You should be able to build a pretty good machine from scratch for 1200. Just focus on Video card as the majority of your expenses as that's the part that matters 98% the most for a gaming machine. I wouldn't put anything less than a 2060 in it.

I really think a 2060 is a bad deal, as is any GPU that is over 250$ that has less than 8GB of VRAM. You can say 6GB is plenty -- which is the exact same story I heard when choosing my 4GB 760GTX over the 2GB version many years back. Less than a year later I was taking advantage of that unnecessary extra VRAM.

infiniteclouds wrote:

I really think a 2060 is a bad deal, as is any GPU that is over 250$ that has less than 8GB of VRAM. You can say 6GB is plenty -- which is the exact same story I heard when choosing my 4GB 760GTX over the 2GB version many years back. Less than a year later I was taking advantage of that unnecessary extra VRAM.

I keep hearing the 1160 is a mixed bag too. Looking at various benchmarks the Radeon fatboy 590 8gb (260.00) doesn't look too shabby for the price.

Something else to consider if going the OEM route: imbedded trojans on the installed OS? I guess confirm the OS is NOT activated.

1160 is also 6GB. The 500 series is nice, if you only care about the latest games. ATIs cards have piss poor compatibility for even some Windows 7 games.

Scratch. I wouldn't buy new at their gouge prices($700-1200 for a video card?) and I'm not even a fan of the relatively lower $300-500 for used, but that being said, 1080ti are $500 on craigslist in my area, $60-100 more on ebay, 1080 were $300 but currently the sellers are trying to get $370-400, higher than ebay, gah I hate pie in the sky sellers. I've never signed up for facebook but they apparently have a market with even better deals for used hardware, which might finally get me to sign up just to check that out, along with some other selling sites I've never heard of that this guy mentions regularly: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9Tn-atYOt8qZP-oqui7bhw Sorry that I haven't cued up a particular video, I do remember him talking about them on his videos of his trip to california & nevada. If the target is just 1080p 60fps, then I'd strongly be eyeing the radeon rx 580, which goes for just $100-120 on craigslist and ebay(actually better deals on ebay than the $120 I'm seeing on craigslist currently,) going by reviews, heavier titles at stock it will average 55 fps with overclocking getting to 60 with most games being well above 60. 512gb ssd for $55-60 off ebay. For cpu/motherboard/memory, best deal was older ddr3 based, like quad channel 6 core ivybridge xeons or 3930k sandybridge & x79 motheboards, equivalent to ryzens but much better deal from ddr4 being overpriced, but ddr4 supposed to be dropping now so time to take a look again. I'd wait for the next ryzen that's supposed to be out sometime this year, expected to finally beat intel, chip to get/price restructuring as a result.

Microcenter was selling RX 580s new for $170 last month, so you can find deals on them new too. Their poor performance in older games is what drove me away.

Hey I'm not advocating for a 2060, I said that was the minimum I would get. Personally I myself wouldn't go for anything under a 2080ti, but then again that's more than his whole budget.

infiniteclouds wrote:

Microcenter was selling RX 580s new for $170 last month, so you can find deals on them new too. Their poor performance in older games is what drove me away.

Any specifics? poor? below 60fps@1080p? 1070 $200 on cl, $225 ebay, which is 50% faster than the rx 580 for ~2x the price.

If you want 60fps with maxed out settings at 1200p (1920x1200), even a slightly overclocked GTX 1080 is not enough for some newer games.

I know because I have one in my main rig. And no, I am not CPU or RAM bound either... i7-4930k running at 4.6Ghz with 32GB of DDR3-2133 RAM in quad channel.

A 1080ti would probably be good for a couple years and is much faster than a regular 1080.. but the price over the 1080 is not very appealing.

awgamer wrote:

infiniteclouds wrote:

Microcenter was selling RX 580s new for $170 last month, so you can find deals on them new too. Their poor performance in older games is what drove me away.

Any specifics? poor? below 60fps@1080p? .

Old Blood, New Order cannot. Their drivers become very CPU limited and you cannot force vsync in any DX9 games.

Have you tried rivatuner to cap refresh rate? ps. searched for old blood and new order on mobys, those both wolfenstein releases?

cyclone3d wrote:

If you want 60fps with maxed out settings at 1200p (1920x1200), even a slightly overclocked GTX 1080 is not enough for some newer games.

I know because I have one in my main rig. And no, I am not CPU or RAM bound either... i7-4930k running at 4.6Ghz with 32GB of DDR3-2133 RAM in quad channel.

A 1080ti would probably be good for a couple years and is much faster than a regular 1080.. but the price over the 1080 is not very appealing.

Figured with the 2080's coming out the 1080ti prices would go down, guess Nvidia wants to "shoehorn" everyone towards the new gear?

Continuing the other side of this discussion found one of these for sale: HP Z440 Xeon E5-1620v3 3.5GHz QC 16Gb 256Gb SSD K620 Win10 x64 Workstation for
290.00 believe it comes with a 525W ps. I could add another hd and video card still be below my budget but it's refurbished of course. Workable?

GTX 1660 looks like the performance sweet spot right now over the rtx 2600. Edges out or matches the 1070 in alot of cases from the reviews iv read and if you don't care about RTX anyways, no need to spend the "Ray Tracing" tax. Also the power envelope is really nice for the performance you get

Looks like it can be overclocked with intel's utility.
https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Desktops-Archiv … or/td-p/5506441
http://www.digitaltechglobal.com/overclocking … -processor.html

spec sheet says the memory is just ddr4 2400 but the 12620v3 is quad channel, so if you want to take advantage of that you'll want another 16gb of memory if the 16gb it comes with is 2x8gb($140 for 2x8gb registered ddr4 2400,) z440 mb goes for $100 on ebay, 256gb ssds are $30, case is meh, I put my pc in a closet, looks matters not to me, 525w ps 80plus/bronze/silver/gold/platinum/titantium? $30-40, win10 license $15. $290 is a better buy than buying the parts individually, the question is whether it's better than a build with off the shelf non hp parts.

nothing beats an i9 9900K with 32GB RAM, 1TB M.2 SSD + 4TB HD, and an S3 ViRGE

4 core 8 threads will do most things but falls short for some titles now, so if you were to get a 1080 ti you'd be leaving a decent amount of performance on the floor depending on the game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZoSWkyyDNE

oeuvre wrote:

nothing beats an i9 9900K with 32GB RAM, 1TB M.2 SSD + 4TB HD, and an S3 ViRGE

The "virge" is an attractive option for those of us who don't to pay the "ray tracing tax"!!! 🤣

of course! RTX is just a marketing gimmick anyways