Super budget gaming PC - any upgrades needed ASAP?

GTanny

GTanny

GTanny

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My eldest has decided she wants a gaming PC for Christmas but due to my current circumstances I cant currently afford to build her a new one so I have put together the following:

I have saved the following from the waste electrical skip for free from work:
Lenovo ThinkCentre SFF PC - i5 8500 CPU
32GB OEM ram from the ThinkCentre (stripped from a few PC's they were scrapping)
512GB Crucial SSD
210W Stock Power supply
and added in the following:
1TB Crucial M.2
GTX 3050 LP
WiFi Card.
Running Windows 11

Is there anything that would be a significant upgrade to the system that I should consider before Christmas?

I have tidied everything up, replaced thermal paste and all in its cost me about £200 for a system that is performing much better than I expected for the price. I have also run some benchmarks and stress tests to check stability and make sure the power supply was adequate and everything has been fine so far.

Her main request is to play BG3 and it runs it at 60FPS on ultra setting with DLSS quality enabled (30-40 without DLSS) on 1080

Ideally I would move everything to a bigger case to allow for more flexibility with graphics card choices and upgrade options but that would likely also require a new power supply so I have put that on the potential future upgrade path.
 
Looks good, the components are pretty well balanced so seems fine. I'm going to have to keep an eye out for something similar, my daughter's only 9 but she wants a PC for homework and the occasional game.
 
significant upgrade? not really. Any future upgrade will probably be a full new build. The 3050 does need a higer wattage PSU technically (550w) but if it works...

It's not going to set the world on fire and I couldnt say if it'll hit the BG3 fps she wants but for £200 you've done well.
 
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Rob_B said:
significant upgrade? not really. Any future upgrade will probably be a full new build. The 3050 does need a higer wattage PSU technically (550w) but if it works...

It's not going to set the world on fire and I couldnt say if it'll hit the BG3 fps she wants but for £200 you've done well.
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I've downloaded and played the opening part of BG3 on ultra and DLSS quality with a stable 60 FPS.

the LP 3050 doesn't have an external 6/8pin power supply so is limited to 75W from the PCIE, when running stress testing it was showing max 150W total system power use so I'm keeping fingers crossed the 210W PSU will survive, at least 4/5 months before I can look into upgrading the case and PSU
 
GTanny said:
when running stress testing it was showing max 150W total system power use so I'm keeping fingers crossed the 210W PSU will survive, at least 4/5 months before I can look into upgrading the case and PSU
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I don't know about Lenovo specifically, but OEM PSUs tend to be capable of offering that power as sustained power (despite their low wattage on the label), so I wouldn't worry about it.
 
Watch out, these OEM builders are very sneaky. I rescued a Lenovo, the Mobo was dead. Replaced it with an off the shelf as the original was cacu and super expensive. The PSU was incomparable; power cable wrong plug, not enough cables. Case header was propiority, WiFi card from god knows what, front panel ports were part of the motherboard. The OEM PSU was stupidly expensive so I had to replace it.

Is the the 3050 LP bus powered? It should only be 75w if it is. (Ok you have said it is already)
 
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jms198 said:
Watch out, these OEM builders are very sneaky. I rescued a Lenovo, the Mobo was dead. Replaced it with an off the shelf as the original was cacu and super expensive. The PSU was incomparable; power cable wrong plug, not enough cables. Case header was propiority, WiFi card from god knows what, front panel ports were part of the motherboard. The OEM PSU was stupidly expensive so I had to replace it.

Is the the 3050 LP bus powered? It should only be 75w if it is. (Ok you have said it is already)
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I did a similar build with a Dell years ago and it was the same then, you can get cables to adapt universal fittings from a standard PSU to Dell/Lenovo etc motherboards, frustrating but it does mean I can move it in to a bigger case without having to replace everything all at once.
 
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