/2018 at 14:08

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Sure! I mean, it is basically a second computer for giggles.

Tohru > Mercedes Streeter 01/21/2018 at 14:31

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Nice tiny build! My miniITX rig (Cyberdyne Systems Model 4583 Compact) is in a Thermaltake CoreV1 case, and is quite a bit bigger than yours.

The GPU pricing issue is why my main rig is running dual Radeon HD 7950's still. I’d like to upgrade, but I can’t justify the price.

Steve in Manhattan > Mercedes Streeter 01/21/2018 at 14:32

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Well, you do have more than one car ...

e36Jeff now drives a ZHP > Mercedes Streeter 01/21/2018 at 15:05

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I’ve been hoarding Amazon gift cards and reward points to upgrade my main PC, but the RAM prices are murderous. I’ve built up $500+ in reward points plus another $200 in gift cards. I would have pulled the trigger already, but I decided to wait for the Ryzen refresh in April. I should have enough built up by then to get the 1800x replacement.

I’d like to upgrade off my 290x as well, but with the absurd prices of GPUs these days that’s a non-starter, and it’s really not that bad off for my needs right now. I do want to jump on the VR bandwagon at some point in the near future, but I can wait a bit longer. About the only GPU that isn’t priced like a stupid person is the Vega FE at $849, which is only mostly stupid rather than full on pants-on-head stupid. But I’m not dropping $849 on a GPU anyway(I did almost pull the trigger at $749, but that’s still more than what I want to spend). I was hoping for a nice $400 Vega 56 or 1070ti, but that’s just a pipe dream for now.

dsigned001 - O.R.C. hunter > Steve in Manhattan 01/21/2018 at 15:17

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Linux!

dsigned001 - O.R.C. hunter > TheTurbochargedSquirrel 01/21/2018 at 15:18

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I mean, it kind of has. Down like 40% is considered a crash, I think.

dsigned001 - O.R.C. hunter > Mercedes Streeter 01/21/2018 at 15:19

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Come to Linux... No FSX, but we do have xplane...

Mercedes Streeter > dsigned001 - O.R.C. hunter 01/21/2018 at 15:30

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I’m wanting to get X-Plane 11. It’s gorgeous and sits on a way newer platform than FSX.

Mercedes Streeter > TheTurbochargedSquirrel 01/21/2018 at 15:33

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The market actually has crashed. The bad thing about that though is that smaller coins (especially the ones resistant to ASIC miners) are even more popular and GPU mining is profitable again. It’s good if you want to mine for cheap, bad for gaming.

Mercedes Streeter > e36Jeff now drives a ZHP 01/21/2018 at 15:35

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Yeah, RAM and GPUs are stupid expensive right now. RAM has doubled in price and GPUs are like a runaway diesel.

e36Jeff now drives a ZHP > Mercedes Streeter 01/21/2018 at 15:46

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Assuming you can even find a GPU in stock. Browsing Newegg’s GPUs is like wandering around in a desert.

TheTurbochargedSquirrel > Mercedes Streeter 01/21/2018 at 15:48

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It hasn’t crashed enough for me to be able to get a GPU for something less than 2x MSRP.

TheTurbochargedSquirrel > dsigned001 - O.R.C. hunter 01/21/2018 at 16:01

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Needs to crash harder. There’s no reason a 3GB GTX1060 should cost $400 when MSRP is $199.

dsigned001 - O.R.C. hunter > Mercedes Streeter 01/21/2018 at 16:58

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It’s on my list to buy as well, but since I don’t have a ton of time, I’ve been waiting for a super killer deal to buy it. Almost bought it at $20.

itschrome > Mercedes Streeter 01/21/2018 at 20:16

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I need a GPU zoo bad but refuse to pay the price. I just went from an i5 4570 anf 12gb of DDR3 to a Xeon E5-1620 v3 and 32GB ddr4. Only issue is my GTX950 remains un changed. God damn it.. I want a 1060 or 1080 but fuck not at these prices.

Mercedes Streeter > TheTurbochargedSquirrel 01/21/2018 at 20:39

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I don’t even know when that’ll happen. It crashed in such a way that it’s even worse for GPU prices. Everyone and their grandma wants to mine now. And with Ethereum and “harder” coins going up in price, GPUs are only going to get more expensive.

I just helped my bestie and her boyfriend make a rig that uses eight 1080 cards. The darn thing will pay out $950/mo (after cost of electricity) and that number will increase so long as the difficulty in mining their coins do not get any harder.

Mercedes Streeter > e36Jeff now drives a ZHP 01/21/2018 at 20:41

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Doing eBay is even worse. Any reasonably priced card survives no more than a few hours. Selling my card was my most successful 24 hour auction ever. lol

Mercedes Streeter > Steve in Manhattan 01/21/2018 at 20:42

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Oh god, I may need an intervention one day lol

Mercedes Streeter > itschrome 01/21/2018 at 20:44

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The worst thing is that like me, you could have gotten a 1050 TI for about $130 around Thanksgiving. But now even “cheap” cards are super desirable and thus, priced stupidly high. So now you’re stuck with the only affordable cards being ones barely better than integrated graphics.

Steve in Manhattan > Mercedes Streeter 01/21/2018 at 21:56

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This thing mesmerized me ... if only I had the skills (and the guts) ...

Mercedes Streeter > Steve in Manhattan 01/22/2018 at 01:27

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I have the guts and even the funds, but not the skills! lol My version of that would probably look sloppy. I mean, thus far the extent of my modding has been making that single fan itx case accept three fans without any outside visual differences.

itschrome > Mercedes Streeter 01/22/2018 at 05:37

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But then bff hit 20k and people went a On a mining binge.. what kills me is that the amd stuff is better for mining, why people gotta horde the gtx??

S65 > Mercedes Streeter 01/22/2018 at 09:26

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I’m a complete neophyte to PC gaming but you kinda make me want to build a rig just for the hell of it, and how as bitcoin mining affected graphics card prices?

Mercedes Streeter > itschrome 01/22/2018 at 09:38

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Things are even worse on the AMD side of things. Any card not inflated in price has a waiting list potentially months long.

And the few that are in stock are just as expensive if not more expensive than their NVIDIA counterparts.

Mercedes Streeter > S65 01/22/2018 at 09:56

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It’s honestly not hard! The case and the motherboard will come with instructions, just like LEGOs would! And everything else usually comes with an install disc.

In the early days of crypto mining, people used to mine with their computer CPUs and then eventually, their graphics cards. Graphics cards showed a great ability to crunch numbers really quickly without generating a ton of heat or requiring a ton of energy.

Eventually, people and companies started making chips specially designed for mining the most popular flavour of crypto: Bitcoin (BTC). Those machines are called an ASIC.

With pretty much everyone flocking over to ASIC miners, the graphics card miners couldn’t keep up and graphics card mining became mostly unprofitable.

Then, the market exploded. BTC reached $20k, then fell, then the smaller ASIC resistant coins (like Ethereum) started experiencing strong gains (they keep gaining today).

ASICs are becoming less popular now as graphics cards are now profitable again. ASICs aren’t as flexible (GPUs can mine pretty much anything while ASICs can only mine one thing), don’t have proven reliability, are more expensive, don’t have a great resale value, and can heat your whole house while sounding like a turbofan engine.

Everyone and their grandma started buying graphics cards to mine the smaller coins and even Bitcoin is profitable for graphics cards too. My bestie and her boyfriend have a rig consisting of eight 1080s and it’s ROI after cost of electricity is something like $950/mo.

Steve in Manhattan > Mercedes Streeter 01/22/2018 at 10:12

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Impressive.

S65 > Mercedes Streeter 01/23/2018 at 19:12

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Wow I only just saw the notification for this, Kinja’d hard lol.