I have a Dell Precision 390 (it may be a 380, I dont know for sure) and I'm planning on using it for parts for a gaming pc build, I wanted to know what I should use. I'm already planning on using the HDD for extra storage. What else should I use?
It's a little long in the tooth for gaming parts I would think. Wasn't the Pentium D the first generation Intel dual core processor (ran hot) and it used DDR2 memory if my memory serves. Not much up to gaming specs.
Use what you can with a plan for a rolling upgrade later. Old hard drives should not be trusted for anything you can't afford to loose and DVD writers are very cheap today. I had trouble verifying a Win 10 ISO dual layer that I burned lately so I replaced my perfectly good (I thought) burner. It was too old for firmware updates and had trouble with the media. Got a nice little DVD burner that will do anything I need for $14.83 shipped with tax. That got me looking again and picked up a 3D Blu Ray Burner for $78.00. Your gaming rig will be determined by the type of gaming you want to do. That determines motherboard, Processor, Memory, power supply, video card, and probably hard drive. A solid state hard drive is a lot faster. I have had some old cases that I used in the past. I'm not being very encouraging. a good gaming rig is going to cost because they are the the leading edge of computing. New games are very demanding of hardware. I didn't even mention cooling, air cooling, water cooling.