My Future Gaming PC Specs

Anyone who's read my articles on here will know that I write a lot about PC gaming on a budget and there's a good reason for that, I don't have much money to be able to afford a top of the line gaming PC. As someone who's currently unemployed, money is hard to come by. This week I was able to finally save up just enough money to be able to afford my budget gaming PC. The only thing that I'm not able to afford yet is a good graphics card, but I should be having a little money in a couple weeks and I'll purchase one at that point. While there will be a couple weeks where I won't have a good GPU, I should still be able to play some older and less demanding titles with my CPU's built in graphics and that's fine with me for a couple weeks.

I decided to go ahead and buy almost everything I'll need minus a GPU. While it may have been wiser to wait a week for Black Friday, money tends to burn a hole in my pocket so I decided to go ahead and snag some good deals that I've been eyeballing this past week on eBay. Everything that I've ordered so far is expected to arrive around the first week of December. Without further ado, let's get into the specs of my upcoming budget gaming PC.

Dell Optiplex 7010 MT
3.4 Ghz i5-3570 (4 cores, 4 threads/boosts up to 3.8Ghz)
8GB DDR3-1600 Mhz RAM
500GB HDD
Corsair 550w Semi-modular ATX PSU
USB Wifi Adpater
24in. LED 60Hz 1080p Monitor

Costs:

All in all, my cost so far including a decent monitor is $165. The PC came with almost everything and that cost me $100 with shipping. Of course I needed a HDD so I managed to pick up a 500GB HDD for $8. While I would have definitely preferred an SSD, for now it just wasn't in my budget. Luckily I already had a good PSU from few years back that a friend had sent me so that didn't cost me anything. The USB Wifi adapter was only $2, but was definitely needed because sadly I don't have enough money to afford home internet and have to use my neighbor's wifi for the time being. I looked around for a decent monitor and managed to get a 24 inch 60Hz 1080p monitor for only $55 with free shipping. Although the monitor is a little bigger than I needed, it was actually cheaper than most monitors that was smaller than it. I could have bought a new one for $70, but it was just out of reach of my current budget and the only downside to the used monitor was a small scratch on the left side of the bezel. That wasn't a big deal for me though.

The last big thing that I'll need is of course a GPU. I'll most likely either be buying either an RX570 or RX580. Depending on which one I get will really just come down to the current prices of them at the time that I decide to buy one. Even with an RX570, I will be able to run almost any game at high settings, 60fps at 1080p. If I decide to go with the cheaper option of an RX570 4GB, I'll be expecting to spend around $75 for a used one which will bring my entire cost, monitor and all, to around $240. To be able to play any game that I want, I think that's very respectable for an entire gaming pc setup. I also already have a gaming keyboard and gaming mouse so that also saved me a bit of money. One thing that I'm kinda surprised about is that the PC didn't come with a HDD caddy which is where the HDD sits when you go to mount it into the PC. Luckily, I can buy one from eBay for around $4 and I'll probably do just that.

So that it! That's going to be my future gaming PC! Since it's a 7010 MT Optiplex, I'll be able to upgrade anything in it down the road. I can upgrade the CPU, RAM, or get an SSD. I could even swap the motherboard to something more modern since it's a standard mATX mobo, so in a few years I may just have an incredible sleeper PC.

I'm really excited and I can't wait to show you benchmarks of just what exactly a $200 gaming PC can do. But for now though... it's been real, it's been fun, it's been real fun. I hope you have an awesome rest of your day and I'll see you in the next article! :)