Daddy Daughter Dance and The "Rescue" Computer: Part 1

You might be wondering; what does one have to do with the other? That probably means that you haven't had the pleasure of attending one of these little shindigs. Mostly, at these annual events, you get dressed up, take your daughter to dinner, get to the dance where she runs off with her friends and spends the evening running, jumping, and squealing while the dads stand around watching and chatting with each other. Of course, there are a few dances where the daughter will appear out of the crowd and claim you for a few minutes..... then off she'll go again!

This year, while I'm doing my "wall-flower" imitation, one of my daughter's friend's dads started telling my about his 16 year-old son's computer woes. As you can imagine, this happens to me a lot around here. It started with this, an Asus X553m notebook computer. That which is of a class of machine that I despise the most: oh no, not the brand or model per se, bu the type...... the lowest of the low.... the $300-400 laptop. This one was worse than most. Again, not so much the make or model, but that they had bought it as a machine to be used for school and gaming! This machine is a wretched choice for either of these functions. Not transportable enough for the former and not powerful enough for the latter. So predictably, it was "broken":

1. It's Windows 8......
2. It's cheap...... in every sense of the word
3. Neither the kid (nor the parents) know what they are doing so it's loaded up with malware etc.
4. In his frustration, had banged hard enough on the keyboard to cause some permanent damage thus requiring replacement. We're hoping that it's the cable and not the connector on the motherboard! If I'm right, it'll be a $30 fix.

So, these being our family friends, and having pity on their computing woes, I told them to bring over the offending hardware..... and this is where things went sideways..... ah get interesting.....

So, one Sunday afternoon, they came. I was expecting the laptop, but several trips back to the car, along with a bunch of unnecessary items (monitor, keyboard, cables, etc.) later a Thermaltake Commander Series case in "Snow Edition" showed up as well.... So here's the story. Apparently, at some point; an accommodating family uncle, knowing that his nephew wanted to game, gathered up some old PC parts and put them in this cheap "gaming" case for him. Oh, make no mistake; it's a cheap case and not just a case of me being hyper-critical! This created a whole new dynamic to the original issue, so let me digress......

Warning! Soapbox Rant Impending; 10, 9, 8 ......... 1, ignition! This is one of the dumbest ideas out there!!! No, no, not the Razer Pro! The product isn't the issue..... it's the concept..... at least for most people, but especially for a student close to or of college age. I've got no issue with gaming, in fact, I'm of the strong belief that it's greatly responsible for driving the industry forward. And gaming encompasses the vast majority of teenage boys and an increasing percentage of young ladies as well. Yet, despite the advances made in mobile computing the "gaming laptop" simply isn't a good option for people of average income. Here's the thing; if you want to do mobile gaming in a satisfactory manner, you don't have a ton of options. You can do Razer, Alienware, Asus ROG, Acer Predator, or MSI Titan Pro. With a few notable bargains such as the Lenovo "Y" series machine, you're really in the $1500-2000+ end of the laptop pool. At issue, is that you can generally replicated the exact (or better) abilities of these machine for half the cost in a desktop! So......yeah.......

So..... don't buy a laptop; buy a desktop!?! Uh..... again...... NO! In today's world, it's not really an "or", it's an "and"  proposition.

It's really, more this scenario. A desktop machine that's a primary workstation which does everything from game to video editing (aka the heavy lifting). Then the laptop would serve as mobile computing, or a secondary device while the primary rig is doing a job like rendering video, etc. So, how are we getting our friend's kid to this ideal? The laptop part is easy: "it is what it is", he owns it and once it's been fixed and cleaned up, it will serve the purpose just fine till he's ready to upgrade. 

The answer to his problem started months ago, right here. You guys are already aware that my brother will out-of-the-blue, send me random things that are still usable, but that he has no use for..... case in point..... this AMD FX 4170 processor. It's a 4 core, CPU from the "Zambezi" series of their "Bulldozer" architecture. So, several years old, but still very usable if your aren't doing much high-end processor oriented work (which is a lot of games). The problem is that other than with HTPCs, my fleet tends to be rather an Intel shop. Not only did I not have a free AMD socketed board, but certainly, not a high end socket AM3+ board. My brother had gotten it virtually for free, but didn't know whether it worked. So it sat for months in the closet of doom, till I remembered that one of the Computer Club students had a relatively recent AMD build. Sure enough, it was AM3+ socket, so I asked him to test out that CPU. I certainly didn't want to invest $50 to $100 on a board and find out that the processor was bad! He found that it wasn't, so a few weeks ago, I found an appropriate board on Craigslist.

Not just a board, but a really nice Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3. You don't have to know this board , just note the extensive heatsinks around the socket, and you can ascertain a lot about it. I got the price down to $60. 

Right around the same time; this happened. An "orphan" found on the doorstep (OK, sitting outside my classroom door)..... a Fractal Design Define R4 missing the middle drive rack, but otherwise in good shape. What happened here, is that another of the Computer Club kids started working on a build and bought this case cheap (again off of CL) and decided to go another direction, so he brought it to me. So I took it home without knowing what I was going to do with it. Lucky thing I didn't name it! So, at this point, you can probably see where this is going, right? When I started working on this other machine, I noticed that not only was it an "ancient" (DDR2) based MB, but that the case was pretty much a low-end product with virtually no room for wire management, sound deadening, drive-trays or anything else that's the normal for today's mid-priced computers. As I'm pulling parts out of the old machine it becomes obvious to me that the "new" stuff doesn't need to go into the Thermaltake Commander, but instead into the Define R4! This stray would get to go to a "forever" home! 

 

The rest is easy. I caught a sale at Micro Center this weekend on the Corsair CX650M PSU and SanDisk SSD Plus 240Gb totaling about $145 after taxes. While I was up there, I was even able to squeeze in a side-trip to pick up a GTX770 Reference Edition graphics card, but that's a different story not having to do with this build. (And now; back to the originally televised program). These items are a case of the right items at the right price, at the right time. He'll be able to use that Corsair PSU through multiple builds due to the 650 watts of 80Plus Bronze power and it has the added bonus of being a modular model so it can help keep the wiring cleaner. The SanDisk will be plenty fast and large enough for him to load not only the OS, but some of the software as well. I'll find him an old mechanical hard drive to put in there as additional storage along with an optical drive. They won't cost anything because I have them sitting around. Where does this thing stand right now? In actual money spent, it's run up to just over $200. Am I going to charge him for the case, and CPU. The answer is yes, in that a) this isn't a charity case, b) I want to get the Computer Club kid back his money and c) I want the friend's kid to have a sense of how much money he'd be spending if he did this all himself and what he'd end up with once the costs were all totaled. What is the total so far? Oh, I'd say about $150 or so would be fair for the MB, CPU and case, making his expenditure at roughly $300. What's left?

Memory and graphic card of course. RAM is easy. We'll do 8Gb because it's the default standard these days and you don't want to game with 4Gb, plus he can't afford 16Gb. End of discussion? Well..... there is the question of 2 sticks or 4. Logic dictates 2, but budget and planning ahead says 4. Why? 8Gb in 4 sticks is cheaper, but he won't be able to upgrade without loosing at least 2 sticks. But really, if and when he needs 16Gb, he'll be ready for another board/CPU combo anyway and in all probability, any new build will then run with DDR4 RAM, not the DDR3 that's this board uses. So, about $35 vs. $55, saving $20 here. Now on to the most difficult question to answer: which graphics card? nVidia GTX1050 vs. GTX1060. What? No love for "Team Red", what about the RX4x0 series that's so hot right now with the new drivers? We've already looked and we know that the games he wants to play are pretty much "green leaning". But that's not the only factor. The GTX1050 is a $100 card and even the "Ti" or "SC" versions can sometimes be had for around that figure if you watch the sales and rebates. When doing the research that I set him on, he came up with the 1060. Yup, he was right, in-so-much as it'll give him the ideal frame-rates at the highest amount of detail, yada, yada, yada. But here's the thing; the 1060s run about $225 to 250 which is a whole other paycheck for a kid working at Sonic. He's not really a first-person-shooter player, nor will he be trying to run 4K or VR anytime soon. So the 1050 would allow him to play what he wants decently without the cost creating an "unbalanced build" (too much money in some particular thing that doesn't give you the return on investment proportional to it's cost). Which brings on the final set of variables in this build.

For the foreseeable future, this will be his gaming monitor(s). Some old "throw-aways"..... because anyone can get these for free or close to it because they're old and small! Plus, we don't live in Highland Park where daddy will buy the kid a new 28" IPS, 1440p screen anyway (along with a new $3000 Alienware)! So, after this stuff gets paid for, he can start gaming while saving up to pick up 22-24", 5ms one or two Asus/Acer/Dell screens that appear on Craigslist daily for $40-50. In the meantime, he can play. 

This question can (and should) also be answered at a later date as well. He'll start out with old Dell "rubber-domed" keyboard and throw-away mouse that's everywhere. The questions of whether Cherry MX "Brown" is superior to "Purple" can wait. I typically advise kids like this to play and learn what they like and what they don't like. Then ask for the specific keyboard and/or mouse for their birthday or Christmas presents from relatives (parents/grand parents) because, they probably can't/won't buy you the whole computer, might feel weird about simply giving you money, but will be happy to walk into a store if they know exactly the thing you want (if you tell them where to buy it). Or better yet; Amazon.

At the end of the day, what we'll have a an under $500 (about $450) build that will allow this kid to play the games that he wants to play, right now. He'll have a number of component that he can grow with such as the case, power supply and SSD so he won't have to do it all at once again unless he really wants to. Having options is a good thing!

You might be wondering what's going to happen to the old computer in a cheap case he brought, that I decided not to use....... stay tuned for Part 2.