Sure, that'a a "cheap" PC you're building here !
You've wanted it with "cheap" parts or try some "unknowns" brands ?
Yes.
Although I could have gone even lower.
A Kllisre A320m motherboard, Ryzen 5 2600, and 16gb kit of DD4 memory will be $105 (free shipping) starting on the 17th. Basically the core of a Walmart "gaming pc". An X99 CPU/Motherboard/16gb kit of DD4 memory is less than $100. Kits build around a B450/Ryzen 3600/16gb start at $135. Intel kits are around the same prices, built around 11th & 12 gen i5. Aliexpress has 2 week sales every month; if it isn't on sale, give it a week or two.
Most of these parts are sold on Amazon; I simply saved a bit of money in exchange for waiting longer for them to show up. 2 days or so on Amazon or 2 weeks for Aliexpress - although the motherboard was nearly a month since the 1st one was lost in the mail somewhere in China. They shipped a new one within 12 hours of me notifying them - customer service was impressive.
The Soyo motherboard is typical of any B550m; same power delivery system, same amount of I/O, same board layout right down to the capacitors. The brand is well known, and I saved at least $20 over what it would have cost me on Amazon. If I had ordered it on sale, it would have been half of the price on Amazon or Newegg.
A Ryzen 5 5600 is 5600. Mine was new (was expecting a used one); and I ordered the cooler separately - that saved me $30.
The KingSpec NVMe I have experience with - it was the same price as Amazon or Newegg, but adding it to my order got me a bigger discount code on my order, so I saved another couple of bucks.
The memory was a shot it the dark - at the time, it was a dollar less than a comparable kit off of Amazon or Newegg, a number of different storefronts were selling them (and had sold thousands) so why not?
The open air test bench was $19; on Amazon the exact same product is $29.
The video cards that I am testing are all "Aliexpress Specials". For the most part, they aren't sold in the west, and I found them
interesting. Most are 90% new - the GPU chip is old, but the pcb & fan assembly are brand new; the others are build around a laptop gpu and turned into a discrete GPU.
It has been my observation that most budget video card reviews (either on YT or here) are pretty much useless for making buying decisions. The information is accurate; but for the most part it is useless data. Pairing a budget video card with a system that is completely maxed out otherwise isn't realistic. This test bench is more in line with what the Steam hardware survey shows.
People in this price range aren't playing their games on Ultra Settings; they aren't using raytracing; they aren't playing on 4k; they will use upscaling (if they know about it), they don't have a collection of the latest and greatest AAA games (that cost more than the entire system); and believe it or not, some people do more than play 1st person shooters and racing games.
My testing games are either free, or they have been on sale for less than $20 recently; most importantly, they are games that people are actually playing -
Starfield isn't in the testing suite;
Diablo Immortal is. There will be a mixture of DX9, 11, and 12 as well as Vulkan. In addition, a number of them will be less well known (this is for my Intel GPU).
I have a number of budget video cards, half bought from newegg, amazon, or ebay (for control - I had them in other systems over the years), the others are the
interesting ones.
RX 480 8gb - from my Mac Pro days
RX 560 4gb - from my Mac Pro days
RX 560xt 8gb ($67) - How does the cheapest 8gb card perform in 2024?
RX 570 8gb - got me through the last mining apocalypse.
RX 580 (2084) 16gb ($100) - Does the 16gb help with Stable Diffusion? We know it doesn't help with games. Otoh, none of the tests I saw had rebar turned on.
RX 5700xt 8gb ($132) - How does RDNA 1 hold up in 2024?
GTX 1030DDR5 2gb - the testing floor, was able to replace defective fans with replacement fans from Aliexpress.
GTX 1650 4gb - only budget Nvida card under $125.
RTX 2060 Super 8gb ($164)
RTX 2060m 12gb ($157) - is this the cheapest card for Stable Diffusion? How does the lower core clocks affect both SD & games?
RTX 3060m 6gb ($130) - Can more CUDA cores compensate for half the Vram & lower core clocks?
RTX 3060 12gb ($285) - Most popular GPU on Steam hardware survey.
a770 16gb ($289) - Productivity monster; gaming - so far, so good.
I will be adding to this list with a couple more RTX
2000m & 3000m variants.
As a followup.....
Newegg is selling an almost identical system for $749. The major difference being the Newegg system has a B450 motherboard, a 550 watt psu, and a thermaltake case.
If you can work a screwdriver,you can save a LOT of money.
they are still "on the way"
