which SFF pc would you buy for a budget build?

raverx3m

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so I recently purchased 2 hp pro 6300 sff towers without really doing much research..
only to find out that they are not that easy to upgrade
enough for now but still not what I hoped for ..
but for the total price of around 250 bucks after upgrades is not bad at all for i7-3770

then I started digging the webs and it seems like dell latitude SFF would be a better option because it has regular PSU that can be replaced and slightly newer with newer cpu support but double the price... which would still be a budget build technically since it would still be under 500 bucks total after upgrades

im curious if you were to build a budget system from SFF case what model PC would you start with?


PS: please don't be captain obvious and reply that I should just build my own pc from components available.. yes I know that option exists and is NOT what im asking.
 
I tried doing this before and wound up with the same problems, the end result is always your GPU limitation followed by PSU. I almost never recommend it.
 
well its never by choice to go with smaller form factor.
if I had space I would stay with full size like I had for years.
but out of all the available used SFF pcs which would you buy if you were to turn it into a budget gaming PC?
its obviously not gonna be as good as full tower
but then again honda civic is the last thing you would expect to do a 7 second 1/4 mile run...
 
I know, just conveying that just because it's an itx board and a SFF case, doesn't mean it has to be gutless.
(could a civic with enough hp and the right tires could do a 1/4 mile in 7 sec?.... yea but not as an economy car!
:lol:

I'm not sure that a budget gaming pc can be built for under $500. A 1060 GPU would cost you $200. alone just for that one thing. Maybe PP knows if you can game with an AMD 2200G to be within that budget
 
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I see some dell sff boxes with 5th gen i7/i5 cpus which seem to have normal PSU and 2-3 pci slots for around 300 bucks
SSD+ max out ram+ graphics card should make a reasonably good gaming pc.
 
I have to agree with PP on the GPU issue and using off the shelf oem pc. HP, Dell and those others really do not provide an easy upgrade a good GPU in their SFF cases, but that is not their intent either. You'll be better off with going with a DYI SFF case from some place like Newegg or Amazon
 
The inherent problem with these machines is that you're buying used so the GPU absolutely has to be upgraded. Even if the PSU can be upgraded if it still requires a LP GPU your max upgrade option is 1050ti and that's it. As good as that machine is if your kid/s outgrow Minecraft, Roblox, Garry's Mod, etc and want to play newer titles they will definitely need something better. A 1050ti is good for high settings on older titles and low-med on newer titles to a certain extent at 1080p. The other problem is you're limited to what's available used so there's no specific model that can be mentioned here to go for. The newer HP Z SFF workstations have a 240w Platinum rated PSU that can actually handle a GTX 1080 if the GPU is mounted outside of the machine. It's expensive though, and the board is limited to using ECC DDR4 which isn't cheap (although the CPU was a Xeon equivalent of an i7 6700). Even with what I was able to do I wouldn't trust a kid or even a teen with a machine that has a GPU zip tied to the chassis.
 
what about IBM and dell?
those seem to have a better psu and design where I can actually replace the psu?

im not going back to full size desktop anytime soon. so the SFF is here to stay for a while because its not as bulky.

I mean can you really beat this performance with off the shelf parts for 300 bucks?
 
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