heck my daily driver is a 3rd gen intel based dell optiplex with 16gb of ram and a Gigabyte rx580 8gb. It seems like it wouldn't be as enjoyable to play games on a modern system because you know it'll be decent. Using "old" systems and optimizing the experience is over half of the joy isn't it?
Oh my god yes, I already have all the pcs I need 😂 Although, most of them started out as fun projects. My gaming pc has a mining GPU with a custom driver. I have thin client running windows 10 (tiny 10 technically) A dell optiplex 740 with a different motherboard (no, the mounting holes didn't fit, I used zip ties and cardboard 💀) Also a few laptops and phones that are yet to find uses. My main laptop is mostly normal though and I don't dare to fuck around with my phone and tablet, they're to important to break.😂
I recently won a PC on ebay listed as for parts for £50 plus postage. Turns out the CPU power connector was unplugged, and other than that it works just fine. It has with an i7 4790k and Z97 board as well as an R9 290, all working fine. Couldn't believe the fix was that simple.
Ah yes good old Devils Canyon, the 4790K was the CPU I upgraded to after my 2600K, its a great CPU regardless of what people say about it, give it good cooling and itll handle pretty much anything you throw at it.
Sounds like my old PC. I still have i7 4790K on Z97 board with R9 290 (wanted to sell it but gave Graphic Card to brother and upgraded my rig with RX 590). I still have it but without case. Someday maybe I'll get case and get it running for older games.
I'm Canadian and have moved to Australia. I love the council cleanups. I've built my desktop right from the side of the road, it's great. I7 4790k, 32gb ram, gtx titan 12gb, 256gb nvme, 512gb sata ssd, 160gb hdd, 320gb hdd, 640gb hdd. Didn't pay a dollar, just found them at random times while going to work and back.
You didn't pay a single pound for any of these stuff?? I live in Poland, and the only thing I ever found on the street was an old dell optiplex without ram&hdd. And I'll probably never find any pc part/pc ever again... Dang life must be so good for yall australians interested in tech
It sounds like I need to move there if people throw out Titan GPUs instead of selling them. My last 3 PCs have been from e waste centres but they've cost money. Normally under £50 though.
Yes, a video on Sandy Bridge/LGA 1155! Literally my favorite generation as of late. Almost every computer I’ve built for my family is some sort of Sandy Bridge Xeon or i5-2400/2500. Even my backup PC and laptop have sandybridge chips, an i7-2600k and i7-2820qm respectively. They’re still new enough to not be worth collector’s money yet, and are super usable. No matter what r/buildapc says.
And don't forget that back in ye olden Sandy Bridge days laptops also came with actual, pleasant to use keyboards that could handle more than a micron of dust :D
Ivy Bridge is also nice and uses the same motherboards but you get PCIe 3.0 instead of 2.0 that Sandy has. I still have a 2600k around too, that beast ran at 4.8Ghz for many years with no issues, might go dig it out later and see if the old girl can still kick it at 4.8.
@@trashpanda8437 And a better iGPU, which means that for a device without a dGPU(so a SFPC or laptop), the CPU doesn't ramp up when you click on youtube. That's pretty much why I had to mess with coreboot to get my Dad's T420 and T520( aka the sole devices that can survive his "enthusiastic" typing) so they could get a 3612QM in place of the 2520M
@@trashpanda8437And equally as importantly for laptops/SFF builds an HD4000 that means that the CPU doesn't ramp up like crazy just doing something like TH-cam playback. In fact, that's pretty much why I used CoreBoot to mod some T420/T520 ThinkPads so they could take an Ivy (a 3612QM to be precise), which made them quite viable as non-gaming devices that are literally more than a decade old.
I still use my first high end build 2600K / TITAN X 12gb / 32gb ram, and it runs every game I want in 1440p with high settings ( War Thunder, ETS2, WoT, Beam NG, Sims 4, NFS Heat )
You are doing it wrong if your 775 is crummy and boring. You can turn a cheap ($2) LGA771 Xeon 90° and overclock it by 50% for fun. My only problem is the stickers to do the pin mod cost $6 😂
I mean... I haven't bought a VGA cable in 20 years, and I'm pretty sure I only own one. On the other hand, I have a spare WiFi card, complete with antennas, in the PC I'm using now because I don't have an anti-static bag to keep it in. PC hoarding be like that sometimes.
It’s also a bit sad that that’s true, in a way, lol. We’re at a point where relatively old hardware is still “just fine” for most uses. Wasn’t true even 20 years ago. Advancement really has slowed a lot.
My 4th gen i7 notebook from 2014 is still completely capable of any task except gaming. I expect to get 10 more years out of it but I likely won't live that long.
@@LatitudeSkymy 2014 netbook with a celeron n2808 and integrated graphics did (and still does) the job for me. It's nice, cheap (like 20 dollars) and besides youtube, I can do anything there... anything meaning Half life 2, Minecraft 1.12.2, emulators, Unturned and most early FNaF games.
Oh what a marvelous beep beep beep. Identical to "beeps that mean BadThings in an aircraft cockpit" (master caution, engine failure, etc) and this is the first time I've ever heard anything outside a cockpit make that particular noise. Fascinating.
I don't go any lower than Haswell these days. That being said, Sandy/Ivy bridge are still absolutely solid office PCs paired with a cheap 120GB SSD. my old work dev PC just had an i5-2320, 12GB RAM and a GTX 745 in it, and I wasn't ever longing for more powerful hardware
my linux dev box is an old 2600, and my old 2600 imac powers my klipper instances for my 3d printers (like a central hub instead of individual pi's) Still plenty of uses for the old girls
I just saw a 6c/12t 9th gen ES chip with 4.3ghz turbo for $38 new after coupons and tax on AliExpress (some kind of BGA1440 mutant chip). You can grab an 1151 Mobo these days for $20, or not much more, pretty easily (Loads of Lenovo Legion Y530 boards going for $24 for example). I also saw someone on local marketplace selling a box of i5 9400F for $30 ea. That's pretty cheap.
I gotta give you points for fighting with the pins on cpu. Bending the pins sounds like a giant pain in the ass. I would have said screw and just by another cheap like it on ebay rather than fight with angry hurt pins. But I admire your dedication to getting a proper test. I just imagine you staring at the cpu trying to bend the pins back together. Telling your cpu gonna give me those tests or die trying. You have good drive.
Man I just love your everyday approach to everyday scenarios that are affordable for the normal human being it's nice to see you producing this stuff that is very satisfying without a big budget sponsor and all that stuff like it gets old and I am an actual tech and it's nice to see somebody else going through the things that I have wondered about and gone through. There's always a diamond in the rough it's just a matter of finding the right deal to invest in.
Idk why, but these 8~12 years old motherboards look cool af imo. And considering how well 2nd gen Intel processors still perform, I have no idea why people doubt I'm telling the truth when I talk about how usable my 4th gen Intel laptops are... I mean, I do have an idea, 4, 6 cores keeps being pushed as the minimal required for a pc nowadays, for some reason
I think it's more about people not knowing it's changed. In the 90s to the mid 00s computing moved very fast, and everyone kind of assumed that they still move fast, helped along a little by advertising.
@@henryokeeffe5835 which's fair when you consider older people, but most of the people that say that are at my age or younger. But yeah, I think advertising is mainly what causes that. And it's worsened by influencers telling people that games running at less than 60fps on ultra on a piece of hardware means it's shit... I mean, you can run games from the early 2000s on a 4th gen Intel iGPU and it'll probably get to 60+fps at ultra
My 4th gen i7 notebook can do literally anything I could possibly want, except gaming modern games. The built in Nvidia 860M is not up to it. I expect 10 more years out of that notebook with no issues but I probably won't live that long. That said, I have just retired my 2nd gen i5 2410 notebook. It has been struggling terribly with Windows 10 but never worked that well anyway even when new.
@@LatitudeSky my i7 4510U with a 840M is kind of at the same place, altho it seems it can run Mount&Blade 2, which alongside Street Fighter 6 is one of the few modern games I wanna play, all I need to do is get enough money to buy it now. All older games worked perfectly so far tho.
@@henryokeeffe5835 This is probably one of the big reasons everyone's pushing AI. The industry has been desperately trying to invent something that actually requires high-end hardware and isn't _transparently_ an excuse to waste energy for no gain like blockchain was, and they finally found it.
My back up system is running a Sandy Bridge E3-1245 Xeon with 16gb ram and a GTX 750ti with that exact CiT psu (which I think I may swap out for a Corsair VS450 after seeing this video), 100mhz shy of I7-2600 performance on base and boost for about half the price on average. Nippy little rig that does the job as far as basic use and light/older games.
@@blakecasimir the VS is one I've already got, I know it's not an ideal choice but should be sufficient for such low power components until I have the spare cash to get something better. Especially as it's in one of my back up rigs.
But "z" boards are not cheap. Not super expensive anymore (still too expensive for 12y old board) but if you don't have one it doesn't make any sense as you can get am4 board for same money.
My main desktop PC is still 1155/Ivy Bridge. It's got a i7-3770, a lot of RAM, and a rather anachronistic Radeon Vega 64 Frontier Edition. It does most things I need or want of it exceedingly well still, though of course the Vega 64 is basically a 300 watt space heater under load.
Man i hate CPU naming. I read i7 and i thought it's something newer. 😂 Ok I bailed out of the hobby more than 10 years ago. Some interest is still there but I find my self often on comparison sites and benchmarks because I can't figure out the performance from names or even the stats.
Agree with the conclusion about Sandy Bridge's longevity - my brother ran an i7-2600k until last year and it was completely smooth doing anything outside of running the most CPU-intensive newest games. Technology has come such a long way that you can get a ton of value from these old mid-range parts
Ah, the HD 3000. I haven't had to deal with that thing since I was interested in Hackintoshes. Had a Dell laptop that worked *almost* out of the box with Snow Leopard, except that HD 3000 just couldn't be used for accelerated graphics. Was the bane of that entire project.
I have a 6th gen Pentium with a 2060, it plays all the games I need it to do like BeamNG and Vintage Story (WITH high settings). It’s also a killer with other stuff, like KiCAD, screen recording, and 4K TH-cam.
Picked up a i5-4750, H97M-Pro motherboard,8Gb ddr3,GTX750,500W PSU, Silverstone case and blue-ray drive for 3,500 JPY which is about 18.30UKP.. The case was fine just a few marks ..bought a cheap SSD and it's good to go
I've recently thrown together a 2600k/GTX 970 system and I'm honestly shocked at how much it can run. BFV at 1080p medium 60fps most of the time. It's perfectly fine for a daily driver too. Yeah sure in a perfect world we'd all be running 4090's and all the rest but where would be the fun in that? Awesome content mate! Keep it coming!!
It feels odd to call HD 3000 "much maligned" given how competent it was for iGPUs at the time. AMD announced Llano but it was only a paper launch (plus the terrible CPU perf). HD 3000 was the first, uh, "gaming" GPU for the many, many people who bought Intel's Sandy Bridge i3/i5/i7 chips. And being able to struggle-settings Skyrim was icing on that cake.
I've got the exact same case, had it for ~7 years, constantly updating / upgrading the parts until last year I moved on and build myself a new PC with all new parts and a new case. AMD5 7600X, 64 GB RAM, 2TB NVMe SSD, 10TB HDD and a RTX 4070 Super. My Wife inherited THAT CASE with a AMD 4 5600, 32 GB RAM, 1TB NVMe SSD and a RX 580 8GB...on which I used to play Elite Dangerous EASILY in VR using an Oculus Rift2 before upgrading. That case took everything I threw at it and it functioned well.
thanks for taking the time to do these tests on these old set ups, myself have tried many of these games on my 775 socket and like yourself was surprised at what you can actually get away with and play, however i have noticed an increase in pricing on these old chips and wonder if it's down to videos like yours which are educating people that they may well be old but are still able to get through a majority of newer games.
I decided to go haswell for my parent's PCs that they'll honestly probably use till the bitter end lol, but this vid makes me think I could have saved a bit on each by going sandy bridge instead! haha great vid man - the price to performance king
This very processor was powering my main gaming PC for YEARS. Paired through much of it's working life with a GTX 750TI. I still have the processor, motherboard, and the 750TI and I suddenly want to rebuild it and do something with it.
I miss using my Zotac GTX 760 2gb which served me very well for years. I still have that build with it's Haswell processor in the Fractal case I got just for it 9 years ago.
I love seeing these types of computers just like older ones that still hold their own in a lot of tasks for such a cheap price. It's a nice refresher from videos on other computers that are like so new and flashy that are 10x more expensive.
I got a PC from the trash with a Core i5 from 2015, and it can do PS2 emulation with an iGPU! Now it's my daily driver. Btw love your channel because you show things I can afford :)
I was trying to guess the generation that processor is from based on the heatsink sticker visible on the thumbnail and I was quite close. My guess was at best 3rd gen Ivybridge i3 or something (but turned out it was a Pentium from the same era), since starting around Haswell its all blue and not the 2 part blue and white of earlier gens. The SSD dangling on the cables is just hilarious since I've also done that before while cloning SSDs and it looks jank, but works fine since they ain't mechanical drives.
G2030 is ivy bridge and the iGPU is the HD graphics ivy bridge version (sometime called HD2500), not even the HD4000 from high end ivy bridge CPU. HD3000 is exclusive to high end sandy bridge CPU. The HD graphics of ivy bridge is slower than HD3000.
CS2 seems to do some sort of shader compilation during the first minutes of gameplay. I get 100% usage on all cores and some stuttering for like 5 mins when I open the game, then the usage drops and it runs fine like you experienced there.
I upgraded a cheap PC I bought off Craigslist with a similar board. It had the same issue. Beeped when I upgraded the CPU from a Core i3 to an i5. Thought the CPU was bad, put the old one back in still beeped. Turned off the power supply pushed the power button and released all the power from the capacitors and let it sit a minute. Turned on the power supply then pressed the power button and it came back on, placed the i5 back in and it worked then. Seemed to be an issue with power in the capacitors being there still. Can try that next time.
1155 was a real game changer of a platform. I build a lot of systems, and a pretty large percentage of them are 1155 based. I do a ton with E3 v1 and v2 xeon CPUs but also a lot with i5-34** CPUs. Even now, they're still very capable.
I'm still using an 1155 CPU fished out of a Dell Optiplex, but I was lucky enough to have a friend with a better mobo laying around too. This kind of thing is useful if you don't have the spare parts!
Dude I glimpsed my phone and no joke for a second I thought I saw gordon ramsey I was freaking. Great vids as always btw, would love to take a crack at some crazy budget builds myself.
That is an insane bargain. I've got a pentium III 1.4GHz with an old 6600 gt card, 1.5GB ram. It can run HL2, decode HD movies, Unreal tournament 2005 with full bots etc.. Not my main pc but I used it until about 2006.
I'm watching this video on an i5-2400 using the built in video. It's perfectly fine for internet browsing and 1080p videos. It's one of those Dell optiplex types. Just great for my needs.
Nice. I recently picked up an i5-6600 optiplex myself that I’ve paired with 8gb of ram and a wx2100 for $40 total. I’ve missed building cheap computers
Great video👍 Idea/suggestion: change the PSU, put an i7, 16 GB of RAM, and a more powerful Graphics card in it, and see how far it can go in terms of more modern games...
I'm surprised how well the Sandy Bridge architecture has aged. You can get those i5's and even i7's basically for free, and you can still do 95% of all the work you want on them. My IvyBridge i7-3840QM laptop is still chugging away at even some heavier loads.
Hmm. My upgrade suggestions would be too increase the ram to 8x2. Why did you leave it at 4x1. An i7 3770. And if possible gtx 1650 low profile or rtx 3050 low profile. Upgrading the power supply too. I really want to see what *3rd gen* is capable in a modern scenario
I bet a sixpack of beer that it runs better under Linux, nothing better than running an older system under something that doesn't have so many built-in system hogs. (No i am not giving up 😁)
I'm not sure about dual core CPUs being adequate for web surfing and day-to-day tasks. Modern websites and video streaming are demanding. Maybe Nanna won't notice but anyone with a modern smartphone will notice the slowdown. Spending just a bit more on a 4 core CPU will improve the experience tenfold IMO. I tried upgrading my FM2+ motherboard but my A10-7800 APU is the cream of the crop. Threw in an Athlon X4 860 with minimal gains and went back to my old APU lol Love the videos mate
The problem I see is that almost anyone with the skill to replace the CPU, straighten pins, and other work to get the thing ready, they have some a lot of better options. I have straighten pins before on a Ryzen 2600 that I used to build a roommate a PC. A beginning PC person is not going to likely do this. Those who have the technical skills likely have already a better system and/or could make a much better upgrade for really only a few dollars more. Likely worth it to spend on a slightly better power supply and a GTX 960 or 970. They are currently still supported and receiving updates.
I have an i3-2120 system that I got for the cost of drilling a hole in the HDD for the previous owner, and a new PSU. It's not the best system in the world. It's not even the best system in the room, but you can't beat it for the price. I wouldn't hesitate to pick up another Sandy Bridge system for general computing, or gaming, if it had the right chip. There's nothing wrong with them.
Great video. My only concern with these older CPUs is that as capable as they are, they no longer support the latest Windows operating system and Linux gaming has not come far enough yet.
A quick tip with crt monitors. You can often push the resolution and or refresh rate much higher with cru (custom resolution utility). Most crt's can likely do 1600 by 1000 at 60 or 75 hz.
Yes, you can also change the monitors config manually in windows or linux and technically overclock it. My guess is that since he’s in Europe, he’s stuck in PAL, which means a slower refresh rate by default.
@@benshannon9386 yes there is a massive rabbit hole when it comes down to learning about how all the timings work, but it can be alot of fun. I use my cheap dell at 1679 by 1100 75hz for desktop, and 1260 by 540 at 144hz upscaled to 1680 by 720 for gaming using vsr.
Just barely beat you out on price yesterday at $7 for the HP mini tower and a PS/2 keyboard...that the PC didn't have the ports for... Ended up being an i3-8100 with 1TB HDD and 16GB Optane module. Oh yeah. Negative was that it lived in the office of a bowling alley kitchen and smells like deep fryer while it's runnin...LOL!!
While I've upgraded my main pc to a Ryzen 7900x, I still have my old desktop that I used till early 2020 which is a Sandy Bridge i5-2500k overclocked to 4.4ghz. It's still a nice computer today.
1050Ti can still pull its own weight, Pascal was an amazing architecture. I feel like my first 'real' 3D accelerator was a Voodoo 3 2000. (Of course you could count the Cyrix MediaGX and the first gen Athlon with SiS motherboard graphics, even though they didn't really do much it was a huge leap from a 386. Although I have attempted to play actual 3D games on a 286.)
Almost exactly my scenario. It was night and day swapping out the factory R7 360 2 GB (Dell OEM) for a GTX 1060 3 GB. Had a second power supply with a paper clip in it and all as the factory internal was only 240W. Much, much simpler times.
Transport Tycoon and its modern remake - OpenTTD - are one of the best computer games for me, still, in the year 2024. And it looks like this game is immortal. Chis Sawyer is a legend.
Those who say "good old times" forgot that anything computer-related used to cost a small fortune back then. Thanks for reminding us that this is no longer the case 😁
Hell man, get rid of theat death trap mistakenly named power supply. It may fry everything anytime. It probably causes more problems as voltages are surely off.
I get similar-ish systems (tough mostly prebuilds) for free every now and then, because they'd otherwise get scrapped. I grew up having to scrape together my money for a PC, just to get scammed over and over (eventually leading to me having to learn how to build/fix them myself) so I can't say no to such offers, even if it means having a lot of PCs standing around at times. I've never seen the illusive R7 450 for a low price, tough. As far as VGA, DVI and Power Cables go, I either have none or 30+, never anything in between.
Great video showcasing the value of these Sandy and Ivy bridge chips, I use an Ivy bridge i5-3470 in my main PC still and it performs well for its age Also, the Discord server invite link is invalid
For the costs of parts you should include shipping costs along side. Easy to win something for a couple of pence when the shipping is a tenner, extreme example but you get my meaning total costs matter
Long time ago I bought dell optiplex 390 sff with i3 2120 and gt 710 pci ex8 ddr3 variant. Swapped out gt710 woth used gt 1030 (20 pounds) and i5 2500k + wifi card. And it handles ok. Unfortunately steam doesn't work anymore on windows 8, it 8s dedicated win8.1 machine. P.s. don't judge me for using win8.1, there is a reason behind it.
My previous system had a 2400. It lasted until 2022 when sadly the motherboard died. It was still pretty capable for everyday use with 8 gb of RAM. For gaming not so much.
My second system is a xeon E3 1270( i72600), 16GB ram and a 1650 ddr6, beside 3A gaming is still nice. If you have P/Z 67/77 mobo and want to squeeze some more power, can overlock non K non xeon (i5/i7) cpus +400mhz all core. For example my i5 2400 was running at 3.6 ghz all core( no blck oc) with only 1.165v. I think 1150/1155 or x99 are decent performers.
So nice of the seller to include a free computer with the Modem they were selling
These videos are my vicarious living aid to stop myself from ordering silly old computers myself
Actually, making thin clients and scrapyard hardware do games is a nice hobby, ask me how i know. 😸
Same
@BastetFurry it has to be one of the cheapest and most rewarding hobbies or pastimes there is. I love it!
heck my daily driver is a 3rd gen intel based dell optiplex with 16gb of ram and a Gigabyte rx580 8gb. It seems like it wouldn't be as enjoyable to play games on a modern system because you know it'll be decent. Using "old" systems and optimizing the experience is over half of the joy isn't it?
Oh my god yes, I already have all the pcs I need 😂
Although, most of them started out as fun projects. My gaming pc has a mining GPU with a custom driver.
I have thin client running windows 10 (tiny 10 technically)
A dell optiplex 740 with a different motherboard (no, the mounting holes didn't fit, I used zip ties and cardboard 💀)
Also a few laptops and phones that are yet to find uses.
My main laptop is mostly normal though and I don't dare to fuck around with my phone and tablet, they're to important to break.😂
I recently won a PC on ebay listed as for parts for £50 plus postage. Turns out the CPU power connector was unplugged, and other than that it works just fine. It has with an i7 4790k and Z97 board as well as an R9 290, all working fine. Couldn't believe the fix was that simple.
Ah yes good old Devils Canyon, the 4790K was the CPU I upgraded to after my 2600K, its a great CPU regardless of what people say about it, give it good cooling and itll handle pretty much anything you throw at it.
Sounds like my old PC. I still have i7 4790K on Z97 board with R9 290 (wanted to sell it but gave Graphic Card to brother and upgraded my rig with RX 590). I still have it but without case. Someday maybe I'll get case and get it running for older games.
I'm Canadian and have moved to Australia. I love the council cleanups. I've built my desktop right from the side of the road, it's great.
I7 4790k, 32gb ram, gtx titan 12gb, 256gb nvme, 512gb sata ssd, 160gb hdd, 320gb hdd, 640gb hdd. Didn't pay a dollar, just found them at random times while going to work and back.
a 12gb titan??? for free ??????? you are blessed by the budget pc overlords
You didn't pay a single pound for any of these stuff?? I live in Poland, and the only thing I ever found on the street was an old dell optiplex without ram&hdd. And I'll probably never find any pc part/pc ever again... Dang life must be so good for yall australians interested in tech
It sounds like I need to move there if people throw out Titan GPUs instead of selling them. My last 3 PCs have been from e waste centres but they've cost money. Normally under £50 though.
wow nice
What a bargain :) This generation of Core is so versatile. You can do Retro Windows XP, or push it quite far with semi modern stuff.
This channel is a perfect example of "you dont need much to enjoy your life", keep up the great work❤
aNY IPHONE HAS MORE POWER !
Love this dudes sense of style. He looks so cool whenever he shows up on screen.
He looks like he's no stranger to love. I think he knows the rules, and he looks like he doesn't give things up.
@@Joomluh12 Ok you win. You clearly have the bigger crush on him.
Private school chic.
@@BozbaccaPlays nah he ain’t no toff lol
As a fellow ginger I can tell you we just sound like that
Yes, a video on Sandy Bridge/LGA 1155! Literally my favorite generation as of late. Almost every computer I’ve built for my family is some sort of Sandy Bridge Xeon or i5-2400/2500.
Even my backup PC and laptop have sandybridge chips, an i7-2600k and i7-2820qm respectively. They’re still new enough to not be worth collector’s money yet, and are super usable. No matter what r/buildapc says.
And don't forget that back in ye olden Sandy Bridge days laptops also came with actual, pleasant to use keyboards that could handle more than a micron of dust :D
Ivy Bridge is also nice and uses the same motherboards but you get PCIe 3.0 instead of 2.0 that Sandy has. I still have a 2600k around too, that beast ran at 4.8Ghz for many years with no issues, might go dig it out later and see if the old girl can still kick it at 4.8.
@@trashpanda8437 And a better iGPU, which means that for a device without a dGPU(so a SFPC or laptop), the CPU doesn't ramp up when you click on youtube. That's pretty much why I had to mess with coreboot to get my Dad's T420 and T520( aka the sole devices that can survive his "enthusiastic" typing) so they could get a 3612QM in place of the 2520M
@@trashpanda8437And equally as importantly for laptops/SFF builds an HD4000 that means that the CPU doesn't ramp up like crazy just doing something like TH-cam playback. In fact, that's pretty much why I used CoreBoot to mod some T420/T520 ThinkPads so they could take an Ivy (a 3612QM to be precise), which made them quite viable as non-gaming devices that are literally more than a decade old.
I still use my first high end build 2600K / TITAN X 12gb / 32gb ram, and it runs every game I want in 1440p with high settings ( War Thunder, ETS2, WoT, Beam NG, Sims 4, NFS Heat )
Damn this thing is far, far better than I thought, I was sure this would be another crummy boring 775 system
custom crab you need, running what on it ????
You are doing it wrong if your 775 is crummy and boring. You can turn a cheap ($2) LGA771 Xeon 90° and overclock it by 50% for fun. My only problem is the stickers to do the pin mod cost $6 😂
No spare VGA cables but spare WiFi attenas, ok.
It’s an odd world.
@@BudgetBuildsOfficial 🤣
I mean... I haven't bought a VGA cable in 20 years, and I'm pretty sure I only own one. On the other hand, I have a spare WiFi card, complete with antennas, in the PC I'm using now because I don't have an anti-static bag to keep it in. PC hoarding be like that sometimes.
This content makes you appreciate your hardware, because even though my cpu might be 10 years old its still doing the job…
It’s also a bit sad that that’s true, in a way, lol. We’re at a point where relatively old hardware is still “just fine” for most uses. Wasn’t true even 20 years ago. Advancement really has slowed a lot.
My 4th gen i7 notebook from 2014 is still completely capable of any task except gaming. I expect to get 10 more years out of it but I likely won't live that long.
@@LatitudeSkymy 2014 netbook with a celeron n2808 and integrated graphics did (and still does) the job for me. It's nice, cheap (like 20 dollars) and besides youtube, I can do anything there... anything meaning Half life 2, Minecraft 1.12.2, emulators, Unturned and most early FNaF games.
@@LatitudeSky I'm 28 and IDK if I'll live that long either... just looking at how this world is going. Biden's about to start WWIII lol
Oh what a marvelous beep beep beep. Identical to "beeps that mean BadThings in an aircraft cockpit" (master caution, engine failure, etc) and this is the first time I've ever heard anything outside a cockpit make that particular noise. Fascinating.
I don't go any lower than Haswell these days. That being said, Sandy/Ivy bridge are still absolutely solid office PCs paired with a cheap 120GB SSD. my old work dev PC just had an i5-2320, 12GB RAM and a GTX 745 in it, and I wasn't ever longing for more powerful hardware
Yep, Haswell is the way, for it has all the AVX instructions that are used by modern games.
my linux dev box is an old 2600, and my old 2600 imac powers my klipper instances for my 3d printers (like a central hub instead of individual pi's) Still plenty of uses for the old girls
I just saw a 6c/12t 9th gen ES chip with 4.3ghz turbo for $38 new after coupons and tax on AliExpress (some kind of BGA1440 mutant chip). You can grab an 1151 Mobo these days for $20, or not much more, pretty easily (Loads of Lenovo Legion Y530 boards going for $24 for example). I also saw someone on local marketplace selling a box of i5 9400F for $30 ea. That's pretty cheap.
It was a 10th Gen: QTJ2. And you can hack the microcode into some Z170 boards with CoffeeTime utility.
Sandy Bridge is still good enough as a NAS server
I gotta give you points for fighting with the pins on cpu. Bending the pins sounds like a giant pain in the ass. I would have said screw and just by another cheap like it on ebay rather than fight with angry hurt pins. But I admire your dedication to getting a proper test.
I just imagine you staring at the cpu trying to bend the pins back together. Telling your cpu gonna give me those tests or die trying.
You have good drive.
Man I just love your everyday approach to everyday scenarios that are affordable for the normal human being it's nice to see you producing this stuff that is very satisfying without a big budget sponsor and all that stuff like it gets old and I am an actual tech and it's nice to see somebody else going through the things that I have wondered about and gone through. There's always a diamond in the rough it's just a matter of finding the right deal to invest in.
Idk why, but these 8~12 years old motherboards look cool af imo. And considering how well 2nd gen Intel processors still perform, I have no idea why people doubt I'm telling the truth when I talk about how usable my 4th gen Intel laptops are... I mean, I do have an idea, 4, 6 cores keeps being pushed as the minimal required for a pc nowadays, for some reason
I think it's more about people not knowing it's changed. In the 90s to the mid 00s computing moved very fast, and everyone kind of assumed that they still move fast, helped along a little by advertising.
@@henryokeeffe5835 which's fair when you consider older people, but most of the people that say that are at my age or younger. But yeah, I think advertising is mainly what causes that. And it's worsened by influencers telling people that games running at less than 60fps on ultra on a piece of hardware means it's shit... I mean, you can run games from the early 2000s on a 4th gen Intel iGPU and it'll probably get to 60+fps at ultra
My 4th gen i7 notebook can do literally anything I could possibly want, except gaming modern games. The built in Nvidia 860M is not up to it. I expect 10 more years out of that notebook with no issues but I probably won't live that long. That said, I have just retired my 2nd gen i5 2410 notebook. It has been struggling terribly with Windows 10 but never worked that well anyway even when new.
@@LatitudeSky my i7 4510U with a 840M is kind of at the same place, altho it seems it can run Mount&Blade 2, which alongside Street Fighter 6 is one of the few modern games I wanna play, all I need to do is get enough money to buy it now. All older games worked perfectly so far tho.
@@henryokeeffe5835 This is probably one of the big reasons everyone's pushing AI. The industry has been desperately trying to invent something that actually requires high-end hardware and isn't _transparently_ an excuse to waste energy for no gain like blockchain was, and they finally found it.
The things you can have done with that 51p...could have bought a carrier bag in Morrisons and still have a penny left!
Worst carrier bag I have ever used that Morrisons one.
@@BudgetBuildsOfficial Hey, can you update the invite link to your discord? It appears to be outdated! I love your videos btw 😘
@@BudgetBuildsOfficial yep, that’s why I used it as an example 🤣, made of paper int it?
My back up system is running a Sandy Bridge E3-1245 Xeon with 16gb ram and a GTX 750ti with that exact CiT psu (which I think I may swap out for a Corsair VS450 after seeing this video), 100mhz shy of I7-2600 performance on base and boost for about half the price on average.
Nippy little rig that does the job as far as basic use and light/older games.
Corsair VS is really not much better... try and go for a CX at least.
@@blakecasimir the VS is one I've already got, I know it's not an ideal choice but should be sufficient for such low power components until I have the spare cash to get something better. Especially as it's in one of my back up rigs.
The Sandy Bridge generation was very good for overclock. You can easily achieve 5ghz with a 2500k in a good motherboard.
But "z" boards are not cheap. Not super expensive anymore (still too expensive for 12y old board) but if you don't have one it doesn't make any sense as you can get am4 board for same money.
@@gorjy9610 you are right, but its not a bad option If you want just have some fun with overclocking.
My main desktop PC is still 1155/Ivy Bridge. It's got a i7-3770, a lot of RAM, and a rather anachronistic Radeon Vega 64 Frontier Edition. It does most things I need or want of it exceedingly well still, though of course the Vega 64 is basically a 300 watt space heater under load.
Man i hate CPU naming. I read i7 and i thought it's something newer. 😂
Ok I bailed out of the hobby more than 10 years ago. Some interest is still there but I find my self often on comparison sites and benchmarks because I can't figure out the performance from names or even the stats.
Agree with the conclusion about Sandy Bridge's longevity - my brother ran an i7-2600k until last year and it was completely smooth doing anything outside of running the most CPU-intensive newest games. Technology has come such a long way that you can get a ton of value from these old mid-range parts
ttdx songs will never get old
Ah, the HD 3000. I haven't had to deal with that thing since I was interested in Hackintoshes. Had a Dell laptop that worked *almost* out of the box with Snow Leopard, except that HD 3000 just couldn't be used for accelerated graphics. Was the bane of that entire project.
I have a 6th gen Pentium with a 2060, it plays all the games I need it to do like BeamNG and Vintage Story (WITH high settings). It’s also a killer with other stuff, like KiCAD, screen recording, and 4K TH-cam.
Picked up a i5-4750, H97M-Pro motherboard,8Gb ddr3,GTX750,500W PSU, Silverstone case and blue-ray drive for 3,500 JPY which is about 18.30UKP.. The case was fine just a few marks ..bought a cheap SSD and it's good to go
It's always a good day when Budget Builds uploads
I've recently thrown together a 2600k/GTX 970 system and I'm honestly shocked at how much it can run. BFV at 1080p medium 60fps most of the time. It's perfectly fine for a daily driver too. Yeah sure in a perfect world we'd all be running 4090's and all the rest but where would be the fun in that?
Awesome content mate! Keep it coming!!
In a perfect world, developers would optimize shit to run well on cheaper/older/weaker hardware and power hungry RTX 4090s wouldn't exist.
It feels odd to call HD 3000 "much maligned" given how competent it was for iGPUs at the time. AMD announced Llano but it was only a paper launch (plus the terrible CPU perf). HD 3000 was the first, uh, "gaming" GPU for the many, many people who bought Intel's Sandy Bridge i3/i5/i7 chips. And being able to struggle-settings Skyrim was icing on that cake.
That GTX 780 at £12 was a steal.
Good old sandy bridge, still running a 2500k in my system paired with a GTX 970. Works fine.
The Sandy Bridge generation is just a rock solid CPU architecture.
I've got the exact same case, had it for ~7 years, constantly updating / upgrading the parts until last year I moved on and build myself a new PC with all new parts and a new case. AMD5 7600X, 64 GB RAM, 2TB NVMe SSD, 10TB HDD and a RTX 4070 Super.
My Wife inherited THAT CASE with a AMD 4 5600, 32 GB RAM, 1TB NVMe SSD and a RX 580 8GB...on which I used to play Elite Dangerous EASILY in VR using an Oculus Rift2 before upgrading.
That case took everything I threw at it and it functioned well.
I trawl the open Ebay seas late at night looking for auctions of P.C. parts too, the prices seem to be coming down so I'm stocking-up a bit.
thanks for taking the time to do these tests on these old set ups, myself have tried many of these games on my 775 socket and like yourself was surprised at what you can actually get away with and play,
however i have noticed an increase in pricing on these old chips and wonder if it's down to videos like yours which are educating people that they may well be old but are still able to get through a majority of newer games.
I decided to go haswell for my parent's PCs that they'll honestly probably use till the bitter end lol, but this vid makes me think I could have saved a bit on each by going sandy bridge instead! haha great vid man - the price to performance king
outstanding video, some hard work brought out the best in these overlooked parts. Crazy prices.
This very processor was powering my main gaming PC for YEARS. Paired through much of it's working life with a GTX 750TI. I still have the processor, motherboard, and the 750TI and I suddenly want to rebuild it and do something with it.
Really wasn't a bad CPU. Great value at the time
I had the classic 750ti until last year as well but it was paired with an i5 2500
I miss using my Zotac GTX 760 2gb which served me very well for years. I still have that build with it's Haswell processor in the Fractal case I got just for it 9 years ago.
£7.50 computer, £80 to ship
you aren't british are you? shipping is pretty cheap within the country
I imagine it wouldn't be cheap sending something across to Wales, Ireland, or Scotland just based on distance.
It was £5 shipping.
I love seeing these types of computers just like older ones that still hold their own in a lot of tasks for such a cheap price. It's a nice refresher from videos on other computers that are like so new and flashy that are 10x more expensive.
Yeah, but...
"10x more expensive" even £75-£150 would be a bargain PC, you need to add another 0 or even 2 these days 😂
I got a PC from the trash with a Core i5 from 2015, and it can do PS2 emulation with an iGPU! Now it's my daily driver. Btw love your channel because you show things I can afford :)
These are my favorite kinds of videos, man! Thanks for all your hard work and dedication. God bless you, good sir!
I love the work you put in, I also use a lot of secondhand parts on my pc
I just found this channel. What a nice experience! Nice videos. Well done.
I was trying to guess the generation that processor is from based on the heatsink sticker visible on the thumbnail and I was quite close. My guess was at best 3rd gen Ivybridge i3 or something (but turned out it was a Pentium from the same era), since starting around Haswell its all blue and not the 2 part blue and white of earlier gens.
The SSD dangling on the cables is just hilarious since I've also done that before while cloning SSDs and it looks jank, but works fine since they ain't mechanical drives.
And they cant short anything. My pc has no supporting bracket for a 2.5inch ssd so i have it flapping arround in the breeze
Sandy Bridge was such a good Intel CPU generation.
Running one as a HTPC.
Darn!!
You getting all the good ones!!
G2030 is ivy bridge and the iGPU is the HD graphics ivy bridge version (sometime called HD2500), not even the HD4000 from high end ivy bridge CPU.
HD3000 is exclusive to high end sandy bridge CPU.
The HD graphics of ivy bridge is slower than HD3000.
CS2 seems to do some sort of shader compilation during the first minutes of gameplay. I get 100% usage on all cores and some stuttering for like 5 mins when I open the game, then the usage drops and it runs fine like you experienced there.
love these vids
i watch every vid
feels different when i watch your vids
The TTD music earned you a subscriber!
I upgraded a cheap PC I bought off Craigslist with a similar board. It had the same issue. Beeped when I upgraded the CPU from a Core i3 to an i5. Thought the CPU was bad, put the old one back in still beeped. Turned off the power supply pushed the power button and released all the power from the capacitors and let it sit a minute. Turned on the power supply then pressed the power button and it came back on, placed the i5 back in and it worked then. Seemed to be an issue with power in the capacitors being there still. Can try that next time.
1155 was a real game changer of a platform. I build a lot of systems, and a pretty large percentage of them are 1155 based. I do a ton with E3 v1 and v2 xeon CPUs but also a lot with i5-34** CPUs. Even now, they're still very capable.
Your haircut absolutely rocks dude!
I'm still using an 1155 CPU fished out of a Dell Optiplex, but I was lucky enough to have a friend with a better mobo laying around too. This kind of thing is useful if you don't have the spare parts!
Dude I glimpsed my phone and no joke for a second I thought I saw gordon ramsey I was freaking. Great vids as always btw, would love to take a crack at some crazy budget builds myself.
That is an insane bargain. I've got a pentium III 1.4GHz with an old 6600 gt card, 1.5GB ram. It can run HL2, decode HD movies, Unreal tournament 2005 with full bots etc.. Not my main pc but I used it until about 2006.
OMG LOLS first thing i thought seeing the thumbnail "is that a cit pwr supply thats gonna pop" Luv the vids 🙂
I love the dell laptop with the video in I'm jealous lol
Oh shit this only dropped 26 mins ago, lets go. OOH budgets builds are always the best to watch.
that packaging is absolutely hilarious
Yeah, these chips were great back then and they still are! And yeah, the 3000 graphics were bad, but damn, I gotta say, I had lotsa fun with those
I'm watching this video on an i5-2400 using the built in video. It's perfectly fine for internet browsing and 1080p videos. It's one of those Dell optiplex types. Just great for my needs.
Nice. I recently picked up an i5-6600 optiplex myself that I’ve paired with 8gb of ram and a wx2100 for $40 total. I’ve missed building cheap computers
Great video👍
Idea/suggestion: change the PSU, put an i7, 16 GB of RAM, and a more powerful Graphics card in it, and see how far it can go in terms of more modern games...
I'm surprised how well the Sandy Bridge architecture has aged. You can get those i5's and even i7's basically for free, and you can still do 95% of all the work you want on them. My IvyBridge i7-3840QM laptop is still chugging away at even some heavier loads.
Hmm. My upgrade suggestions would be too increase the ram to 8x2. Why did you leave it at 4x1. An i7 3770. And if possible gtx 1650 low profile or rtx 3050 low profile. Upgrading the power supply too. I really want to see what *3rd gen* is capable in a modern scenario
Love this channel 😊
I bet a sixpack of beer that it runs better under Linux, nothing better than running an older system under something that doesn't have so many built-in system hogs.
(No i am not giving up 😁)
I'm not sure about dual core CPUs being adequate for web surfing and day-to-day tasks. Modern websites and video streaming are demanding. Maybe Nanna won't notice but anyone with a modern smartphone will notice the slowdown. Spending just a bit more on a 4 core CPU will improve the experience tenfold IMO. I tried upgrading my FM2+ motherboard but my A10-7800 APU is the cream of the crop. Threw in an Athlon X4 860 with minimal gains and went back to my old APU lol
Love the videos mate
The problem I see is that almost anyone with the skill to replace the CPU, straighten pins, and other work to get the thing ready, they have some a lot of better options. I have straighten pins before on a Ryzen 2600 that I used to build a roommate a PC. A beginning PC person is not going to likely do this. Those who have the technical skills likely have already a better system and/or could make a much better upgrade for really only a few dollars more. Likely worth it to spend on a slightly better power supply and a GTX 960 or 970. They are currently still supported and receiving updates.
I have an i3-2120 system that I got for the cost of drilling a hole in the HDD for the previous owner, and a new PSU. It's not the best system in the world. It's not even the best system in the room, but you can't beat it for the price. I wouldn't hesitate to pick up another Sandy Bridge system for general computing, or gaming, if it had the right chip. There's nothing wrong with them.
The ability of this guy to pick up parts for less than a pound will always impress me
Great video. My only concern with these older CPUs is that as capable as they are, they no longer support the latest Windows operating system and Linux gaming has not come far enough yet.
A quick tip with crt monitors. You can often push the resolution and or refresh rate much higher with cru (custom resolution utility). Most crt's can likely do 1600 by 1000 at 60 or 75 hz.
Yes, you can also change the monitors config manually in windows or linux and technically overclock it. My guess is that since he’s in Europe, he’s stuck in PAL, which means a slower refresh rate by default.
@@benshannon9386 yes there is a massive rabbit hole when it comes down to learning about how all the timings work, but it can be alot of fun. I use my cheap dell at 1679 by 1100 75hz for desktop, and 1260 by 540 at 144hz upscaled to 1680 by 720 for gaming using vsr.
The music in this video sounds like a Transport Tycoon midi tune. Love that game.
Just barely beat you out on price yesterday at $7 for the HP mini tower and a PS/2 keyboard...that the PC didn't have the ports for... Ended up being an i3-8100 with 1TB HDD and 16GB Optane module. Oh yeah. Negative was that it lived in the office of a bowling alley kitchen and smells like deep fryer while it's runnin...LOL!!
TTD music always does it for me.
While I've upgraded my main pc to a Ryzen 7900x, I still have my old desktop that I used till early 2020 which is a Sandy Bridge i5-2500k overclocked to 4.4ghz. It's still a nice computer today.
Sandy Bridge is a gem....still use a 2600k PC to this day.
that is allot of dedication for a 2nd gen intel but good for you sticking in their
*a lot
*there
My first "gaming" pc shipped with a R7 250.... I remember back in the day upgrading to a 1050ti and it felt like magic.
1050Ti can still pull its own weight, Pascal was an amazing architecture. I feel like my first 'real' 3D accelerator was a Voodoo 3 2000. (Of course you could count the Cyrix MediaGX and the first gen Athlon with SiS motherboard graphics, even though they didn't really do much it was a huge leap from a 386. Although I have attempted to play actual 3D games on a 286.)
Almost exactly my scenario. It was night and day swapping out the factory R7 360 2 GB (Dell OEM) for a GTX 1060 3 GB. Had a second power supply with a paper clip in it and all as the factory internal was only 240W. Much, much simpler times.
I have to say, your understanding of the term 'playable' and mine vary somewhat.
Still have a 2500K run it at 4.2 and a 1050ti its a beast for what it is. You should really consider putting a 2500k in that mobo.
Bro i have a i7-2600 and 12gb of ram with a RX 480 8gb with linex mint AND LOVE IT! All the speed i need baby!
I suddenly have an urge to play transport tycoon....
Transport Tycoon and its modern remake - OpenTTD - are one of the best computer games for me, still, in the year 2024. And it looks like this game is immortal. Chis Sawyer is a legend.
Those who say "good old times" forgot that anything computer-related used to cost a small fortune back then. Thanks for reminding us that this is no longer the case 😁
I've literally only just upgraded from an i5 2500k which I got new at release. It still did its job perfectly fine.
Yet another great video!
Hell man, get rid of theat death trap mistakenly named power supply. It may fry everything anytime. It probably causes more problems as voltages are surely off.
I'm surprised that CiT psu actually lasted the duration of the video to be honest, also your brave even powering it up.
I get similar-ish systems (tough mostly prebuilds) for free every now and then, because they'd otherwise get scrapped.
I grew up having to scrape together my money for a PC, just to get scammed over and over (eventually leading to me having to learn how to build/fix them myself) so I can't say no to such offers, even if it means having a lot of PCs standing around at times.
I've never seen the illusive R7 450 for a low price, tough.
As far as VGA, DVI and Power Cables go, I either have none or 30+, never anything in between.
Great video showcasing the value of these Sandy and Ivy bridge chips, I use an Ivy bridge i5-3470 in my main PC still and it performs well for its age
Also, the Discord server invite link is invalid
TT Demo was how I got banned from Computers in School back in '95. Oh well.
how are you using that laptop as an external display?
Great question
I’d imagine a cheap usb hdmi capture device.
For the costs of parts you should include shipping costs along side. Easy to win something for a couple of pence when the shipping is a tenner, extreme example but you get my meaning total costs matter
Wow - the Gordon Ramsay of PC's. LoL ; are you 2 long lost Twin's from another mother? Great video though. :)
Long time ago I bought dell optiplex 390 sff with i3 2120 and gt 710 pci ex8 ddr3 variant. Swapped out gt710 woth used gt 1030 (20 pounds) and i5 2500k + wifi card. And it handles ok. Unfortunately steam doesn't work anymore on windows 8, it 8s dedicated win8.1 machine.
P.s. don't judge me for using win8.1, there is a reason behind it.
My previous system had a 2400. It lasted until 2022 when sadly the motherboard died. It was still pretty capable for everyday use with 8 gb of RAM. For gaming not so much.
My second system is a xeon E3 1270( i72600), 16GB ram and a 1650 ddr6, beside 3A gaming is still nice. If you have P/Z 67/77 mobo and want to squeeze some more power, can overlock non K non xeon (i5/i7) cpus +400mhz all core. For example my i5 2400 was running at 3.6 ghz all core( no blck oc) with only 1.165v. I think 1150/1155 or x99 are decent performers.
Try the Anermine drivers with that RX 450. Should improve perf and compatibility.
As someone that sells on ebay - that packing made me laugh out loud