$7.48 PC Build, looking for a cheap video card.

PunkMcKunkle · Jan 22, 2017

Greetings,

My son and I are rebuilding a PC we bought at a thrift store for $7.48 and I would like to see what you guys suggest for a decent budget gaming card. Nothing fancy, cheap is what will work best for us. Don't mind buying used either.

It had the following:

Thermaltake Case

Asus AM2 M2NPV-NM Motherboard

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ CPU

2 Gigs PC2-6400 Ram

500 Watt Antec Power supply (With 6 pin power connector)

DVD Drive

We were gifted a 250 Gig Hard Drive and I installed an extra 2 gigs of 6400 Ram I had lying around.

So far, we've spent less than $8 on this build, I would like to keep the total cost below $50 is we can.

Thanks for the help

chemmajorp53 · Jan 22, 2017

What kind of games do you plan on playing with 2GB of RAM and an old dual core?

imsqam · Jan 22, 2017

I would look for a GT 730
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/GFTrxr/zotac-video-card-zt7111320l

or an R7 240
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/bL6BD3/msi-video-card-r72402gd3lp

PunkMcKunkle · Jan 22, 2017

chemmajorp53 :

Nothing too heavy, and he hasn't gotten to the age where super high framerates and resolutions are a deal breaker. He just likes to play whatever he can.

We have a total of 4 gigs after I ungraded from what I had lying around.

Thanks

PunkMcKunkle · Jan 22, 2017

imsqam :

Both of these were on my radar, which of the 2 do you suggest?

Thanks

chemmajorp53 · Jan 22, 2017

If you just want to play games like rocket league and non-intensive RPGs, then I'd just look around your area on craigslist. Search "GPU" or "video card" or something and see what you find. Anything you get new for $50 is gonna be a terrible value.

http://orangecounty.craigslist.org/sop/5946151794.html

Here's an example from around where i live, contact people like this and see if they'll do $35-40. Usually they don't get much interest and say OK if you come pick it up.

EDIT: Between those 2 he gave you that are new, the GT 730 is better

PunkMcKunkle · Jan 22, 2017

chemmajorp53 :

Thank you, I appreciate that.

I found an NVIDIA 550ti on ebay for around $40 used. would that run decent?

chemmajorp53 · Jan 22, 2017

Yes, but see if you can haggle it down a bit to save some money and make 100% sure that you have a 6pin PCIe power connector on your PSU. That card will be about 30% faster in game than a GT 730.

PunkMcKunkle · Jan 22, 2017

Thank you, yes I checked and we have the 6 pin, the person who built this seemed to do his or her best to put the best they could in for it's time. We are considering picking up a 6000+ CPU on ebay for $16 also to give it a little extra HP

PunkMcKunkle · Jan 22, 2017

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NVIDIA-1GB-GDDR5-VIDEO-GRAPHICS-CARD-EVGA-GEFORCE-GTX-550-TI-01G-P3-1556-KR-/232205255382?hash=item36108302d6:g:SywAAOSwImRYeOY9

http://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-Athlon-64-X2-6000-3-0GHz-2MB-Dual-Core-Socket-AM2-125W-ADX6000IAA6CZ-CPU-/162051643326?hash=item25bb07d7be:g:gBIAAOSwKfVXIJbv

Some possible upgrades. We can also max this board out at 8 gigs of Ram which we would like to eventually do.

chemmajorp53 · Jan 22, 2017

This is worth it for $5 more

http://www.ebay.com/itm/EVGA-GeForce-GTX-650-Ti-PCIe-Graphics-Card-2GB-DVI-HDMI-P-N-02G-P4-3651-KR-/142254692365?hash=item211f0a580d:g:yT0AAOSwo4pYhTJV

PunkMcKunkle · Jan 22, 2017

chemmajorp53 :

Thank You

imsqam · Jan 22, 2017

Missed a lot. 730 is better. Don't spend much on the video card, the CPU will just bottleneck it. The 650 Ti is more than enough.

chemmajorp53 · Jan 22, 2017

To be completely honest I wouldn't spend too much money on upgrading this computer's CPU and ram because of the old motherboard, you can probably find an older i3/i5/mobo or FX4100/6300 and mobo for cheap and it would be a better value, the AM2 athlon chips are just so old and slow

imsqam · Jan 22, 2017

Its a Frankenstein, they can be a lot of fun to build.

PunkMcKunkle · Jan 22, 2017

imsqam :

We just wanted something to learn on, I didn't expect to find this all for under $8 We wont spend more than $50 as it is all very outdated hardware. However, If we could invest now in a decent card that could carry us to the next build which we will probably use the case and the power supply on. I figure $16 for a dual core 3.0 cpu isn't that big of a deal, I used to play crysis on one of those back in late 2000's on my old alienware board.

Thanks for the help guys!

PunkMcKunkle · Jan 22, 2017

by the way, we are currently running stock on board graphics so anything will be better than what we have now lol

$7.48 PC Build, looking for a cheap video card.

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