An i5 2500K Budget Gaming PC in 2024

An i5 2500K Budget Gaming PC in 2024
Today we're giving an old i5 2500K gaming PC a new lease of life, by adding a couple of new parts. Is this old, once popular CPU still usable? Let's find out.
0:00 Intro
0:37 Cleanup, and What We're Keeping
1:35 A New, Affordable CPU Cooler
2:00 The Power Supply
2:27 New Case Fans
2:54 Adding an (unsupported) SSD
3:02 Upgrading The Graphics Card
3:32 Total Cost
4:01 First Boot, CPU overclock and Specs
4:52 Gaming Tests - Fallout 4
5:24 Counter-Strike 2
5:49 The Witcher 3
6:22 GTA 5
6:50 Red Dead Redemption 2
7:19 Cyberpunk 2077
7:48 Fortnite
8:09 Final Thoughts
Thanks for watching :)

[@megan_alnico]

This man will show himself getting his butt handed to him in Counter-Strike without batting an eye, absolute legend.

[@user-ht1oy4lp6e]

The 2500k is like an old drunk at the end of the bar talking about his glory days.

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Haha yeah and no one believes him. 😁

[@user-bl1ej5ft4d]

​@RandomGaminginHD but he's not lying. He actually pushed those pixels

[@BREEZYM6015]

"They'll pass you by, glory days, glory days".

[@josephdias5859]

@@user-bl1ej5ft4d and pushed them for years and his bigger brother the 3930k may still be a drunk but stlll gets down today

[@Lauterec]

He tells stories of his old man, Q6600.

[@mehmetyas1079]

I still see I5 2500K and GTX 970 setups and it brings me such nostalgia. Man I miss good old days.

[@AdamMarcinkowski-yn6tb]

I had that one , worked well :)

[@aninfinitemindofmusicandreams]

I had a 960 and i3 2100 setup back in the day. Upgraded the CPU to an i5 7500 and RAM to DR4 in 2017. The GPU still was good for 1080p gaming up to 2019 but I did used to wish I got a 970 instead sometimes

[@riffdex]

“good old days” man I’m currently using a GTX 1070 😭😭

[@RanjakarPatel]

This man is number one disgrace. This very Xcelent machine and he talk four it like it is trash computer. This very power cpu four India market and cost 200,000 rupees in my country and every humanitarians enjoi four this power

[@mehmetyas1079]

@@riffdex Don't worry man I still rocling with my RX 590 :D

[@xilix]

I had a custom water cooled 2500k@4.8Ghz running 24/7 for 11 years. That damn thing doesn't owe me a dime, it served with distinction. No dyes or coolants, I only filled it once with distilled water and would top it up here and there and add a few drops of iodine every few months, and it never gave me a single issue. I loved that machine. 5900x with a 4090 now, which is amazing, but.. I do have a soft spot for that silicon lottery 2500k. It's framed as part of a computer part art arrangement thing my gf made me, which is pretty cool.

[@danimayb]

I'd go 5800x3D or better AM5, If ya gonna invest in that much horsepower you might as well get the hardware to fully back it up. Can't knock 5900x tho still a solid CPU.

[@youtubeaccount7544]

Oof BIG CPU bottleneck.

[@BREEZYM6015]

I have an i7 8700k and a GTX 1060 6GB. I haven't overclocked the CPU beyond the turbo mode in the bios. Do you think I could overclock the CPU to 5GHz with the AIO cooler or would I need better cooling?

[@alecarlos26]

New tech is bored

[@koolin3613]

​@@youtubeaccount7544 Wdym CPU bottleneck, 5900x is freaking fast man still especially in games

[@rometherevenant8749]

I love the simplicity of this PC. Sometimes you dont need rgb in your rig. Love me the black sleeper/ budget builds.

[@morzemus1805]

I mean, you never actually *need* RGB, sometimes it just comes with the most sensible option anyway.

[@frostmafia1380]

Never need RGB lol. Black is best imo

[@ukraine_supporter_777]

The only useful rgb is on keyboards

[@auturgicflosculator2183]

@@ukraine_supporter_777 My entire house is lit with RGB strips that run on solar.

[@droson8712]

Built my PC when I was a little younger than now and I got to say I sometimes just turn RGB fans off and in a future build I'm looking to have black fans. I actually really like a little hint of color mainly on the GPU text I think that looks really clean with the Gigabyte logo.

[@joshstucki4349]

As he pointed out, this same PC with an 8GB RX480/580 and a i7-3770k would bring you to a whole new level of not just performance, but also PCI 3.0 (started with Ivy Bridge).

[@antoinedrela794]

It's my actual setup, i7 3770, 16Go ddr3 1600 and RX 590 8Go gold ed. It's solid! For my wife, it's Xeon E3 1240 V2, 16Go ddr3 1600 and RX 570 8Go... Works absolutly fine!

[@goncalomoura9816]

Actually no, PCI 2.0 is still enough to get 99% performance out of the RX 580 (8 GB would be useful tough), and Hyperthreading does not help getting better performance in most games (CS2 and GTA 5 get 0% performance increase from it, although in more modern DX12 games you can get better 1% lows with HT enabled, but expect a 15-20% performance increase best case scenario). Also an OCed i5 2500k has better IPC than a stock 3770k

[@AllAloneInUK]

I've used i 3770 non-k overclocked to 4225MHz on all cores (z68 board), 32GB of RAM and an RTX 2060 12GB (started with Radeon 7790, GTX950, GTX 960, 1060, and 1070 I like to haggle what can I say :D ) up until last year. The PC served me well for over 10 years. Best PC I've ever had. I hope my current setup will last as long. Sold it to a kid who still texts me sometimes to ask how to tweak his system to squeeze every last drop of perfomance from the system :)

[@SterkeYerke5555]

I'm not sure pci-e 3.0 just works on any P67 motherboard though?

[@SterkeYerke5555]

@@goncalomoura9816 Do you even know what IPC means?

[@Angel-HC]

These types of retired old gaming PC's if not used anymore for gaming can make some great home server PC's. My old SIM racing PC that I don't game with anymore recently became my home media server PC for my family to watch saved movies and TV shows from over our home network. It started life as an old HP office PC with an i5 4570, 8gb of RAM and I just added a cheap SSD and replaced the old hard drive with a slightly newer 1TB hard drive for all the video files.

[@TheSpotify95]

Nice! That's what I was thinking too, once games are too much you can always use it as a general purpose PC, a media PC, or a server PC. Though to be honest I have no idea how you'd go about setting up a PC as a server.

[@MR_FIAT]

Sandy bridge was the goat tbh, recently slapped a i7 2600 in a Dell optiplex replacing a i3 2100 as a media pc under my TV and its still very snappy and pleasant to use.

[@user-bl1ej5ft4d]

I3 2100 is what I run in my acer htpc and it runs pretty nice too

[@dianaalyssa8726]

Nice upgrade. Still have around i3 2100 it was playing 1080P x264 well, just haven't used it as much as times started to change on what could be played on it, even on Linux. Gave it 16gb DDR3L though.

[@WD_40737]

Im using a dell 3020 SFF with a 4570 with 10gb ram both at 1333mhz with a 2gb gt710 ddr3 and on windows 11 pro but man it runs flawless in world of warships amd any other tasks

[@Budder99]

I had an i5 2500k setup for the longest time, until only about 2 years ago or so (I now have an i9 12900k rig...) I had it overclocked to 4ghz with a beefy air cooler, 16gb of ram that I'd picked up from working in schools, a 512gb ssd and 1tb HDD, and a Radeon R9 270x 2gb It was limited a lot but it really inspired me into getting the most out of a system!

[@xilix]

honestly i think it was the last era of truly being able to squeeze a rig for everything it's worth. there was so much headroom if you knew what you were doing. it was satisfying and inspired so much pride. straight up millennium falcon vibes. i'll never forget my 2500k build.

[@Adam130694]

Oh yea! Antec 300 that's first computer case that I bought with my own money in 2009!

[@RandomGaminginHD]

It’s an awesome case

[@SirGingerOfKnight]

Late 2008 for me, but same! I still have it! Only change I made was removing some of the hard drive cage with an angle grinder to accommodate modern GPUs

[@fennecfox7845]

​@@RandomGaminginHDshould i pair rx 580 8gb with i7 2600?

[@MandoMTL]

@@fennecfox7845 Decent 1080p combo.

[@fennecfox7845]

@@MandoMTL exactly what i am aiming for, i just want 1080p 30 fps in single player games. Thank you for your time

[@brunoagostinho3539]

Had a 2500K@5.3Ghz... lovely machine... thanks for reminding of this little beast

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Really? That’s awesome. I need to try and hit 5ghz!

[@brunoagostinho3539]

@@RandomGaminginHD best OC'er I had along with an old 4790K... just prepare the cooling, but he will go at 4.9Ghz without much hassle, thats for sure.

[@BREEZYM6015]

What about an i7 8700k? How much overclock could I get out of it?

[@ConstanceJill]

5.3 GHz ?! Was is watercooled? I never managed to get mine stable at more than 4.7, maybe 4.8 GHz all cores… but it was with an air cooler (Noctua NH-D14). Upgraded to an i7-3770K a few years ago just to see how much of a difference it would make, but didn't manage to get that one over 4.3 GHz

[@craciunator99]

I had my 2500k running a 4.8ghz 24/7 with no overvoltage with the scythe mugen 2 cooler, and actually the last few years I used that PC it ran PASSIVE because I lost the bracket for the fan, and it still stayed below 80C. Absolute beast of a CPU

[@H4WK6969]

I still have an old 2500k paired with an rx480 lying around somewhere, those were the days.

[@ggmgoodgamingmichael7706]

Indeed 😌

[@Truth12345]

I remember in 2015 I wanted to buy a second hand 2500k, people where still asking big bucks on ebay for this cpu. So I went with a 4690k, because the price difference was minimal. I was extremely lucky and got a golden sample, it does 4,9 ghz at 1.3v and 4,4ghz @ 1.1v. Still use this build as a server.

[@m8x425]

you did well. I had a 4790k that could do 5.0GHz but it needed 1.4v and because of the TIM it was too hot to stress test

[@toufusoup]

Good choice pairing the Radeon card with the older chip due to driver overhead, even if it was unintentional. It really does make a difference at times.

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Yeah seen many comments about it before and honestly I don’t use AMD enough. Thought I’d go AMD this time :)

[@jbetancourt11]

I think my second ever build was in an Antec 300 with a Hyper 212 cooler cooling an i5 2500k. It must have been an ati 6850 gpu that I put in there. Such fun. Thanks for the nostalgia trip!

[@aghostyboi3075]

“We can make a 120mm fan fit” Ah the good ole, 2 screws outta do it😂

[@Nassyy]

Awesome build! I have a i5 2500, still using it today. Like you said, not entirely useless - it's very useful for my requirements. Added a 1050Ti a few yrs back and this opened the door for more modern games to run

[@plamen5358]

I used i5-2400 + 1050Ti for a long time and for anythint last gen (current gen by the time ps4) it was always GPU limited. I just got an old ThinkCentre for 15bucks from work and put it in a decent box. Now it still work as a decent media PC/NAS. Awesome video as always.

[@hrayz]

I have old systems still around. An i5-2500k and an fx-8350. Tested both with a GTX 1050 ti and the RX 580-8GB. The 1050ti was holding both systems back quite a bit.

[@phatminhphan4121]

Another absulutely briliant content as always ! love your hard work Sir 🤩😝

[@ric9573]

I used to get a bunch of these systems at my first job when I was around 17 (im 23 now) and would turn them into gaming PCs to flip them on marketplace, man what a time, I would watch your channel and tech yes city builds to get inspirations and figure out what hardware combinations would give decent performance. I lost count of how many of these I built with rx470/480/580s, GTX 960s, 970s, 1050s and sometimes even 1060s, and they ALWAYS had those blue Asus motherboards like the one in this video, these things were a powerhouse and were sooo cheap, so many offices would just throw them out as everyone was switching to laptops so I was practically swimming in these systems. Time has moved on and now that I have a decent job spending my entire weekend building junk PCs isn't worth it anymore, but damn I miss taking my mum's car to go on a 1 hour trip to buy some cheap parts from some unknown seller.

[@nathanddrews]

I still have a 2500K machine sitting around... Nostalgia is the only reason i keep it.

[@stevecareless6969]

I love seeing old rigs getting a new lease on life. Also like seeing the PC master race grow. 👍👌

[@pdmywlduzmqk]

Great vid! Thank you, Steve.

[@Isoshi-47]

oh hello there, never been so early haha. love the videos by the way have a nice one !

[@proodst03]

Hi man, so happy you've started using thermalright stuff, they are so good for value to performance

[@lorenzopollocaffe6277]

Can't wait for the cpu swap! Great video as always

[@TopGamer12558]

Keep up the good vids friend 🙂🙂🙂❤❤❤

[@AlexKey-ty1gw]

Holy crap im early for once...love this guy

[@tommyhallows]

I have a i7-2600, GTX1650,16GB Memory. Plays many recent games well. Had this pc for at least 13 years!

[@Meisuko]

Love these videos

[@Gamingomad]

Just good to see👍

[@Alpha-ms9nj]

I just installed the same cooler and fan kit a week ago in an old Thermaltake Versa H35 case that I got for $23 US. that included an EVGA 500W PSU but nothing else. I already had an Asrock Z97 Extreme 6 MB with an I7-4790K on hand, 16GB Corsair Dominator 1866 ram and a Gigabyte Aorus RX 570 4GB GPU. I added a cheap ARGB fan hub w/remote. The case has a see through panel and I like the way the fans look through the front mesh. This was just my 2nd build. I recently started this hobby and those parts that are old by today's standards, are all new to me and I'm having a blast getting them cheap and putting them to good use. I'm thinking of selling all my prebuilt HP and Dells so I can source some more parts. I have my eye on a board with the I7-3770K. Great video and channel content keep up the good work.

[@omegalul8466]

what a timely upload. i'm building my Dad a gaming PC on a budget. he wanted to try out Red dead redemption 2 and NBA 2k. still keeping an eye out for a good motherboard tho. but i pretty much have a Ryzen 5 3500, RX 580 8GB, with 16 GB Ram. only had to buy The GPU as both the RAM and the CPU are parts that i replaced from my main rig. cant wait to complete the build so i can watch him play RDR2 on the living room TV.

[@mapesdhs597]

The good old Antec 300 case, I have lots of them. :) The Antec 302 was a nice followon in terms of styling, but I did miss the recess at the back, it helped so much with moving the case around. I knew you'd mention the 120 SE cooler, bought one for a Z97 build I intend selling off, probably with a 780 Ti.

[@duey1083]

Holy moly...the way you received your PC is almost exactly the same as mine: Antec 300 case, ASUS motherboard and the i5 2500k cpu with stock cooler. Mine only had a 500W psu though...

[@colinreece3452]

Blimey I never seen these on eBay, great find.

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Yeah always sort by newest listed 😁

[@HIKKG]

It's a pity you didn't disable Meltdown/Spectre patches, because they seriously affect CPU performance in games. Because of these patches, the FPS of 1% and 0.1% (and depending on the game, "AVG" as well) is usually lower by ~15% (in some cases even more!). Another addition to this: it's worth enabling Resizable BAR on this old MoBo, thanks to an open source project called "ReBarUEFI" - which will be a great pairing with a video driver called "RdN,ID"

[@antoinedrela794]

Resizable BAR is not available for this generation unfortunatly. But it worth to take a look on the open source solution, i'm interested!

[@josephdias5859]

@@antoinedrela794 rebar does work with a bios mod on some motherboards with sandy bridge but it needs to be needs to be a z77 board

[@antoinedrela794]

@@josephdias5859 Ok i can forget about my b75 so! Thank you for the info :)

[@twyx6928]

That Sapphire card has a really neat design!

[@spdmaniac2]

You should try to limit the FPS in riva tuner (msi afterburner) options, to test if the 0.1% low improve in several games/cards. You will be surprised in some games, even if the limit is near the average (60fps would be the limit with more sense, to "work better" on older monitors but even for all range of fps, 45, 90, 120, 144, etc). And try Dirt Rally 1 with older pc's. Ego engine will surprise you and it's a great game to test and very cheap nowadays. I believe it'll be a great benchmark! Keep with the good work!

[@ReaverSenpai]

2500k was my CPU from 2014 - 2020. its very nice to see old technology still playing these titles!

[@citruesilver]

Nice vid bit i think dialing in lower settings would show that almost all of the chosen games are still playable with that cpu. It was one of the best that intel ever made (Celeron 300A still number 1 imho and honorable mention to the Q6600 or better the xeon X3450)...

[@Redmage913]

One of my friends had my trusty 2500K for a couple years, and I upgraded them to a 2600K in trade for my chip. I still have a 2600 system, but it’s on a locked board so it’s better than the 2500K. Love this platform, handles most everything from Win95-Win7/10 without issue, and many more current titles are decent at a 4.2GHz overclock with an RX 480/580.

[@bramvandenbroeck5060]

I have an old gigabyte chassis and upgraded the usb 2.0 ports to usb 3 ports, and i added some subtle lighting, it houses an i5 10400f and a 1660, my second pc is an i7 2600, it's build into an hp pavilion mediapc case :p the old sandy bridge cpus are still quite useable, it surprised me on several occasions so yeah, if you want a gaming rig on the cheap, a sandy bridge cpu might be all you need!

[@joshuaminke6629]

my first ever gaming PC was a pre built i bought from ebay. it had a GTX 560 1gb and a AMD Phenom II 850 x4 in it. it was okay, but i noticed in some games, my GPU usage was not at 100 percent. so i got a new motherboard with an I5 2500k. huge improvement. i still have the GTX 560. i use it as as display card when i sell my Actual GPU and am waiting for my new one to be delivered

[@ArtisChronicles]

That is my favourite cooler. That 5 heat pipe cooler works extremely well.

[@snosno3]

I've had the same case for over 10 years of different builds now, lovely chunk of metal. Fits 6 hard drives and 3 (!) 5.25 inch drives. The included fan sounds like an aircraft turbine though. p.s. There are mounting holes for a single 2.5 inch drive at the floor of the case, under the 3.5 inch slots.

[@complexacious]

2:54 There are 4 screw holes on the bottom of the case spaced for a 2.5" drive. It's really awkward to get the usual SATA cables connected there, perhaps some standoffs would help. Seems like they put this in as an afterthought. I still have this case and I remember it being on clearance when I bought my then brand new 2600K.

[@ksterlings197]

After 4 years of gaming on Intel HD 620 graphics, my broke ass scraped together some money to buy a laptop with an i5-8300h and a 4gb 1050ti and it performs almost exactly like this! I'm just so happy I can finally game properly :)

[@aleksazunjic9672]

Never buy laptops if you are broke, desktops always have more horse power for the same price.

[@MuchWhittering]

They're also way less portable. ​@@aleksazunjic9672

[@gcmanuel85x]

Nice one. Maybe modern case would do you a sale. if not, then you can re use some parts on other build.

[@sisqobmx]

Dude these budget builds are so much more intresting than high end pcs. Please make more!

[@AAjax]

You could squeeze out more performance by disabling the "all core boost" timeout in the bios, or if there's no bios setting, using throttlestop instead. I've done that in-bios with a couple of ivy bridge systems here, and they're running modern titles without issue. The same trick (throttlestop) on an i5 7500t mini allowed it to run Switch emulation full speed.

[@josephdias5859]

throttlestop got me full speed switch emutation on a 6400t bus oced 4.6ghz it helped keeping my multiplier from dropping

[@blakekelley8112]

Ahh nice to see my first cpu getting some love. I slowly started building my first real gaming pc back in 2016. I had a couple old dell optiplex computers my dad found with a pentium 4 on xp, and one with a core 2 duo. They both sucked but played all i wanted, minecraft, just fineish. I had a friend with a sweet setup that pushed me towards building something custom. We found an i5 2500K, 8gb 2x4 corsair vengeance ddr3 @ 1600mhz and an asrock z68 extreme3 gen3 as a package on ebay for only $200, i saved my money and gave it to my friends mom and she ordered it for me. I later on found a new evga nex750b psu, a 120mm cooler master aio, a cheap rgb case and a brand spanking new western digital blue 1tb hard drive. I used it like that for a while until i saved some more for a gpu. It hardly played terraria on integrated graphics but i got by until i found my first gpu, a dell oem gtx 960 2gb blower style with a cool red pcb. I loved that computer, idk how i can remember each spec as that was so long ago. Good memories.

[@BlackLionPT]

I... Still use a i7 2600k @ 4.8ghz 32gb ram and 6750xt as my daily driver. I plan to upgrade when Ryzen 9000 arrives!

[@christohees9150]

Same i7 2600k @4.7ghz but with a RTX 2080 super I'm surprised at how well it's doing but I'm getting a ryzen5 5500 soon

[@CBGX]

That's quite decent! I jsut got myself an i7 2600K and a GTX970 for 30€... Not bad although my CPU stutters sometimes. It probably doesnt like the 4K and 2K monitors hahaha

[@sirdetmist3204]

I had this exact case back in 2012 when I bought my first gaming PC, it had an I5 3570K and an Radeon HD 7770.

[@finnbianga4189]

A friend of mine is still running my old i5 2500 along with an r9 280 3gb. Proper old school combo. It was my first quad core cpu and the jump from dual core laptop cpus felt amazing at the time

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Yeah cool older combo there :)

[@DhanarAdiDewandaru]

If I am allowed to request, it might be nicer if we have information also on the power consumption from the wall in the future - idle and under load. Thanks!

[@tomstech4390]

From previous friends upgrade dong part-ex I had an NZXT S340 and P8 z77v-lx To which i've now added: 3770nonK, POS H61 board, 2x8GB ram, evga 1060-3GB SC, NZXT 120mm AIO. It's a hell of a system considering the overall value, It will go on to make someone else happy in a few months so they don't have to fork out £8/month for the next 30 years on paystation plus pass gold... just to play games with friends etc. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

[@SkipsTinyBeard]

I see a sweet TrueNAS build in that case! Get an HBA and a couple Icydock x6 ssd caddys, and boom you've got something sweet there!

[@nickgenov]

Awesome PC for the price! I would get one if I find it for the same price.

[@joshuabarredo8057]

I have an i5 - 2500 in my main system, paired with a gt730 and this veteran of a PC still runs games(with a ton of modifications to the settings lol)

[@SerafimovskiDejan]

I had the same board but a full atx one with an i7 3770 until last year, yeah this cpus struggle due to lack of newer instructions sets, for example the performance in games was equal to an i5 4590, yes the 4 extra threads were useless on the i7 cuz lack on instructions sets something that the i5 has. It would be interesting to see a comparison between those two at some point if you can find one.

[@OlaftheGreat]

Hey, I love giving old hardware a new life. It's why I love the X99 platform so much, it's cheap and moderately powerful when paired with an appropriate GPU.

[@Google_Does_Evil_Now]

Please make a video of the BIOS settings you used to make it to 4.5ghz. i think a lot of us would enjoy it.

[@danr3055]

I have the same case, same CPU and a 1660 ti that I gave to my son, he plays ratchet and clank rift apart with no issues. He even plays helldiver's 2 on it.

[@Gaspode-uj8jt]

Nice airflow in that case, disk drive mounting aligns with the airflow not across it. A top front fan should be mountable using a 3D printed mount for triple 5.25 bays, available on Amazon.

[@desktopstu4145]

I still have a 2500K ITX setup as my media player in the bedroom, running onboard graphics it played netflix and amazon without issue on the 50" tv.

[@aid0nex]

My dream system a decade ago :D

[@rmgaminguk7079]

Sandy bridge was great for overclocking, 4.5Ghz is a hefty uplift and I'm sure lead to the impressive performance. Looking forward to seeing how much of an uplift an i7 gives, CEX sells the i7-3770k for £30. If it can also overclock to 4.5Ghz it should be an interesting video.

[@tordoff80]

i like it the parts aren't supposed to fit but ya made them fit lol i do that all the time make room

[@ABaumstumpf]

i had that case - that exact case. With an i5 760 with i think initially a GTS 250, then a HD 5770, HD 7870 and lastly R9 280X (the 2 HD cards both broke within like 1 year each... ). The case really is nothing special but for the price it was a rather solid case. The i5 760 stock was i think 2.9GHz allcore, and later OCed to 3.6GHz allcore (~4GHz was easily doable and stable but my towercooler was way too small for that).

[@cutizuki]

For Cyberpunk, you can install the 1.63 Legacy patch which should improve performance on lower end systems (on the cpu side of things atleast)

[@michaelg1237]

Antec 300 was my first case. My best friend had an Dell PC with a antec 900 with a 8800GTX in it. Good old days

[@Spiritslife]

The Antec 300 supports ssd support right at the bottom of the case, you have 4 screws place to fit your ssd in it

[@Singurarity88]

Recently upgraded from a i5-2500k and ASUS Sabertooth P67 to Ryzen 7600x and an MSI Tomahawk b650, I will keep my old system as a second pc or workspace for teams/zoom meetings maybe.

[@nadussee]

FSR is awesome for the 400/500 series AMD cards. Extended the lifespan of those cards a few years, just keep the expectations in check lol

[@TheSlowDude]

I7 2600, 970 GTX still my second machine :-) SSD and 16gb should be used tho ;-)

[@RandomGaminginHD]

The 2600 is still going surprisingly strong considering how cheap it can be these days

[@NickABQQm]

I still use 2600 daily, and weekly a game of Dota2.

[@teaspoon966]

Love budget hardware. Do a comparison with a 2700K to see how much HT helps in modern games.

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Same 😁

[@Faya_Bits]

hey my main pc uses that case! odd to see one in such nice condition when mine is in such bad condition

[@bootsgamingtips]

I use an i5 2500k and rx 570 4gb for an extra PC I got parts cheap right before all the markup happened in 2020 still use it everyday should have done a video on it back then lol. Still a good gaming setup today for some new games!

[@antoinedrela794]

The thermalright cooler is a beast for the price, got the same on my i7 3770, full load never above 57°C! This brand realy do a good job on their products, it's always my first choice. 1155 is not dead!

[@luizations]

the xeon 1230v2 is a great choice for ivy bridge systems, i know this video was all about the 2500k but its a cheap choice and you get 8 threads out of it. Would be nice to see a comparison

[@nickdolin393]

Great video. Some of us older farts love systems like this because the games we wanna play are 5-7-10+ years old and newer hardware won't necessarily make them look/play any better than a system like this.

[@EliteRock]

From what I gather you pretty much always had to bump up voltages (VCCIO and DRAM) to get XMP speeds to work on 2nd/3rd gen Intel boards. Recently resurrected my old Z77 (which started life with a 2500K) and the Kingston HyperX 2x8GB will only do its XMP 1833/CL9 at 1.08V and 1.55V (up from 1.5V) respectively. Received wisdom is that there's not much to be gained from anything above 1600MHz with these generations of Intel, but I recall some tests that found faster DRAM speeds can help with minimum FPS (reduce stutters).

[@HardWhereHero]

I have a 2600K set up in my living room that's overclocked to 4.7 GHz. I have a Corsair hydro h80 I think, and a r92 '90X in it. Still runs games like Witcher 3 GTA V just fine. I use it for streaming but most likely sell it soon

[@uniquegamingduo9872]

I have a similar combination, 2500k 3.3ghz , freezer 13 cooling , 16gb ram 1600mhz , sapphire rx 480 and mb asus p8z77-v le plus , chieftec 500w ps...and still run extra

[@mutaniswow5054]

This is super funny because I checked my very old computer yesterday with similar specs i5 2500k and a gtx 560ti. Without using the PC for the last five years, I was surprised how well it still works

[@carlosfandango2419]

My 2500k is still chugging along with it's GTX980 companion. Surprised to here it's 15 years old!

[@connivingkhajiit]

I still use this exact setup, except and 8GB card. 4.8Ghz, never had a reason to upgrade it so far

[@mynickisalreadytaken]

Nice! The Antec Case reminds me a lot of my old Sharkoon Rebel 9. It had Place for 120mm Fans. I came from standard 90mm fans, so these felt like huge overkill Fans for me Core2Duo+8800GTS :D I spraypainted it Black from the inside and did cut a Window in it and screwed a Window in it. Almost no Case had Windows. Often, it was garbage looking cheap "Gaming" Towers. Had one. Hated it. I still have working FX 8320E +mobo and an i7 8700 + mobo. But i have nonuse for them because i do not need a second running PC. England has a different Market than Germany maybe, but would you say it is better to sell PC Parts as Whole Builds, Sets or each part separate? It is not about "getting the most money out of it". I want that people buy stuff they can use because they lack money at the moment or in general. But an olf FX or oh, i also have an i5 4690K + mobo laying around, sound more like special interest in older Hardware, rather than looking for a modern but cheap gaming PC. On the other Hand, i was and am exactly this Person, that looks for these special deals.

[@frisco557]

I had a 2500k also at 4.5ghz on a hyper 212. First with a 560ti and then a 1060 6gb. It was a great PC that I ended up selling to a coworker in 2019.

[@pitergriffin01]

I'm currently using my backup rig, which has a pretty useless AMD A8 5600k, 24gb of ddr3 (bits and pieces of ram I found laying around) and my trusty 1060 6gb, I manage to play my favourites with some sacrifice, but I still have fun and that's the whole point of gaming. So an old machine is as capable as you manage to have fun with it, as old as it may be.

[@ineligible2267]

Seeing the 2500k's performance makes me realise how much of an upgrade the 2600k really is, I had one lying around with a similar ASUS board and my brother was able to do so much with that CPU even until 2023

[@corneliusantonius3108]

I have the same exact board in my parts collection.

[@Litassa]

Remembers me, back in *mid 2017, when I had i5-3570K* and was lacking some performance in *PUBG* , and finally after *half a year* , I upgraded it to *i7-3770* and the *stuttering was gone!*

[@TheSwiftFX]

Got an i5 2500k sitting next to me here. I just can't bare the thought of letting her go, so will be holding on until she can't run the latest WIndows OS!

[@personalgao]

And then... put Linux, SteamOS like system and voila! 10 more years haha

[@himmelskibet]

Just keep 7 running on it

[@TheSwiftFX]

@@himmelskibet I've heard there's security issues with running Windows 7 nowadays

[@vedantagrawal9530]

My primary PC is still an i5 2500k machine with an RX580 8GB. I mostly play older games and it serves me quite well still.

[@EliteRock]

The CPU temps are pretty impressive - even with the overclock/overvolt never above 52°C, usually high 40's, and this with a fairly modest 120 air cooler! Those days are long gone.

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Yeah this cooler is great for the price

[@alchemistslab89]

Not bad for a 280-300 watt system. I'm pretty sure the 3rd and 4th gen i5s and i7s are still viable for modern gaming needs in 1080p.

[@MadIIMike]

You could also try to replace the i5 with a Xeon, a E3 1270 or 1280 should be fairly cheap to get. I didn't expect the PC to stutter in Fortnite, but I don't play it and might base it off old memory where almost everything could run Fortnite.