$0 Gaming Rig: What can you get for nothing?

[Luke122]

As many of you know, I'm pretty frugal (cheap) when it comes to computers lately. Part of that may have to do with losing my job just before Christmas.. Anyways, I've managed to put together a complete system out of donated and salvaged parts, so I thought I'd share it with you all.

The beginning of this setup was a donated Seanix tower, with an Intel D865 motherboard, a P4 2.8 Northwood cpu, and 1gb PC2-4200 memory. This computer came from a client of mine, who asked me to recover the data from the hard drive. Once the recovery was completed, he asked me to dispose of the system. I asked his permission to salvage it and use it for myself, and he agreed.

A 30gb hdd came from another computer (an old P3 Emachine tower) which was destined to be recycled. The Windows install key on the side of the Seanix tower was reused, and the sytem was beginning to take shape.

Next up was a donated gpu, an ATI X1600Pro 512mb AGP card. The owner had upgraded to a socket 775 system, and a PCI-E gpu, so there was no need for the card anymore.

Another customer of mine had decided to replace their desktop PC with a pair of laptops (one for him, one for his wife), so I landed another Emachine tower, this one with a very nice 15" NEC LCD.

While dropping off all the unneeded components at the local recycling center, I found a Dell tower sitting in a bin full of microwaves. I noticed a p4 HT sticker on the front, so I grabbed it thinking I could at least build another PC for my mom to replace her aging celeron 733.

When I got home, I opened it up to find an Audigy 2 sound care (gold edition) and a 7600gs! Ram was gone, optical drive, and hdd were removed, but the cpu and cooler were intact as well.

Part 2 to come very soon!

[Luke122]

The completed phase 1 build was as follows:

P4 2.8ghz Northwood
1gb PC2-4200
Intel D865 Motherboard
ATI X1600Pro 512mb
Audigy 2
30gb HDD
15" NEC LCD
Seanix Mid Tower Case
300w Sparkle PSU

Certainly not anything extravagant, but it was solid, free, and could play World of Warcraft. The only cost here was for my WoW subscription, and the power used.

After my little WoW blowup/rant/meltdown, I decided it was time to do something else with my gaming time. I removed WoW and cleared 13gb of hard drive space! Yay me!

My roomate donated an 80gb hdd that he pulled from his computer after upgrading to a 250gb, so now I have a 30gb OS drive, and an 80gb storage drive, which is hosting the swap file for a bit more performance. A bit.. not alot. :)

About this time, I also started working for a computer shop, and the owners were sad to hear about my crap machine, so they gave me another matched pair of PC2-4200 512mb's for a total of 2gb ram. The increase in performance was definitely noticeable.

With some minor tweaks to Windows, I had a fairly decent computer, for no cost.

I benchmarked it last night with Aquamark, and scored mid-43k. I thought this was not too bad, but decided I wanted to try my 7600gs that i salvaged.

The 7600gs has 256mb ram, half of the X1600pro card, so I didnt expect much from it. More than anything, I wanted to see if it worked, and if would make any sonic difference in my machine, since it's passively cooled. After installing and booting up, I heard no difference at all, so I thought "well, at least it's working so far."

I downloaded the drivers for it, and ran the benchmark again. This time I scored just over 53,000! Needless to say, I was pretty impressed. I grabbed Ntune and started to tweak.. after pushing it to 425mhz (from the stock 400mhz) I gained just over 1000 points, and hit a little past 54,000. 7mhz more (432mhz) got me up to 55,000!

At this point the card crashed, and I had to reboot. Well, since I was pushing it 15% past stock speeds with a passive cooler, I sort of expected this, but I certainly didnt expect a 2000 point gain from only 15% increase in clock speed. I guess thats only 4% or so more performance, but hey, I'll take it. :)

[Luke122]

This morning my new bosses gave me a CPU to try in my system. :) Not anything fancy, but still an upgrade, and I should see a decent gain from it.. P4 3.0/1m/800mhz SL79L.

I also landed a new set of mounting hardware for my old Zalman cpu cooler which I found in a box of junk last night, so I could install that also, but since the mobo I'm using has no overclocking ability, I might just save it until a new board falls into my lap.

More to come as this system evolves!

[Omega]

Not bad for a free rig.

I've paid for worse gear.

My first rig that I had here on TBCS was about $700 and had a nV GeForce 5500, AMD Athlon64 3200, 1gb RAM, etc.

[Luke122]

The first computer I paid for myself was a Cyrix M 100mhz box, with 16mb ram, and an S3 Virge pci video card. 1 gb hdd yay me! $700. Of course, this was 1995.

[nevermind1534]

I got a P4 motherboard and socket 772 3GHz CPU (plus a really nice case) for free out of the trash. That is among my best finds so far. I've also got quite a few Athlon XPs.

[Luke122]

I got a P4 motherboard and socket 772 3GHz CPU (plus a really nice case) for free out of the trash. That is among my best finds so far. I've also got quite a few Athlon XPs.

If you still have the system, lets get some Aquamark benchmarks from it!

[nevermind1534]

If you still have the system, lets get some Aquamark benchmarks from it!

I sold it to somebody in Canada. I can ask if he could get some benchmarks for us, though.

[FuzzyPlushroom]

Sounds a lot like my backup machine. My friend gave me his old motherboard (Abit GD8 ), RAM (2x512 Corsair VS PC3200), and video card (6600/256MB PCIe) when he went off to college, and I used the PSU and case from my old, slowly-dying Socket A box (420w Enermax/Ultra Aluminus) and found a 40GB Western Digital to stick in there in my collection of old drives, and picked up a 3.2 Prescott from school (thank God for LGA 775, as I carried it home in my pocket)... "Dodecapede" is runnin' smooth.

Athlon XP systems can be great value if you can find one dirt cheap or free. They can still run with almost any single-core 32-bit CPU (which is to say, most pre-Core Intels), which is plenty for email, light gaming, Photoshop... you name it. DDR's pretty cheap, some of 'em even have perfectly okay nForce onboard video (GeForce2 MX, basically)... I ran one as my main rig until a year ago, and still enjoy tinkering with 'em more than just about anything else. They take a bit of skill, and I appreciate that.