(I'm putting the important stuff in all caps, lol)
Tip: Unless you're just building a PC for the experience, or you want a certain chipset or high quality parts
When doing a budget build, it's generally cheaper to buy a refurbished PC, with a decent CPU THAT'S NOT IN A SLIMLINE CASE. Before you buy, look up the PC's manual to find out how many HDD it can support, if it can support an SSD, the maximum amount of RAM it can support, and what kind of PCIE it has
From there you just replace the the PSU, maybe add some RAM depending, and add a decent GPU.
ONE MAJOR THING YOU NEED TO WATCH OUT FOR.
Some manufacturer PC's use proprietary connectors, meaning they might have some weird connections that are different than your regular PC.
Great example: Lenovo often uses some weird PSU and mobo that uses a 14 pin connector instead of a 24 pin connector
Fortunately, a lot of people with Lenovos want to upgrade their PSU as well, so companies started making adapters for it.
https://www.amazon.com/Power-Supply...8&qid=1494564544&sr=1-1-fkmr0&keywords=lenovo+14+pin+to+24+pin
I Bought this for $270 a few weeks ago. (Note refurb sometimes don't come with the exact listed specs, but typically pretty close.)
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883797477
Instead I got an i5 3550 and a 2 TBB HDD,
Intel Core i5 3rd Gen 3470 (3.20 GHz) i5 3550
8 GB DDR3
1 TB HDD 2 TB HDD
Windows 10 Pro
Intel HD Graphics 2500
From buying refurbished I saved (just rough estimate off the top of my head)
CPU - $200
RAM - $50.00
Mobo - $70
Case - $35
Harddrive $50 (unless you want an SSD)
OS - $30-100+ (we'll go with $30)
= $435
-270
= $165 saved.
All I did was put a new PSU in it, was thinking about throwing an RX 460 in it, but I'm not going to be using it for any gaming, so nah.
It's not my main PC, I got it for something else.
I also bought this refurb monitor for it, it actually came brand new.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824022275