Cheap Low End PC Part that Really Surprised/Impressed You with its Excellence?

[Zarathustra[H]]

Here is an idea for another fun run-on thread.

What was a cheap, low end part you bought for not very much money that completely surprised and impressed you with how good it was?

Post your own, I'll start with mine.

For me, the top contender for this award has to be my NZXT Source 210 case I bought in 2011 for only $29.99.

I bought it from the Egg 11 years ago as a no-frills case to use as a consumer hardware server, my first ZFS-based NAS box.

The thing is an absolute trooper. Surprisingly solid for the price. Three 5.25" drive bays and 8 (!) 3.5" bays, fitting up to an E-ATX motherboard, and 6 slots for 140mm fans, major panels attached with thumb screws, you name it. Being a NAS box I bought it for all the drive bays and the fact that it could fit an E-ATX motherboard as well as the affordable price.

Only cons I could think of is that it doesn't have a case window (something I didn't care about) and also doesn't have any 2.5" drive bays (something that wasn't really a huge priority back then, and you could always use adapters if you needed to.

The thing has remarkable quality for the price. This $29.99 case is still in active use in my house. The servers have long since moved into a rack and use real enterprise hardware, but my backup "workbench" system (built with spare old hardware so I have a machine to flash controller firmware, do hard drive tests, etc. on without having to break into my main desktop or take any of my servers offline) is still built into the thing, and 11 years later it shows no sign of wanting to give up.

Solid quality construction, lots of features, would totally buy it again if they still made it. Great job NZXT!

Here it was in my basement when I first got it in 2011 four houses ago after I had just built the ZFS pool and was transferring data over from my old Drobo:

Here it was in my basement in 2014 two houses ago serving as a NAS and VM server, with a Bulldozer FX-8120 CPU and 32GB of RAM:

Here it is in its current role as a backup/testbech/extra machine in my office:

Seen here doing what it does these days:

Running Smart Short test, Conveyance test and 4 read/write passes of badblocks on a new 16TB drive before it gets installed in the server. That should take a few days.

Installed hardware is a mix of old stuff from the spare parts bin:
i7-3930k (6C12T)
Asus P9X79 WS
64GB of DDR3
Nvidia Quadro 2000
Intel 10gig Copper AT2 server NIC
LSI 9300-8i SAS HAB (with SATA breakout cable)
A couple of old nearly worn out SATA SSD's for booting.

Which reminds me, one of those case fans has a bearing that is starting to get noisy and drives me crazy every time I do a long drive test. It's time to swap that thing out...

Now, let's see what inexpensive piece of computer hardware impressed you!

 

[Zepher]

This is a tough one. gotta think for a bit since I don't buy cheap stuff, lol.

 

[auntjemima]

I would say my 500gb NVME drive I paid $59 for. (That's $46 USD).

 

[Darunion]

My roller blade wheels i put on my office chair surprised me how much it changes the feel.

 

[GoldenTiger]

I got a cheap m.2 nvme enclosure (USB-c) that was solidly built metal and came with multiple m2 screws plus a mini screwdriver for them even!

 

[Zepher]

My roller blade wheels i put on my office chair surprised me how much it changes the feel.

I got a set of roller blade wheels as well. Got them for $3.00 from OfficeOwl I think, they gave a coupon for Amazon to get them for $3.

 

[Nobu]

My roller blade wheels i put on my office chair surprised me how much it changes the feel.

How many FPS those wheels get you?

 

[NattyKathy]

I have a few of these stories, but the one that comes to mind first is also a case
I wouldn't say I was totally surprised that the Cooler Master Q300L ended up being exceptionally good for a budget case, because I did my research, but it has met or exceeded all my expectations.
Had my last Ryzen build (1600 + AiO Vega 64) in Cooler Master's predecessor bargain mATX case, the "Lite 3.1" and it was garbage trash. Shitty airflow that took extreme modifications to remedy, flimsy, the HDD bay was in a terrible position that interfered with everything in the bottom of the case, just bad and I felt no remorse when I threw the case away like a year after selling off the rest of the build.
The Q300L though? This thing is a $50 case that friggin rules.

I think this one pic says a lot...

Airflow, my friends, Airflow. We fuccin got it now. Why did I put a nearly $3K build in a $50 case? Because I looked at every mATX case $200 and under that I could get in a reasonable amount of time and honestly, I liked this cheap case the most. Somehow Cooler Master made a budget product that's, IMHO, actually really good because they designed it to be wholistically barebones and not just shitty. It's got massive airflow- especially with the filters off, which is easy to do in an instant- and has undocumented OOB support for 280mm rad in front, 2x140mm fans up top, and 1x140mm in the bottom even tho the specs say it only takes 120mm in most spots and doesn't support 280mm rads at all. It feels sturdy because Cooler Master finally decided to strategically bend sheet metal in a way that gives it extra strength. There's a crapton of space behind the motherboard tray for cable management and the HDD cage- down to a single 3.5" but it's 2022 ffs- is nicely out of the way behind the motherboard tray too. And the omissions? I don't really mind. There's no cover over the PSU section, but I like that because it opens up the bottom of the case, allows easier access to cabling, and allows a bottom-mounted 140mm fan blowing into the GPU- something that is omitted in most competing cases that cost 2x or more the price. The side window is acrylic instead of tempered glass, but again that's actually a plus for me. I don't like how heavy tempered glass windows are and I don't like the risk of it shattering if scratched and bumped too much, had one once (did not shatter) and was not about it.
So, yeah. Pretty chuffed with this bargain-basement (by 2021 standards) case that's holding my expensive-ass hardware. And the hardware loves it too- got an H115i XT up front cooling my 5800X which mostly stays in the 40s/50s and the 3070Ti is LOVING the massive airflow- I went with the Founders on purpose because I like the industrial design and explicitly wanted a more compact card for this build, knowing full well that its airflow requirements are considerably higher than a colossal AiB card, and this case delivers. GPU @2055Mhz / 1093mV / 320W is staying in the high 70s which is pretttyyyy good for something that's half the volume of "regular" models.
Was pleasantly satisfied by this, would def recommend.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I have a few of these stories, but the one that comes to mind first is also a case
I wouldn't say I was totally surprised that the Cooler Master Q300L ended up being exceptionally good for a budget case, because I did my research, but it has met or exceeded all my expectations.
Had my last Ryzen build (1600 + AiO Vega 64) in Cooler Master's predecessor bargain mATX case, the "Lite 3.1" and it was garbage trash. Shitty airflow that took extreme modifications to remedy, flimsy, the HDD bay was in a terrible position that interfered with everything in the bottom of the case, just bad and I felt no remorse when I threw the case away like a year after selling off the rest of the build.
The Q300L though? This thing is a $50 case that friggin rules.

I think this one pic says a lot...

View attachment 440972

Airflow, my friends, Airflow. We fuccin got it now. Why did I put a nearly $3K build in a $50 case? Because I looked at every mATX case $200 and under that I could get in a reasonable amount of time and honestly, I liked this cheap case the most. Somehow Cooler Master made a budget product that's, IMHO, actually really good because they designed it to be wholistically barebones and not just shitty. It's got massive airflow- especially with the filters off, which is easy to do in an instant- and has undocumented OOB support for 280mm rad in front, 2x140mm fans up top, and 1x140mm in the bottom even tho the specs say it only takes 120mm in most spots and doesn't support 280mm rads at all. It feels sturdy because Cooler Master finally decided to strategically bend sheet metal in a way that gives it extra strength. There's a crapton of space behind the motherboard tray for cable management and the HDD cage- down to a single 3.5" but it's 2022 ffs- is nicely out of the way behind the motherboard tray too. And the omissions? I don't really mind. There's no cover over the PSU section, but I like that because it opens up the bottom of the case, allows easier access to cabling, and allows a bottom-mounted 140mm fan blowing into the GPU- something that is omitted in most competing cases that cost 2x or more the price. The side window is acrylic instead of tempered glass, but again that's actually a plus for me. I don't like how heavy tempered glass windows are and I don't like the risk of it shattering if scratched and bumped too much, had one once (did not shatter) and was not about it.
So, yeah. Pretty chuffed with this bargain-basement (by 2021 standards) case that's holding my expensive-ass hardware. And the hardware loves it too- got an H115i XT up front cooling my 5800X which mostly stays in the 40s/50s and the 3070Ti is LOVING the massive airflow- I went with the Founders on purpose because I like the industrial design and explicitly wanted a more compact card for this build, knowing full well that its airflow requirements are considerably higher than a colossal AiB card, and this case delivers. GPU @2055Mhz / 1093mV / 320W is staying in the high 70s which is pretttyyyy good for something that's half the volume of "regular" models.
Was pleasantly satisfied by this, would def recommend.

That looks really nice.

Weird position for the front panel though.

 

[NattyKathy]

That looks really nice.

Weird position for the front panel though.

Yeah the front panel is funky. That's the one kinda gimmicky thing on the case, it's mounted like that so it can be positioned in different places on the side. Kinda bizarre but works superbly for me- the way the box ended up fitting into my desk setup, the front is not accessible, but the left side very much is. Seems to be made for folks like me who have the case up on the desk in an angled position optimized for gazing into the internals.

 

[Darunion]

How many FPS those wheels get you?

i could move so fast! like 10-15 feet per second downhill!

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

My roller blade wheels i put on my office chair surprised me how much it changes the feel.

I got a set of these on Amazon a couple of years ago too. Had a rug that the old traditional wheels on my Aeron chair kept getting stuck on.

I don't know why it took someone so long to come up with this genius and in retrospect totally obvious idea.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Yeah the front panel is funky. That's the one kinda gimmicky thing on the case, it's mounted like that so it can be positioned in different places on the side. Kinda bizarre but works superbly for me- the way the box ended up fitting into my desk setup, the front is not accessible, but the left side very much is. Seems to be made for folks like me who have the case up on the desk in an angled position optimized for gazing into the internals.

View attachment 440981

As crazy as it sounds to some of us old timers, that seems to be most kids these days.

I've always been of the belief that desktops belong on a desk, and towers belong on the floor. (unless it's a mini-tower of course)

And when I say desktop, I mean one of these

 

[NattyKathy]

As crazy as it sounds to some of us old timers, that seems to be most kids these days.

I've always been of the belief that desktops belong on a desk, and towers belong on the floor. (unless it's a mini-tower of course)

And when I say desktop, I mean one of these

View attachment 441474

It's funny you should mention that, cause the Q300L actually has feet on the right side panel for "desktop" orientation instead of tower, and CoolerMaster suggests that as an option. Why? I'm not sure, and I'd be hesitant to place even lightweight modern LCD monitors on an acrylic panel (maybe CM expect you'll obtain a second metal panel from them?) but it's interesting to see CM testing it as a feature.
I remember the old "desktop" and "pizza box" desktops... I generally avoided them for x86 systems because I like to be able to get at my computer to pull it apart without moving too much stuff but had a bunch of Macs and Sun / SGI workstations in the form factor. Agree with "towers go on the floor" thing generally, as long as I'm in a place where dust is reasonably under control. I've been drawn to minitowers lately tho 'cause mATX has all I need and I admit I do like having the compy up on the table to look in the window and admire the hardware, although I refuse to associate that exclusively as a "young person" thing because I remember enough of the turn of the century to recall my 2002-ish Duron build which definitely had a case window and obnoxious LED lighting, although I think it was mostly Blue LEDs that were the rage at that time, ack

 

[pendragon1]

stupid cheap, really nice build quality, quiet and chooches(flows).

 

[NattyKathy]

stupid cheap, really nice build quality, quiet and chooches(flows).
View attachment 441498

Damn, those are up to $60-70USD now You got a good deal on that!

 

[pendragon1]

Damn, those are up to $60-70USD now You got a good deal on that!

yes i did theyre $90CAN now.
got that and then a sweet deal on some freezemod rads, a corsair block, reused an aio block for gpu and built a decent loop for ~ $200CAN

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

It's funny you should mention that, cause the Q300L actually has feet on the right side panel for "desktop" orientation instead of tower, and CoolerMaster suggests that as an option. Why? I'm not sure, and I'd be hesitant to place even lightweight modern LCD monitors on an acrylic panel (maybe CM expect you'll obtain a second metal panel from them?) but it's interesting to see CM testing it as a feature.
I remember the old "desktop" and "pizza box" desktops... I generally avoided them for x86 systems because I like to be able to get at my computer to pull it apart without moving too much stuff but had a bunch of Macs and Sun / SGI workstations in the form factor. Agree with "towers go on the floor" thing generally, as long as I'm in a place where dust is reasonably under control. I've been drawn to minitowers lately tho 'cause mATX has all I need and I admit I do like having the compy up on the table to look in the window and admire the hardware, although I refuse to associate that exclusively as a "young person" thing because I remember enough of the turn of the century to recall my 2002-ish Duron build which definitely had a case window and obnoxious LED lighting, although I think it was mostly Blue LEDs that were the rage at that time, ack

One thing I usually hear as a reason for people wanting to put their towers on their desk is due to carpeting, which really surprised me.

Every house/apartment I've lived in in my 40+ years has had (let's see, counting, 13 now, excluding college dorms) has been all hardwood flooring. I've literally never lived anywhere with installed carpeting. (we put area rugs on the hardwood flloring, but that's all together different).

I wonder if carpeting is a regional thing. Or maybe a construction year thing. The newest house I've ever lived in was built in the 60's. Maybe carpeting became more common in newer homes?

I can see not wanting a case standing on carpet for dust and static purposes, especially if you have a case with bottom fan intakes, but I might find a low side table or something instead, as to not waste my desktop real estate, and to get the fans further away from my ears!

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

stupid cheap, really nice build quality, quiet and chooches(flows).
View attachment 441498

Nice. What brand is that?

I'm usually OK with experimenting with low cost stuff, but I've generally avoided it in water cooling gear, as leaks are no fun.

 

[NattyKathy]

One thing I usually hear as a reason for people wanting to put their towers on their desk is due to carpeting, which really surprised me.

Every house/apartment I've lived in in my 40+ years has had (let's see, counting, 13 now, excluding college dorms) has been all hardwood flooring. I've literally never lived anywhere with installed carpeting. (we put area rugs on the hardwood flloring, but that's all together different).

I wonder if carpeting is a regional thing. Or maybe a construction year thing. The newest house I've ever lived in was built in the 60's. Maybe carpeting became more common in newer homes?

I can see not wanting a case standing on carpet for dust and static purposes, especially if you have a case with bottom fan intakes, but I might find a low side table or something instead, as to not waste my desktop real estate, and to get the fans further away from my ears!

Yah, in my experience, carpeting is much more common in new construction and in crappy remodels of old buildings. I've only lived in a few places w carpet- three newer places built between 1987-2005, one place built in the 1960s, and one place from the 1890s that was the victim of a crappy slumlord remodel. Everywhere else (built between 1880s and 1950s) was hardwood. I have seen a bit more carpet in CO and MN than TX, so maybe it's somewhat a regional thing too. Can't stand carpet; I'll have to be feeling real desperate to even schedule a viewing of an apartment with carpeted floors.

Fan noise? That's what chunky over ear headphones are for

A little low platform for the PC does sound like a good idea tho. I see those built into desks sometimes.

 

[pendragon1]

Nice. What brand is that?

I'm usually OK with experimenting with low cost stuff, but I've generally avoided it in water cooling gear, as leaks are no fun.

it wasnt labeled/named when i ordered it. turned out to be freeze mod too.
edit: looks like you can get em directly on their site, my size is only $33US and there are bigger for a couple bucks more and you can add rgb IF you want. shipping up to here was a doozey though...
https://freezemod.com/product/freez...-control-or-aura-synchronizationpub-fs6pd-12/

 

[longblock454]

Sometime around 2001 a good friend bought me a Lindows Linux PC for X-Mas and I loved it. These were $199 IIRC but ended up bringing a career change for the better as well, i've been 100% Linux since that day.

 

[wra18th]

I bought a Pentium 3258 and a cheap motherboard with it. It runs 4 VMs for me without a hiccup.

 

[matt167]

I bought an Ryzen R3 1200 to flash a bios and get my current computer running, and paid I think $40 for it brand new. Sat on the shelf until my brothers computer quit and I gifted it to him, and we built an R3 1200 box. It's a little bit of an odd combo having a 1200 on an X570 with 16gb of 3200 mhz ram, but I didn't buy the parts. I just assembled it for him... He came off from a Dell Precision T3500 running W3680, 12gb of ram and a MSI Armor GTX 1060 6gb... With the 1200 he actually bumped some graphics settings in games he plays and has yet to replace the 1200 with the 3600/5600 that the build really deserves.

 

[robijito123]

I got a 4 bay 3.5" yottamaster usbc das enclosure for $100 off amazon and has worked really well for backups and moving primary PC windows storage space arrays around. That or my $80 open box rx 570 8gb card from 20 months ago ..... a steal by today's prices and I think I got some AMD bundle with it

 

[JSHamlet234]

I have 2 ASUS H81M-E motherboards that I paid $50 for when new. They've had the shit beat out of them for the last 7 years, and they still work.

 

[Dan_D]

Celeron 300A. That's about the only thing I can think of. For the most part, cheap hardware rarely if ever impresses me.

 

[lopoetve]

Here is an idea for another fun run-on thread.

What was a cheap, low end part you bought for not very much money that completely surprised and impressed you with how good it was?

Post your own, I'll start with mine.

For me, the top contender for this award has to be my NZXT Source 210 case I bought in 2011 for only $29.99.

Hey, I've got one of those! That's a damned fine case. Also my NAS Running an ancient Phenom II

 

[grumperfish]

Sunbeam rheobus extreme bought for $30 in 2012. Still using it to this day as it can run my case fans slower than the motherboard headers. Much lighter duty than when it was running old Delta, Panoflo, and Sanyo Denki monsters.

 

[whateverer]

Celeron 300A. That's about the only thing I can think of. For the most part, cheap hardware rarely if ever impresses me.

Agreed - but sometimes you get lucky in the markdown bin

got a closeout STB Velocity 4200 (TNT, no TV-out they were clearing stock for tnt2 ) for 80 bucks in winter 1998 for HL. (was powerful enough to play Quake 3 in 32-bit a year later- at 640x480)

Also, I got a similar deal after the mining selloff three years back Zotac cleared stock for the1060s for half-off MSRP (90-day warranty, but it's still running 3 years later!)

 

[TypeO]

I have a few of these stories, but the one that comes to mind first is also a case
I wouldn't say I was totally surprised that the Cooler Master Q300L ended up being exceptionally good for a budget case, because I did my research, but it has met or exceeded all my expectations.
Had my last Ryzen build (1600 + AiO Vega 64) in Cooler Master's predecessor bargain mATX case, the "Lite 3.1" and it was garbage trash. Shitty airflow that took extreme modifications to remedy, flimsy, the HDD bay was in a terrible position that interfered with everything in the bottom of the case, just bad and I felt no remorse when I threw the case away like a year after selling off the rest of the build.
The Q300L though? This thing is a $50 case that friggin rules.

I think this one pic says a lot...

View attachment 440972

Airflow, my friends, Airflow. We fuccin got it now. Why did I put a nearly $3K build in a $50 case? Because I looked at every mATX case $200 and under that I could get in a reasonable amount of time and honestly, I liked this cheap case the most. Somehow Cooler Master made a budget product that's, IMHO, actually really good because they designed it to be wholistically barebones and not just shitty. It's got massive airflow- especially with the filters off, which is easy to do in an instant- and has undocumented OOB support for 280mm rad in front, 2x140mm fans up top, and 1x140mm in the bottom even tho the specs say it only takes 120mm in most spots and doesn't support 280mm rads at all. It feels sturdy because Cooler Master finally decided to strategically bend sheet metal in a way that gives it extra strength. There's a crapton of space behind the motherboard tray for cable management and the HDD cage- down to a single 3.5" but it's 2022 ffs- is nicely out of the way behind the motherboard tray too. And the omissions? I don't really mind. There's no cover over the PSU section, but I like that because it opens up the bottom of the case, allows easier access to cabling, and allows a bottom-mounted 140mm fan blowing into the GPU- something that is omitted in most competing cases that cost 2x or more the price. The side window is acrylic instead of tempered glass, but again that's actually a plus for me. I don't like how heavy tempered glass windows are and I don't like the risk of it shattering if scratched and bumped too much, had one once (did not shatter) and was not about it.
So, yeah. Pretty chuffed with this bargain-basement (by 2021 standards) case that's holding my expensive-ass hardware. And the hardware loves it too- got an H115i XT up front cooling my 5800X which mostly stays in the 40s/50s and the 3070Ti is LOVING the massive airflow- I went with the Founders on purpose because I like the industrial design and explicitly wanted a more compact card for this build, knowing full well that its airflow requirements are considerably higher than a colossal AiB card, and this case delivers. GPU @2055Mhz / 1093mV / 320W is staying in the high 70s which is pretttyyyy good for something that's half the volume of "regular" models.
Was pleasantly satisfied by this, would def recommend.

I'm glad you enjoyed it, but I hated it. I bought it from Microcenter which is 2 hours away and had nothing but issues with the standoffs, threads, etc. Magnetic flap panels kept sliding down. It was pretty bad and perhaps I was unlucky.

I can't think of anything other than the 300A that impressed me while still being inexpensive. On the flip side, I have plenty of expensive parts that didn't impress.

 

[zandor]

Celeron 300A. That's about the only thing I can think of. For the most part, cheap hardware rarely if ever impresses me.

Athlon XP 1700+. Stock was 14xxMHz (forgot, it was 14 something), I didn't have any issue running one at around 2200 and you could do a little bridge mod to make them dual capable. IIRC they were like $60 back in the day.

 

[funkydmunky]

Well as others have mentioned my old 300a, and my Duron 700. Cheap and clocked super well but definitely weren't surprises.
For a surprise I would have to say my GF2-MX. It clocked high out of the box and with some ghetto mods was able to push the SDR way up to compensate. Did it rip shit up? No, but for around $100 it never held me back in any titles and let this poor-ass gamer have a competent rig.

 

[cjcox]

Well, off topic, but if broadened to "tech" in general, the Insignia Pilot. Tiny media player with dual headphone jacks (full size), bluetooth, video out, recording, FM radio, music and videos. "Cheap", but probably one of the best device I've ever owned.

 

[Dan_D]

I do remember a a Celeron 1.8GHz CPU that was given to me. It would overclock to 3.0GHz and I would have been impressed if the performance wasn't still crap afterwards. Unfortunately, those CPU's have so little L2 cache that their performance was still well below that of a stock 2.4GHz Pentium 4.

 

[pendragon1]

and my Duron 700

man, how could i forget about my little duron that could... my 600 did 1133. i swear it woulda done more but i ran out of voltage adjustment on my board.
edited speeling

 

[kirbyrj]

I had an Allendale Celeron E1200 that had a stock frequency of 1.6Ghz. Doubling the FSB yielded a 3.2Ghz clockspeed. Only time I ever got a 100% OC on a CPU. I think it cost $40 at launch.

 

[cjcox]

I date back to the Celeron 300A, so there you have a cheap CPU that easily overclocked to be faster than the top of the line PII at the time. Maybe the biggest Intel blunder.

 

[matt167]

I forgot about my cheap Sempron 2500, that when overclocked by just bumping the multiplier a little, made it display as an Athlon in the bios. Was my Doom 3 build. My first build with a 3D graphics card

 

[cjcox]

While not a "low end" part, it was a part that did something somewhat unique. It allowed you to put a mirrored set of SATA drives into a PATA only system. The Accordance ARAID-2000. I actually still have this device. It will also mirror to SATA as well. I've tested mirroring up to 2 x 2TB drives. It's a hardware subsystems, so it's OS agnostic. But, it's original SATA, so, slow by today's standards. What is neat is you can mirror and pull the drive and put another in and it will mirror to it. Cheap fully bootable backups of the primary drive. I used the device on my mom's old PC to give her a mirrored pair of 80G SATA drives on her P4 desktop (back in the day). So.... yeah, maybe too offtopic since it wasn't "low end", but it did impress me.