Soldato
- Joined
- 12 May 2011
- Posts
- 6,325
- Location
- Southampton
I've been following the xbox 360 20 year anniversary stuff this winter considering I still regularly use my 360 and it is permanently plugged into my TV. I then thought about PCs 20 years ago. Can I use a 20 year old PC still as an "everyday PC"? That is, Windows 10 (or 11... but no) steam and gaming, discord, browsing and youtube, without needing to use any 'hacks' or workarounds?
I looked at the parts you could get in 2006 and came up with the following:
QX6700 Extreme CPUs are expensive and rare so I substituted this for a regular Q6700 - the exact same specs but a later (cheaper) release that I already had.
I ordered 4x 2GB of DDR2 800MHz as a set but annoyingly one stick is dead so I swapped this out for another, different, pair running at 667MHz so now all four run a that lower speed.
I pulled out my old case with reasonable airflow to give the system half a chance at keeping cool and quiet. I also used a S775 compatible tower cooler - looking at the Overlockers website circa 2006 it looks like 120mm tower coolers did exist back then but this is an old Silverstone AR1 from quite a bit later. I like the look of this set up:
Finally the 8800GTS arrived:
All set up in a modern Lian Li case:
At this point I should say I have cheated and used an SSD which were available in 2007 at the earliest. I don't think I can use spinning rust any more.
Setup
The first problem was that the board would not boot via USB. I did the first stage of a Windows 10 install install on another PC and then moved the drive over to my 2006 PC. Whilst I only needed to do this once it is still a bit of a red flag for using this PC in 2006. I didn't even try Windows 11.
I then had the 8800GTS die (as expected to be honest) after an hour of desktop usage so I swapped that with an AMD 7970 as I had it lying around. I also removed the sound card as the newer GPU has audio over HDMI. The 8800GTS would not output at 1440p (even though the DVI-D should support this), probably due to my cheap DVI to HDMI cable. The replacement 7970 does 1440p @ 144Hz fine though over DP though. I may try the 8800GTS on Windows 7 or something to see if it was just driver problems.
So with an SSD, a newer GPU, and what looks like newer RAM than you could get in 2006 (it looks like you can only buy 1GB sticks in 2006) I guess it is more like an "upgraded" 2006 PC.
With setup and drivers all installed I overclocked the CPU to 3.33GHz (i.e. going from 1066MHz FSB to a 1333MHz FSB which allows my basic RAM to still run at its proper 667MHz) to get a bit of extra performance. With better RAM I think the CPU (and board) can take a higher overclock.
Is it usable?
Browsing, youtube and Steam are all usable. Not great but fine. I am writing this with several tabs open, resizing images and listening to Spotify in the background. Booting takes a while as there are a few different controllers on the board that need to initialise (which I can't seem to turn off individually in the BIOS). The CPU fan takes 5 seconds to start spinning which is a bit disconcerting!
The board has PWM fan headers which was a nice suprise. The case fans are quiet. It only has USB 2.0 headers so I have used an adapter on my 3.X case usb ports but these all work fine.
The front panel audio header is inconveniently located so I didn't bother. I wouldn't be using my headset on this PC anyway.
Overall yes it is tolerable using it for daily browsing and faffing.
Can it game?
Yes and no. I tried all games at 1440p.
2D indie games will get well north of 60FPS:
Pentiment (2022)
Hades (2020)
Hollow Knight (2017)
Moving to 3D games, this was hit and miss:
Crysis (2007) This was GPU limited on "high":
1000X Resist (2025) some new gamepass game (needed an internal resolution of 1080p) The framerate did drop in gameplay but was "around" 30fps:
GTA 5 legacy (2015) The new version (or its anti-cheat) needs an instruction set this CPU doesn't have. The benchmark gave me an average fps of 42.2fps with 94% of frames above 30fps. Medium to high settings. Textures were slow to load on Very High.
I Am Your Beast (2025). Surprisingly ran at all, and ran pretty well at medium settings:
My Summer Car (2016). Runs in excess of 30fps so far that a 30fps cap is very smooth:
Medieval Dynasty (2020/1). This struggled to hit 30fps.
GTA San Andreas The Definitive Edition (2021). In cities it struggled to hit 30fps:
OG Skyrim (2011). Ran enough above 30fps to work flawlessly with a 30fps cap:
Snowrunner (2020). Dipped below 30fps, which is not too much of a playability issue in this very slow game, but not very enjoyable.
Conclusion:
This PC is surprisingly usable for day to day browsing. I am not sure if it would run modern office software (or any productivity software)..
The xbox app and its games (which I recall are not traditional .exes?) ran fine which I was pleasantly surprised about and it has the performance to run new 2D games without issue. I was suprised at how many late 2010s and early 2020s 3D games ran.
Not many games had launching issues (i.e. the CPU not being compatible) but I was being sensible with my game choices, I know that the new GTA5, Elden Ring, any new COD of BF game won't run.
If anything I was amazed at how well the 3GB 7970 held up, and on a PCIe Gen 1 system. It ran these games at 1440p, a resolution it was not really designed for, really well.
8GB of RAM was also no an issue in any of the use cases. Loading times were slow due to the RAM speed (and maybe PCIE bus speed) but I never saw more than 7GB being used.
Should you use your 20 year old PC as your main PC? No
If you're on a very tight budget should you buy 20 year old parts to use as your main PC? No buy ivybridge or haswell parts
Now to take it apart and make a killer XP system...
I looked at the parts you could get in 2006 and came up with the following:
- Intel Core 2 Quad QX6700 @ 2.66GHz - I wouldn't want to try to use Windows 10 on an old Dual Core
- Intel 965P chipset motherboard (Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3) - the only 2006 chipset that can take Core 2 Quads and can take 8GB of RAM
- 4x 2GB DDR2 RAM - I ended up with 667MHz when I bought 800MHz
- Nvidia 8800 GTS 640MB - DX10 support and Windows 10 supported drivers and GTXs are rare and expensive now.
- Creative X-Fi soundcard (these are 2005 to 2010 or so and I happened to have one lying around)
QX6700 Extreme CPUs are expensive and rare so I substituted this for a regular Q6700 - the exact same specs but a later (cheaper) release that I already had.
I ordered 4x 2GB of DDR2 800MHz as a set but annoyingly one stick is dead so I swapped this out for another, different, pair running at 667MHz so now all four run a that lower speed.
I pulled out my old case with reasonable airflow to give the system half a chance at keeping cool and quiet. I also used a S775 compatible tower cooler - looking at the Overlockers website circa 2006 it looks like 120mm tower coolers did exist back then but this is an old Silverstone AR1 from quite a bit later. I like the look of this set up:
Finally the 8800GTS arrived:
All set up in a modern Lian Li case:
At this point I should say I have cheated and used an SSD which were available in 2007 at the earliest. I don't think I can use spinning rust any more.
Setup
The first problem was that the board would not boot via USB. I did the first stage of a Windows 10 install install on another PC and then moved the drive over to my 2006 PC. Whilst I only needed to do this once it is still a bit of a red flag for using this PC in 2006. I didn't even try Windows 11.
I then had the 8800GTS die (as expected to be honest) after an hour of desktop usage so I swapped that with an AMD 7970 as I had it lying around. I also removed the sound card as the newer GPU has audio over HDMI. The 8800GTS would not output at 1440p (even though the DVI-D should support this), probably due to my cheap DVI to HDMI cable. The replacement 7970 does 1440p @ 144Hz fine though over DP though. I may try the 8800GTS on Windows 7 or something to see if it was just driver problems.
So with an SSD, a newer GPU, and what looks like newer RAM than you could get in 2006 (it looks like you can only buy 1GB sticks in 2006) I guess it is more like an "upgraded" 2006 PC.
With setup and drivers all installed I overclocked the CPU to 3.33GHz (i.e. going from 1066MHz FSB to a 1333MHz FSB which allows my basic RAM to still run at its proper 667MHz) to get a bit of extra performance. With better RAM I think the CPU (and board) can take a higher overclock.
Is it usable?
Browsing, youtube and Steam are all usable. Not great but fine. I am writing this with several tabs open, resizing images and listening to Spotify in the background. Booting takes a while as there are a few different controllers on the board that need to initialise (which I can't seem to turn off individually in the BIOS). The CPU fan takes 5 seconds to start spinning which is a bit disconcerting!
The board has PWM fan headers which was a nice suprise. The case fans are quiet. It only has USB 2.0 headers so I have used an adapter on my 3.X case usb ports but these all work fine.
The front panel audio header is inconveniently located so I didn't bother. I wouldn't be using my headset on this PC anyway.
Overall yes it is tolerable using it for daily browsing and faffing.
Can it game?
Yes and no. I tried all games at 1440p.
2D indie games will get well north of 60FPS:
Pentiment (2022)
Hades (2020)
Hollow Knight (2017)
Moving to 3D games, this was hit and miss:
Crysis (2007) This was GPU limited on "high":
1000X Resist (2025) some new gamepass game (needed an internal resolution of 1080p) The framerate did drop in gameplay but was "around" 30fps:
GTA 5 legacy (2015) The new version (or its anti-cheat) needs an instruction set this CPU doesn't have. The benchmark gave me an average fps of 42.2fps with 94% of frames above 30fps. Medium to high settings. Textures were slow to load on Very High.
I Am Your Beast (2025). Surprisingly ran at all, and ran pretty well at medium settings:
My Summer Car (2016). Runs in excess of 30fps so far that a 30fps cap is very smooth:
Medieval Dynasty (2020/1). This struggled to hit 30fps.
GTA San Andreas The Definitive Edition (2021). In cities it struggled to hit 30fps:
OG Skyrim (2011). Ran enough above 30fps to work flawlessly with a 30fps cap:
Snowrunner (2020). Dipped below 30fps, which is not too much of a playability issue in this very slow game, but not very enjoyable.
Conclusion:
This PC is surprisingly usable for day to day browsing. I am not sure if it would run modern office software (or any productivity software)..
The xbox app and its games (which I recall are not traditional .exes?) ran fine which I was pleasantly surprised about and it has the performance to run new 2D games without issue. I was suprised at how many late 2010s and early 2020s 3D games ran.
Not many games had launching issues (i.e. the CPU not being compatible) but I was being sensible with my game choices, I know that the new GTA5, Elden Ring, any new COD of BF game won't run.
If anything I was amazed at how well the 3GB 7970 held up, and on a PCIe Gen 1 system. It ran these games at 1440p, a resolution it was not really designed for, really well.
8GB of RAM was also no an issue in any of the use cases. Loading times were slow due to the RAM speed (and maybe PCIE bus speed) but I never saw more than 7GB being used.
Should you use your 20 year old PC as your main PC? No
If you're on a very tight budget should you buy 20 year old parts to use as your main PC? No buy ivybridge or haswell parts
Now to take it apart and make a killer XP system...
