So good news. I now know the direction I want to take these PCs in. And if you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, in my last PC build video, I wasn’t sure what I was going to be doing with the PCs I built on the channel. But now I’m going to be selling them! I have no use for them once they’re built and benchmarked. So I’ve started a PC flipping side hustle, if you want to call it that, but with only one PC so far. This next build has been fun, it’s an mATX case so nice and small, and with a bit of a story surrounding the graphics card. But more on that in a moment.
The case was a refurbished thing from CCL I think. It cost just over £31, and it’s black, has a tempered glass side, and looks alright. The motherboard is an MSI A520M-A Pro, an mATX AM4 board I got from Currys here in the UK for £48. The CPU being paired with it is a Ryzen 7 3700X, which I picked up for £73. The cooler I’m hoping to use is a nice little Thermalright I got for under £20 online. For RAM, I’m recycling an old 32GB kit, so no real cost there. For storage, I’m giving this Fanxiang one a test again. It cost £45 for a terabyte, which I thought wasn’t bad.
Graphics has been a bit of a journey. I started this build thinking I was going to be using my R9 280X from Sapphire, however, I very quickly realised that the age of the card and driver compatibility issues with Windows 11 was going to be a bit of an issue, and while it played games like Fortnite and could hit a fairly decent FPS rate, if this was going to be sold on to someone, I didn’t want to cause any issues there with future use. So instead, I got myself a nice little RX580 8GB version from eBay for £66 including delivery, so I was happy with that. For a PSU I purchased a CX500 from Corsair, because of the black cables, and finally, for fans, I got six unbranded fans for £29, because they look nice and colourful. All in all, I’ve spent £353 on this PC, and with any luck, it’ll go quickly. So, let’s start the build.
Putting together the machine was a very easy job, and I didn’t really fall down anyhere except for the front IO inputs, because as always they absolutely suck. The CPU cooler needed a lot of pressure pressed down on it for the screw holes to latch on to the bracket but it went in simple enough and yes, there was a backplate in the motherboard box this time! Swapping out the case fans was a bit of a job though because there’s not much room to move inside of the case, which I did feel pretty heavily when it came to running my cable management (which remained almost non-existent. I do take for granted these bigger fish tank style cases, as well as daisy chainable fans now which reduces clutter. Anyway, it was necessary because I wanted this gaming rig to look quite striking. And also just to let you know, I’ve cut the GPU install from this part of the video because we’ve swapped out the 280X for the 580X, which we’ll show a bit later.
As it happens, I did have an issue with the 280X. I played some Fortnite, and it was very stuttery, especially when it got a bit busier. The 280X is an old card now. It came out in 2013, and driver support is really nonexistent. There are workarounds, and I could start going out and finding legacy drivers that could work, and if I was keeping the PC for myself that’s exactly what I would do, but as it’s being built to sell on, I feel it’s a little unfair selling this system when there could be issues down the line with driver compatibiltiy and Windows updates. So with this in mind, I did find a 580X on eBay as mentioned at the beginning of the video, so I will be swapping out the graphics card for that. It should be a decent 50% or so jump up in spec from the 280X I have here now, and framerates at 1080p should improve. It’s also got Freesync available too to minimise screen tearing. It’s the 8GB version, so a much more capable card, though you’re not going to be pushing much past 1080p gaming.
Anyway, watch the video, it explains everything.
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