larger ~$600 new prebuilt that will take to tinkering later? has to be prebuilt for scollership.

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raventai

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My eldest son (12yo) had qualified for a tutoring scholarship but with this CO-vid mess they have cancelled tutoring and are offering instead to reimburse $500 for a new desktop, we were already saving up for him to eventually get one anyway and we can throw about $150 on top of that.

I have monitors and peripherals for him just need the tower, but most of what I am finding in that range is either SFF ITX and a handful of mid ATX, I would like to get something with onboard graphics for now for school work and as he saves up drop in a graphics card for gaming, and later I would like to be able to drop in an ATX board. space is always nice for upgrades, more drives etc. are prebuilds not coming in that size in this price range anymore? ATX seams almost exclusively in HEDT. obviously out of this price range.

I have nice cases I could hand down and the money would go a lot further in just guts but the reimbursement will only cover a whole computer.

edit I have been looking around, apparently size is not the only problem, even if you find a tower the IO shield is cut directly from the case and therefore not removable, that means you cannot move that motherboard to another case or put a new motherboard in, and precious few are using standard ATX power supplies,I haven't bought a prebuilt since the late 90's and new prebuilds kind of suck.
 
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Plus a lot of the prebuilts are using 12V only PSUs with strange formfactors. Seems like most cheap prebuilts are designed to be disposable and non upgradeable.
 
kirbyrj said:
Do you have specific places to shop? I know Newegg carries some prebuilts from places like iBuyPower which would be upgradeable later.

https://www.newegg.com/ibuypower-ar...0021-00130?Item=9SIAKCGB6F2888&quicklink=true

Something like that has an onboard GPU and then you can upgrade just about everything in it later.
Click to expand...

kinda digging that suggestion, looks like standard components, 7 pci slots, should take full ATX, I think I can see the removable I/O shield in one of the pictures, 3200G might allow for a 3600 later for not much money, details are a bit light, wish they had given a picture of the back but looks like it might take a standard power supply. wondering how the airflow is in that case but if that turns into a problem and its standardized components I could always move the components to one of my existing cases.
 
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