Upgrading prebuilt help

My cousin is going to college to study aerospace engneering, but a medical emergency means his parents will be basically unable to support him. He has a laptop arranged through the school but it's not good enough to game. Since I'm pretty proud of him for being the first on his side of the family to go to college, I wanted to get him a desktop that can do some gaming.

A startup near my work failed recently and they had these spare small formfactor Optiplex 790s and I got one for free, as well as a blank 128gb SSD
>3.1ghz quad core
>8gb ram
>500gb hard drive
>Win 10
>245W power supply

As far as problems go, I see there's no graphics card and no wifi. So far some googling has said a low-profile graphics card (HD6450 or GT 1300) and that TP wireless cards have problems with Win10, so I was thinking maybe an Intel 7260 wireless card. Figure budget is somewhere between $150-200.

Any advice is appreciated.

it has onboard, you wont be able to game on that thing. just spend a few bucks to ma out its specs, and call it a day.

Damn I never knew integrated graphics prevented putting in a GPU. I don't game, and I'm not too techy so I don't know this stuff. So just put in a wireless card in a PCI slot, maybe flash the OS onto the SSD and call it a day?

Thanks again.

just

Can't you put in a 750Ti into those things or even some models of GTX 1050? They run off motherboard power, IIRC.

It having integrated graphics doesn’t mean you can’t see a graphics card don’t know what that guy means.

Regarding the WiFi card won’t his dorm or whatever have Ethernet ports?

shouldn't any wireless card work out of the box unless it's some obscure as shit brand?

if you dont game, whats wrong with onboard?
besides vga only

plenty of low riser video cards out there. we throw them away left and right. prob worth like $10

some 1050 models do run off the motherboard but not all of them. There's also the fact that half-height 1050s are relatively rare. As far as I know, MSI is the only one that makes them. Although, they're not a bad choice if you can find them.

i have this exact desktop (nice choice btw) - i have a separate graphics card in it so i can have more screens. the onboard graphics don't prevent that or anything, don't worry. only catch is it has to be a low profile card, and they're generally targeted more at "office drone needs three monitors" than "college kid wants gaymen".

It doesn't. You just need to get a GPU if you want to game. The onboard just gets automatically disabled

just play good ol games

If he's the first in the family to go to college he shouldn't fuck that up by playing gaymes.

There is a general for this.

>shouldn't any wireless card work out of the box unless it's some obscure as shit brand?
I figured as much, but when I searched Amazon people were saying that TP-Link (and D-link to a lesser extent) has driver issues with one of the win10 updates and that the companies don't plan to update them.

I don't game, I'm giving this to my cousin as a grad gift because he wants to play some games.

Yeah I figured with the processor and a cheap vid card he could play most stuff on medium. He liked old turn based games last I checked, like Civilization, I figured those weren't too intensive. Which graphics card do you use? I'm worried about the power draw.

Got it, thanks.

Yeah, somehow I missed /sqt/ which is probably a red flag that I should be in there. I have faith in him anyways, it's not like his parents are bad people or fuckups just recent immigrants without opportunities.

I have hp elitedesk g1 800 with stock psu and a low profile 1050ti, works fine.

the gt 1030 and the half height versions of the 1050 and 1050ti run solely off of the pcie slot, no additional cables needed. They're fairly low power draw

$70 GT 1030 and $5 USB Wifi adapter.
/thread

this, not all workstations deliver 75w through the pci slot, but the gt 1030 is sold as an upgrade, turn down the settings to the lowest level and you'll get console tier resolution and frame rates

exactly, and yet for it's lower power, it can deliver performance near the 750 Ti

>gaming is required for college
entitled fucks

>He has a laptop arranged through the school but it's not good enough to game.
I thought he was going to study. Tell him to grow up.

parent are unable to support him, meaning he probably doesnt have much money to do other shit, so i think having a rig he can do some gaming on is a small consolation for limited funds. he's not going to school in North Korea.

He should be studying.

who's not to say that he isn't? trust me when i say, people can game and study. i got two nephews on the deans list who study, work, and have more games than a 12 year old asian kid. it's all about balance.

Buy him a Switch so he can be normal.

Asian kids have discipline. Your cousin probably doesn't.

i'm not OP, and my nephews aren't asian, hell they come from a one-parent home. You like to make assumptions.

Chinese guy here. This. All of my Chinese friends can game and study but I know of no white guys who can do the same.

You should actually focus on CAD capacity, and you want lots of threads and vram for that. Framerate isn't as important. Granted, he doesn't necessarily need the computer to run the simulations if the university already has computers built for that, but it will help with finding time to build the models. Usually there will be some kind of deal where he can get CAD software for free.

Do you only know white autists? I’ve deans listed it all 4 years despite nursing addictions to Rimworld and Fallout 3/NV. What’s up with all the “no fun allowed” assholes in the thread? Gaming is a bett hobby than degenerate bing drinking.

agreed. seems autists think university has to be a single focus, besides the 5 second fap before sleeptime. i feel the no-fun neckbeard patrol can't seem to multitask...

I have an i7 790 setup for my kids. Replaced HDD with SSD and it has 16gb ram. Have a sff ti750 in it and it does well for moderate 3d. Overall has been a great machine I got for next to nothing.