This was a budget build I put together for a buddy to play at our LAN parties together. The games we were playing were Left 4 Dead 2, Warhammer: Vermintide, and Destiny 2, so we didn't need too powerful of a machine, just good enough for 1080p/60fps. There was no set budget for the project, but I did want to keep costs as low as possible since I would be paying for all of it and flipping the PC after. Built in early 2019, we definitely got good value out of this build and it's still working great in 2020.

Case

The build all started with this case I got from a reddit user from /r/hardwareswap. I ended up picking up 3 pieces from him, so I got this case on a super good deal. Since this build was going to be used for at LAN parties, I thought this case would be a good space saver. It's honestly not too compact, but it's a great looking case and a steal at $10.

CPU / Motherboard / Cooler

The motherboard was a spare micro-atx board I had lying around with no use for since it's not overclockable. This actually worked out pretty well since I had a bunch of Intel stock coolers that I was about to recycle anyway, so I figured I could try one out here to save some money. I kinda wish I went even more budget and used an 4th gen i5 instead, but I wanted my buddy to have those extra threads for Destiny 2. The CPU actually did really well while gaming and never went up above 65c.

Ram / SSD

The 240GB Inland SSD for $26 is actually quite a steal now. In early 2020, the same drive now goes for over $32. The ram was just some spare ram I had lying around.

Video Card
I think this was a former mining card I picked up on eBay. Can't really beat the price/performance here as well as the availability.

Power Supply

I previously had a really cheap Thermaltake 500W 80+ unit in this build and my SSD's kept failing. Ever since it was switched out to this one, it's been fine. Never going cheap Thermaltake PSU's again.

Conclusion

Ever since I got the small form factor itch, I've been building smaller and smaller builds, so I ended up giving a different PC to my buddy to use. Therefore, it was finally time to move on from The Blue Cube. I ended up flipping this PC for $400, which was honestly not too much of a profit compared to my other PC flips. I definitely could've profited more if I used an i5 instead, but I still made some money and got a lot of value out of this PC at our LAN parties. Thanks so much for reading