Sad Affleck
Member
Edit: also i have never met a PC gamer who would buy a refurbished pc with an old ass core2duo inside it to then put a new GPU in it or who would advise a friend on a budget to do so. Like are we being serious here? I'm all for people showing that budget builds are possible but at least post something that you would actually buy yourself if you were on a budget.
I'm assuming that your background in gaming is console-focused, please correct me if I am wrong. I have reached that conclusion because your post makes it pretty clear that you don't know how frequent this scenario is and why the Potato Masher videos and other similar projects are interesting to follow. Even if you never buy a refurbished PC as part of a shoestring-budget build, even if you spend a lot of money on a top-of-the-line gaming rig, at some point you will inevitably be looking to upgrade. You will have a build with outdated components, some more so than others, and you will be weighing your options. You have to understand that all these builds are experiments, tests and trials meant to provide the consumer with useful information.
There's no reason for anyone to feel threatened because a budget PC can keep up with a console. It doesn't diminish the console's performance in any way, the existence of an equally capable platform doesn't affect your own experience. Budget PCs are a fine option and buying used components is a perfectly valid way of buying hardware on the cheap. PCs using a combination of new and old components is also a widespread practice.