Budget friendly desktop recommendations

I know it’s a stretch when trying to get something better but also save money. We learned that upgrading our 17yr olds laptop last year for his coding class. But we were just upgrading one computer not 8. 

We’re a family of 7 plus we use a separate desktop as our server. We currently have HP and they work fine but the upgrade options are limited and there’s still a couple not running on full memory because you can’t find it. 

We LOVE to play Modded Minecraft, we run our own private server and play. 17yr old and 6yr old have discussed becoming content creators. Those two also play Roblox and Five Nights at Freddie’s. Plus other members of the house play World of Warcraft & Fortnite and some Steam games. 

We don’t have to go with the high intensity graphics because we usually turn them down in the game setting anyways (personally I can’t see HD or even 3D at the theater with the glasses, it’s a bummer). So We’re more focused on processing and memory. And it has to have Ethernet ports. We noticed a lot of new laptops don’t offer this. But our house is networked. And I’m sorry but things run better plugged in. 

Any recommendations? That aren’t $2,000 each LOL 

  • I know it's been said, but for any machines running Windows, you could always squeeze new life out of them by dual-booting Linux.
    I can't speak for it personally, but I hear Pop OS is especially suited for gaming (there was recently a thread on here concerning that; perhaps others more familiar will care to comment.)

  • I'm also interested to know

  • Each of the major brands has options for desktops that would seemingly work for you for under $1k each. Also you can always DIY a build, and customize for each family member.  I think it would be helpful to the community if you had a target price range and maybe some target specs.

  • Lenovo Legoin I5. It has really good stuff and lots of memory, RAM, CPU, and personally thinking of it so i can make better youtube vids. Lemme know if I can help if they start a youtube or etc. on amazon its $830

  • Walmart has some... In their stores:   

    www.walmart.com/search

    And on their website  www.walmart.com/search  

  • I'm curious about the recommendations too!

  • I recently picked up a HP Slim Desktop. Not specifically for gaming, just needed an upgrade as Windows support for 8 was ending. It's a hybrid (SSD meant for programs, HDD for file storage) and came with 16 GB RAM that's upgradable to 32. I bought it around the Black Friday sales for about $520 (before tax). It's currently out of stock but I've enjoyed it so far.

    www.hp.com/.../hp-slim-desktop-s01-pf1048xt

  • You can get a Legion i5 with a newer 16gb intel processor and a 1660 nvidia card  between $550-$650 when Lenovo runs sales or flash deals and can upgrade the ram to 32gb if needed later. I have extremely bad experiences with HP. I have had 2 different HP laptops not last even a year each so I stopped buying their products over 10 years ago. I would look into either Lenovo or Dell.

  • The Lenovo legion I5 has pretty good specs and is reasonably priced. Also, check out Paul's hardware on YouTube since he has a monthly build series and it usually has a budget build. Also I recommend pc part picker for parting out your build and it will also tell you if a certain component you pick isn't compatible and will keep a running tally of the parts. Good luck!