Been given some kit, is it any good?

Soldato
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Hi all,

My brother has given me some of his old PC kit. He keeps his gaming PC up to date but I haven't built a PC for about ten years.

I was wondering if any of it was any good and could form the basis of a decent enough gaming PC for me, or whether it's just worth selling on.

Intel stock cpu cooler for an i5-3570k
Intel q6600 cpu at 3.4ghz
Intel e5200 cpu at 2.5ghz
Abit ix38 QuadGT motherboard
OCZ 2x 2gb pc2 6400 gold series ram modules
Crucial 128gb m4 ssd
Sapphire HD 7970 3gb

I have an old PC which I can take the monitors, mouse, keyboard and old hard drives from.

My guess is the q6600 cpu is a little long in the tooth for modern gaming? The main monitor I have is only a 1600x1200 one so I'll probably buy a better widescreen one as a main display. So I'll take advice on a good, not too expensive monitor that's also good for photo editing.

What's the ram like? Is it worth just buying 8 or 16gb of new stuff or can the 4gb I've been given still be used. How much is ram theses days for decent stuff?

Is the motherboard modern enough to take current i5 CPUs or has there been a socket change since it was introduced.

What's the graphics card like? Any good still or too slow?

Can the cpu cooler be used with the CPUs I've been given?

As you can tell I'm completely off piste with current PC tech and performance. My budget would probably be £500 or so for upgrades but I haven't really put any thought into it tbh.

Thanks!
 
Oh, I don't have a suitable case! Or a power supply! A small, quiet one would be ideal. What's good? I have absolutely no idea about psu's either!
 
What are the specs of the old PC?? Do you have a copy of Windows??

Are the HDDs SATA and what capacity are they??

I would probably reuse the HD7970 and SSD.
 
What are the specs of the old PC?? Do you have a copy of Windows??

Are the HDDs SATA and what capacity are they??

I would probably reuse the HD7970 and SSD.

Don't laugh, the old PC has an opteron 164 at 2.3ghz, a GeForce 6800gt and 2gb ram! Told you it was 10 years old. I don't think the old drives are sata, I think they're just IDE.

I've got a copy of Windows 7 on cd which I can reuse. I can reuse the CD-ROM at a push.
 
Hi all,


Intel stock cpu cooler for an i5-3570k -
Intel q6600 cpu at 3.4ghz
Intel e5200 cpu at 2.5ghz -
Abit ix38 QuadGT motherboard
OCZ 2x 2gb pc2 6400 gold series ram modules
Crucial 128gb m4 ssd
Sapphire HD 7970 3gb

Thanks!

you might be able to squeeze an entry level gaming system out of this , and any extras you spend could be used on a new PC later.

The Q6600 goes with the motherboard, you need to get a socket 775 cooler
The ram also goes with the motherboard, worth looking for some second hand ram the same and get it up to 8gb.. I cant download the manual for mobo so I don't know the max RAM, its probably 8gb. Graphics could still be ok for some entry level gaming. SSD fine for installing windows 7 and then upgrade to 10.

just add a case and a decent psu, possibly another SSD or an HDD

did do you a basket.. but the tool no longer works
 
Graphics card is pretty decent
SSD is a lot better than no SSD
The q6600 and x38 motherboard and 4GB Ram... Not amazing, but would play most games at 30FPS+ I would wager...

Case and good quality PSU wouldn't cost the world, and would be worth not cheaping out on becuase if you decide to upgrade the motherboard/CPU/RAM, you can carry it over.
 
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