Hey guys, It's been forever since I looked at PC hardware, so I'm well out of the loop. My main pc is a socket 2011 pc with a 6800k, 32gb ram, 760ti, and lots of other lovely bits. However, it's a linux workstation and gets used for everything apart from gaming. I was rather hoping to get back into video gaming as I especially miss Skyrim and few other games from that time, I'm not bothered about anything too cutting edge. What I'd ideally like is a roughly console-like experience. Lots of stuff with a controller, sitting on the sofa rather than spending hours hunched over a strategy game like I used to. I was going to repurpose a pc I have around here that used to be our band recording PC. It has: i3 2120 8GB DDR3 SSD, HDD, case, all sorted from my parts bin *dun dun dun* integrated graphics My first question for the BT wise old owls is: is this pc even worth bothering with? Part of me says that 1080p on older games can't be too demanding, another part of me says that there's no way a 7 year old dual core will be good for any kind of gaming. My second question (assuming the mobo bundle is passable) is which budget gpu for this purpose? I'm open to new or second hand, budget is, as ever, as little as possible but as much as necessary.
If you do keep that bundle you should have a look for a secondhand 1050 or 1050Ti. I had an i3 4160 running with a 1060 without issue. If you do end up buying new you could consider an AMD APU - 2400G would work I'd imagine (BT review)
i3 2120? That'll be Sandy Bridge, there are a number of games that don't like dual cores these days, but luckily there should be plenty of cheap (sub £50) used quad cores available on the bay of flea to upgrade to, what exactly is the mainboard? With the exact model we can dig up a list of supported CPUs. Then throw in a Geforce 1050TI and your golden.
Thanks all! The mobo is an MSI H61MA-E35, I've found the supported CPU list here. There seems to be a small consensus for the 1050ti, so I'll look into those. Thanks again.
I believe Custom PC still has the 1050Ti as their choice for 1080p gaming. You can get low profile versions as well if you want a particularly small case to save space.
I've dug through the bay of flea, the i5-3570 (no need for the K version as H61 doesn't support multiplier OC) currently appears to be the way to go, you can double your cores from 2 to 4 somewhere in the £20 - 40 range.
