elvarg9685
Description
Thank you for stopping by and giving my third build a read! This little beauty started as an idea two months ago when I overheard my dad talking about wanting to go to Walmart and wanting to buy a new desktop to replace his aging i3 laptop. My parents know that I build pcs but have never approached me about it so I put together a list of parts for about 300 dollars and here we are! Everything is new except for the mobo, CPU cooler, and the ram. They came from my previous 2200g build that I am upgrading so I used these parts to keep the cost down. If those parts were purchased new the price of this build would be somewhere around 390 dollar mark. The psu was purchased from EVGA's b stock website. The case, hdd, gpu, and CPU were purchased on eBay. The prices marked also included either free shipping or shipping included. Everything else was purchased from Newegg. I added a 120mm fan to the front of the case for airflow.
I was originally going to purchase a 2200g build, but when comparing the 90 dollar price of the 2200g to the 106 dollar price of the Athlon 200ge and the rx 460, the increase in performance on the gpu side of the equation vastly justified the decision to go with the cpu/gpu combo. This pc will be used roughly 50 percent of the time for productivity. My parents are retired and travel a lot so they wanted something with lots of storage space for their photos and videos. My mom volunteers with the national parks service and is going to use this for very light editing and production, while my dad plays games such as Diablo 2 and war thunder at 1080p. The plan is for my to use this rig for the next three weeks until they come down to visit. In that time I am planning on multitasking on this rig to try and push it as far as it can go. I will be playing game such as fortnite, csgo, GTA5, war thunder etc.
If I need to, I can add an additional stick of ram. The Athlon is currently sitting overclocked at 3.75 Ghz and has been amazing me how well this little duo core runs. There has not been any stuttering or any issues what so ever. So far the max temp I have seen the system hit while under low was 46 degrees C! I will be following up via the comments over the next few weeks to report back any issues or changes I make to this build.
Part Reviews
CPU
The heart of this build! This puppy is currently over clocked to 3.75 ghz stable and has not had any issues in daily use of multitasking between playing youtube, downloading large files, internet browsing, and light games running all at the same time. So far max temperature under load has been a whopping 46 degrees C.
CPU Cooler
I have used this m9 in two builds and cannot swear by this cooler enough! My first build using it was a ryzen 2200g that was sitting at 55-58 degrees C idle and 68 degrees under load with the stock wraith cooler included with the cpu. I replaced the wraith cooler with the M9 and idle temps dropped to 38 and load dropped to 52!
Motherboard
Love this board. This was also used in two builds. Im taking a star off because as of today (2/23/2019) the pricing is about 100 dollars for the board. This board only has 3 fan ports including one for the cpu and no onboard wifi. Other than that, its a great board
Storage
Originally I purchased two of these ssd's. The first one was for an older laptop of mine. These SSD's are extremely picky when it comes to formatting them. No joke, it took me 5 computers to find one that would see the drive and allow me to install windows onto it. Other than that, one drive has been used for about 6 months now no issue. Boot up times are fast.
Storage
I snagged this for quite a bit cheaper than other 2tb hdds available at the time. Hitachi is a pretty decent company, so only time will tell how long this drive lasts.
Case
IT is hard for me not to give this case three stars. This case was picked out by my dad because he wanted something that was minimalist in design, and black in color. Here is why it gets three stars
CONS:
- cable management was there but barely. most of the cut outs made for cable management are mostly blocked my things being plugged in by the 24 pin connector and sata ports.
-some rough edges inside the case. I cut myself twice on some edges that did not look rough, but were.
-the stand offs. I had to drill out and tap two of the stand off holes. Second, after I installed all of the included standoffs that came with the case, the threading was awful in them and trying to secure the mobo was impossible. I wound up having to pull standoffs out of another case I have lying around and I had no issues once I replaced them.
PROS:
-this case is solid! This case is small, and cheap but has made great use of its size giving you plenty of space to work minus the cable management. The metal does not feel cheap and does not have any give when being stressed.
-AIRFLOW!! this case has space for I believe up to 6 case fans! The front is porous with a mesh appearance that is plastic so it gives the ability for air to pass easily yet is solid. If you mounted RGB fans in the case, I imagine they would illuminate well!
-Pleasing to the eye! The case looks great! The I/O ports are located on the top of the case, which gives the front of the case a nice simple appearance and you can plug in usb devices without them hanging off the side of the case and getting snagged.
Overall I enjoyed this case, and would consider using it in a build for myself.
Power Supply
This was a b stock refurbished unit I picked up from EVGA. IT comes with a no questions asked 1 year warranty and was almost 20 dollars cheaper than new.
Wireless Network Adapter
Pretty simple wifi card. has good speeds.
Custom
This card originally cost 62 dollars on ebay, but I was able to use a coupon to get the price of 52 dollars shipped. This is an HP branded rx 460 that was intended for use inside HP prebuilt units. Gives great performance, but is just an ugly card.
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