A lot of the time people end up with these stock lower end machines where they feel trapped into just web browsing, face-booking, listening to music, e-mail, etc.. They think (or have some sales person tell them) they have to upgrade to some $1,300.00 monstrosity to be able to play games, movies, or really anything that's just plain cool. Well, I'm happy to say if that's you, you are very mistaken.
Lets base this off a cheap PC you can find just about anywhere. This little guy should do the trick! During some weeks you can find this little puppy with a free 17in or 18in lcd monitor. So needless to say people tend to grab them up rather quickly. (Hell, I even got a few of these for my office!)
So keeping in the spirit of spending less money, lets have some fun with this "for the cheap".
Now say you've got an extra monitor lying around, and don't know what to do with it.. Why not jack it into your PC for some dual monitor goodness? For roughly 46 bucks, and about 10 minutes of install time you easily can!
Go out and feed your little PCs PCI Express slot with something like this! It'll cost you about 46 bucks minus shipping. You will most likely need 2 of these also if you have lesser quality monitors. You can check via the back on the monitor.. DVI is typically white and VGA blue. Better yet have a HD TV nearby? Well substitute one of those VGA adapters for a HDMI to DVI cable and you'll now be able to play those games or movies on the big screen. (Takes a little tweaking to make it look just right via HDMI) There is nothing special required for dual monitors other than an installed and updated graphics card with 2 video outputs! Just go to your display settings, click on the second monitor, and click the "extend my desktop to this monitor" box. It's that's quick and simple, and allows you to get some serious game on.
If you are sick of how it just looks like a somewhat curved gray box, add some bling. You can honestly go all nutty with this and it surprisingly doesn't cost much either. You'd have choices for everything from full case stick on art, to light strips, to led power supplies/fans, to full blown cases. I could list so many cool things, but I'll save that for another day. Below is an example of a cheap case I found for roughly 30 bucks for one of my old projects. (I got this one on newegg) Transferring over parts is a breeze too just make sure to stay grounded!
So instead of buying a new PC, you spend roughly 100 bucks and end up with some bad-ass looking gaming rig. Granted it's not going to run Mass Effect on max settings, but it'll get the job done rather well. Oh and for those ppl out there that are not so computer savvy don't fret. I've found that a good number of PC places will install things like the graphics card for a reasonable price. I wouldn't go to a Best Buy with that request though... They have crazy high prices for that kind of thing in my opinion... ( Especially considering it takes a normal technician all of 10 minutes)
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