The Craigsbay 350!

Build Name: The Craigsbay 350

(Craigslist and Ebay, $350)

Description - The Craigsbay 350 is my adaptation of the "Scrapyard" idea generated from LTT. I wanted to make the build a project to help teach my 10 year old nephew how to build a computer. He's a big fan of LTT (and tech in general) but does not come from a financially stable home. To him, this "budget" build is the Taj Mahal of computers. I picked out all of the parts to cater towards a capable gaming machine with upgrade ability. It turned out very well.

Parts - G3258, 212 EVO, ASRock Z97 Pro3, 4GB Ballistix Tracer, 128GB Sata 3 SSD, 250GB Barracuda, EVGA GTX 650, Raidmax Vortex V4, CX430 Builder, LG "22 1080p, AZZA Keyboard/Mouse combo = 345ish after taxes/shipping. I also ended up grabbing a couple of LED case fans from coolermaster to match the LED's on the RAM (kids love that stuff!).

Conclusion - I was able to OC the pentium chip to 4.5Ghz running 1.35v and a core temp of 68 max through Prime95 (only for 4 hrs, but that was all the time I had and no failures). The graphics card is a weak link in this system and I expect he'll upgrade to 8 gigs of RAM at some point in the future. He is only interested in Minecraft right now, but that will change I'm sure. The longest part of the build was the install of the 212, which was easy enough but required some patience for someone that has never used a screw driver before . My nephew was blown away with how much fun it was to build his own "gaming" rig. I might have hooked him for life.