intel 920 GAMING
intel 920 GAMING
I recently swapped in some DDR4 RAM for a first-gen Intel i7 (920) with a working motherboard and 24GB of RAM. I plan to use it as a budget gaming machine for my girlfriend, and I’ll upgrade the power supply so I can stick with my old one—wattage shouldn’t be a problem. What graphics card and storage should I choose? I’m limited to SATA 2 and PCI-e 2.0, so I’m not sure which components to pick. I’m worried the slower connection might slow things down, especially if we go for an SSD or GPU bottleneck. Any advice would be appreciated!
Missing AVX support limits first-gen cores for gaming builds—unless you're just running retro titles. Does that match your needs, plus your budget?
Keep in mind that this is a 12 years old CPU. Not sure why you've traded perfectly good DDR4 memory for something that old. But if you don't want to spend too much, look into a used RX 570. There are lower end cards that might be "better suited" for this CPU... But I've just checked the prices on ebay and seriously, people are WAY overcharging for their old garbage, when an RX 570 cost about the same as an R9 270... it's ridiculous. If you want brand new, get a GT 1030.
Consider getting a refurbished X5650/X5660/X5670/x5675/X5680 CPU for the best value. These options are affordable and widely available. For the GPU, a used RX 470/570/480/580 or GTX 1060 will perform well.
He's a solid friend who gave me a decent 45 bucks plus an iou, which feels fine. I was mainly interested in checking how it performed just because it seemed like a cool thing. (Triple channel RAM??? WACK) People seem to charge too much for basic stuff, while my other friend is thinking about upgrading his 970. Maybe I'll grab one then. But nothing beats a 570 if you say so? I was thinking about getting a used GTX 1050 since the NVIDIA drivers have been reliable... I still remember the screams from my old GT 1030 during the mining boom. In terms of games, we mainly want to play Divinity Original Sin 2 and Destiny 2, so we're not trying anything extreme. I don't expect the world to wait forever for more money.
We intend to leave this site after the quarantine ends in my area, and once the 4000 series Ryzen releases, we can connect her with affordable Ryzen units across the network. This is just a temporary measure to save some money and keep her busy until then.