This is so hard to admit, but I’m a gamer. I never was that much into gaming. I played Doom in the early 90’s, own GameBoy and Nintendo DS handheld gaming systems so I can play retro arcade hits like Galaxian and Frogger (yes, Frogger). I maintain an old Windows 98 machine just so I can play the original Doom. What you’re going to read is hard for me to admit.
A few weeks ago a regular customer brought in his gaming system to have it upgraded to play the latest version of Battlefield. The game was released in beta for a couple weeks so the customer downloaded it and quickly realized his computer wasn’t up-to-snuff. It lagged and the with the settings turned down the frame rate was terrible.
His goal was to rebuild with top of the line components so he wouldn’t have to upgrade for a while. We agreed to upgrade from the bottom up with a Ryzen 9 processor, 128GB of memory, a new NVMe solid state drive, a NVIDIA 5080 graphics card and top-of-the-line power supply. I duplicated from his old drive to the new one because it was setup the way he wanted. All told my customer paid almost $2,800.00 for his new rig.
Here’s where I became hooked. I had to test the system. So I connected my dusty old XBOX controller and fired up Battlefield 6. I didn’t know quite what to expect and was taken into a world of shoot-’em-up insanity I couldn’t put down. My hands grew sweaty and my heart was pounding out of my chest. After an hour of playing I was hooked and immediately got it in my head I needed to build a gaming system of my own.
I’m cheap. I wanted a gaming system but didn’t want to spend almost $3,000.00 for something I may grow sick of in a month. Like any addict I justified it and decided I was going to build a system even though it will most likely take away from my other business. After reading the requirements I spent a few hours putting parts in my shopping cart only to remove them later trying to find the optimal mix of playable and cheap.
Dawn broke over Marblehead as I remembered all the parts I have been saving from previous builds and tear downs over the past year or so. In my box I had most of the makings of a decent system that meets the minimum requirements of Battlefield. I built the system around an LGA1700 motherboard I’ve been shuffling between stores for a year now. The customer who left it behind wanted a better board than was originally supplied in his prebuilt gaming computer. The board currently sells for $200.00.
A few months ago I pulled a 64GB kit of DDR5 RAM from a customer’s computer who wanted RGB memory installed. DDR5 is current and when I offered it back to the customer he asked me to recycle it. I’m not a huge fan of fancy lights so for me it was a win. I saved $150.00.
Sometime around February this year I upgraded a graphics card and was told to scrap the old one. The customer upgraded to a 39″ monitor and the old card couldn’t achieve a high enough resolution and play her games. I ended up with an RTX4060Ti which currently retails for around $350.00. In fairness, I’m taking a chance on the card because it was very used trying to fill a very large monitor at high resolutions.
Last year a vendor sent me a 1,000 watt power supply that was missing cables. I was told to keep the power supply and received a full refund. The value of the power supply with the correct cables is around $150.00. I reached out to the manufacturer and ordered cables which cost around $25.00 including shipping.
Customers are a funny beast. But then again so am I. My oddest acquisition were two monitors I was given. A regular customer drove almost 100 miles to have me recycle two high end gaming monitors. The first was a 36″ curved monitor that currently retails for $700.00. The other was a 27″ gaming monitor valued at $650.00. Apparently they weren’t good enough for his CAD application. I’m currently using the 27″ because I’m not a huge fan of curved monitors.
Many of you may have noticed there’s no processor (or CPU) in my parts list yet. It was one of a couple parts I needed to order. In keeping with my frugality I decided to go with a used Intel i7-12700k that I picked up on eBay for $140.00 very late on a Saturday night. I saved around $80.00 compared to other used CPU’s. Mine came in a plastic bag and didn’t include a box or paperwork.
Not everyone has access to a box of higher end computer hardware, and I get that. But, with a little ingenuity a decent gaming computer can be built on the higher end of a game’s system requirements for far less than purchasing a new build or putting one together with new parts. Specific to Battlefield 6, parts to build to the recommended list of components could be purchased used on eBay for under $500.00.
With my new budget gamer complete and setup in my spare bedroom I’m playing the waiting game. My expectation was I could have it done before the beta for Battlefield 6 ended. If it wasn’t for the cables and CPU I would be playing rather than writing this article. The door to my spare room will be closed until early October when I’m finally able to download and install the game.
Jeromy Patriquin is the President of Laptop & Computer Repair, Inc. with locations in Gardner and Greenfield MA. You can read more articles at LocalComputerWiz.com