I bought a $6 Novatech GAMING PC…

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

Would people like me to keep doing polls on the specs of the PCs when we get them on the channel? I found it fun to see what the guesses were

[@GodSaveTheUnitedStates]

Yeah it was fun trying to guess the specs. I was surprised you received those specs for $6. That's pretty amazing!

[@wobber999]

What do you type In ebay for the cheap gaming pc's ?

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

“pc” in all categories

[@wobber999]

@@BudgetBuildsOfficial Ok cheers mate.

[@wobber999]

I bought a hp 15 n268sa from a charity shop last month and all that was wrong with It was the bios battery had died, changed that formatted and reinstalled the drivers and jobs a good one, I tell you though getting to the hard drive Is a pain, but the laptop Is working fine.

[@oliverlotus]

You're my 'enabler' - I can't stop buying old PC's. My latest win was a decent case, Phenom 2 X6 1035T, 16GB DDR3, 240Gb SSD, decent PSU and ASUS mobo, opt drive, Radeon HD7770 for £40.... Keep it up!!

[@maho8204]

That's an amazing deal!!!

[@shaneeslick]

G'day @oliverlotus, wow nice grab. When I lived in Sydney I was the same as I was able to go pick them up easily, but now I live in Rural South Coast there is not much available & the cost of petrol or shipping for a full PC just makes it unreasonable, but I have enough plus bits & pieces already that I have plenty to play with.

[@TechnoboxOG]

Nice

[@pioruns]

I picked AMD FX-8350 Eight-Core CPU, some old Nvidia Quadro 2GB, 24GB of RAM (originally 32GB but one stick didn't work) for zero - from local Freegle giveaway. Can't beat that :)

[@RadarLeon]

R9 290x and 390x are still quite decent cards and cheap as dirt

[@stu1701E]

The Q6600 is what, 17 years old? Imagine being able to run Windows 2000 on a CPU from 1983!! Shows how far we've come in terms of continuity of support, backwards compatibility, instruction set etc (or how little we've progressed, depending on how you look at it). I kept an overclocked Q6600 machine as my main rig until 2018. It still works. Nice to know it could be pressed into service again in an emergency.

[@user-yv2cz8oj1k]

They are good, I picked an ITX version with DDR3 memory, upgraded to 8GB, GTX 660, SSD, and finally went from Q6600 to a Q9400. Even more capable now.

[@VladSuperKat]

@@user-yv2cz8oj1k Try xeons with the 771 mod

[@TheBcoolGuy]

We seem to have a wider range of useful levels of performance now. Of course the baseline is much higher as well.

[@TheBcoolGuy]

@@user-yv2cz8oj1kDepends on what you do, but I honestly cannot bother going to 775 for any modern usage anymore. For internet stuff, I'll use my Haswell laptop or something. For work, it's my similarly old desktop with a gtx 1080. It really is a lot faster and not really more expensive. You can even get early Ryzen fairly cheaply now.

[@anthonyyoung9810]

Bsel mod all the way...... Love the old gear guys!!

[@kingkarl1st871]

Totally did not think of anything illegal when i saw the thumbnail

[@DanielCardei]

more like illegally cheap

[@user-dw6fj1py1o]

Ok

[@rtheogamer]

let's go some cokai... euh wrong chat😂

[@bitelaserkhalif]

We need to cook

[@gabrielv.4358]

((""a whimsical illustration of former Brazilian president Lula da Silva with a monkey body"")) ((LITERALLY))

[@IntheBay85]

Doesnt really matter what it was....it was FIVE DOLLARS!! lmao. ANY working PC for that price is a steal!

[@scotttait2197]

7$

[@IntheBay85]

@scotttait2197 Oops, too much then. Not worth it. Lol, jk.

[@flandrble]

but if it's too slow, like an old netbook, it might be counter productive

[@Dee_Just_Dee]

No kidding. You could use a brand new Raspberry Pi 4/5 as a basic daily-driver PC - they can run minimalist Win10/11 builds, and their on-board video decoding hardware is actually pretty damned good... but they'll cost you around $100 for the PC and then another $30-60 for a case and microSD storage. Meanwhile, this old PC costs $5 and only really wants a $25 SSD to live its best life, even being able to play some older games while it's at it. It's a little champion. But I think the less-than-overwhelming and "we already knew" sorta point here is, there are a lot of old PCs out there that are perfectly good for day-to-day use the moment you replace HDD storage with an SSD.

[@BilisNegra]

Actually, the shipping must have been 2 to 3 times what the item itself cost. But even considering that, the value is there. A fiver is roughly what the Q6600 alone would cost when bought from China with a 2-3 week delivery time.

[@WalkerArt-64]

The goat of CPUs itself: The Q6600 Interesting thing about it, as it is just a chiplet design with two Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs, the cores have to communicate somehow, which they don’t do like today’s chiplet-designed processors (Infinity fabric for example) Instead they had to communicate through the North Bridge, which could lead to latency between both dies

[@Nordlicht05]

In this time was it were the sandy bridge was the best for it?

[@LNCRFT]

I was quite baffled when I’ve switched between my E8500 and Q6600 and saw that AC3 ran better with the dual core CPU

[@WalkerArt-64]

@@Nordlicht05 ?

[@WalkerArt-64]

@@LNCRFT Yeah it was mostly because of the latency. Nehalem fixed the core latency problems by, you know, sticking to a monolithic design again, even if it still used the NB for other things including RAM control. Sandy and Ivy Bridge did eliminate such dependencies on the NB.

[@WalkerArt-64]

@@LNCRFT So in the end the best time to buy a quad core (And when it made the most sense actually) would have been in the nehalem times.

[@poeskey]

Damn hats off to all the peeps that guessed the q6600.

[@Rudolph5231]

Thanks haha, i somehow also had the gpu right, dont know why i guessed it hahah.

[@Nordlicht05]

I voted for it but I had doubts because the CPU alone often sells for more despite a whole pc. Maybe that people who are searching for the cpu aren looking for complete PCs

[@PatalJunior]

When I saw DDR3, I guessed an 1st gen i3, but I was to hopefull. Would be good to see a video on 1st gen intel core and see how is holding up today (even a pentium tbh)

[@MrCed122]

It wasn't really a hard guess, the Q6600 sold like crazy at the time for regular consumer after its initial price drop, even in the Haswell / Broadwell era, a lot of people were still using them since they were so good, they're probably the most common "high-end" CPU of the late 00s.

[@avtips4779]

I got that right, but I honestly have never heard of that GPU, so I just voted on one that ended up winning.

[@LNCRFT]

The Q6600, quite legendary of a CPU. I’ve used it until 2019 with a Radeon HD 7850 and it was such a massive jump from what I’ve had before. Your system might be a bit slower than what I’ve had but it was such a nostalgia trip going back….thank you for sharing your experience with it ☺️

[@Tipman2OOO]

Right I still have a q9550s system with a 3.7 overclock and 980. Went through many gpus but once I switched the dual core for the core2quad I was good on cpu for a decade 😂

[@carlettoburacco9235]

That's the first processor I've watercooled. Overclocked to an inch of its life. Since there wasn't much choice of radiators and they cost a fortune, I made do, please don't laugh. The radiator from an old Fiat 500 complete with its 12V fan did the job perfectly even as a reservoir dangling from the back of the desk. Good old times.

[@aleph7417]

this pc truly is a budget pc, it can pretty much do anything w/o any issue. browsing? yes, gaming? also yes, you can play lots of game as long as u go tweaking some graphics setting. with only 6 bucks this is just a steal it also have the old classic core 2 quad series, they got some really good performance even in 2024 considering the age, it can probably do some light editing with somewhat acceptable performance, good old day when intel is still in their peak

[@TheNiteNinja19]

I find these systems are great for "time capsule" PCs to capture the best games of the late 2000s, the way they're designed to be played. I've been getting games off GOG and filling up a system with a QX9300 and GeForce 130M just for that.

[@gabrielv.4358]

"gaming" only older titles

[@Compact-Disc_700mb]

@@gabrielv.4358 Yeah, and? What do you expect? Why are you so snobby, Old games are better anyway.

[@leangxd]

Please for the love of Lord, change the thermal compound on the North bridge if you work with old 775 pcs Or go even further installing a small 40mm fan on top Core 2 quads and 771 xeons put A LOT of stress on that weak little chip Good video nonetheless Thank you mate

[@gabrielv.4358]

I never knew what was otrhen bridge unyil yout comment

[@rogeramu]

Agreed. Have an X38 Asus motherboard with a Q9550 that I finally got working a couple of years back. It used to turn itself off in shorter and shorter intervals. The thermal compound on the north bridge was hard and dry. After some surgery and clip replacements, it now runs cool with the integrated watercooling as intended. The motherboard came with a cheap, plastic 40mm fan as an "alternative" to watercooling. The computer runs Einstein@Home 24/7 with an RX480 and Manjaro. Without good thermal paste and cooling, the north bridge runs hotter than the CPU in normal use.

[@Mother_Mercury]

I still use a Q6600 pc to transfer videos to harddisk. I work mainly with 8mm film and my old trusty pci card gives much better image quality than the best usb video grabber. I built this pc in 2006 for this job and is still in use.

[@liammhodonohue]

@mother_mercury if it's not broken, don't fix it🤷‍♂️

[@crazyidiot5309]

Makes a heck of a Plex server/NAS with a budget GPU for transcode.

[@ffwast]

Now you can give it fresh thermal paste or pads and a $20-30 ssd for its 18th birthday.

[@Mother_Mercury]

@@ffwast There is already new thermal paste on it and an ssd is not an option, the motherboard does not support ahci. There is a wd raptor in it of 320gb.

[@StayMadNobodycares]

@@Mother_Mercury SSD not an option?, Not true at all.

[@dazisback2]

Watching you slash away at that floppy, flimsy box with a pair of blunt scissors shows all the other tech channels just how opening a box should be done, excellent stuff keep it up :)

[@computerrefurbishment9748]

Budget Box Opening! I use my trusty bread knife (not cut bread for years and it's used just for package opening).

[@dave7244]

Novatech isn't a bad PC builder. My first PC I got from Novatech and they fixed my broken laptop screen for the price of P+P on the laptop. Good company.

[@swilson42]

That light on the front isn’t a feature exactly, that’s someone making the mistake of plugging the power light lead into the HDD activity header. Several people I know did that on purpose after seeing it done by mistake back in the day. On cases with large power lights like this one, it IS kind of nifty.

[@Lovicide]

for five bucks, this is an incredible gaming pc for a younger sibling or beginner PC gamer. It gives you a taste of what a PC can be while being no where near the expenses of a modern gaming PC. And the fact that it runs most lower end games (and even a few higher end games) is a huge plus. I remember building my first PC years and years ago with specs probably slightly better than this for hundreds of dollars, so this is really cool to see for the price.

[@Compact-Disc_700mb]

I watched this on my Core 2 Quad Q6600! They are still fantastic CPUs, in fact the Athlon II and Phenom II are great still today. These late 2000s CPUs still have enough power to brute force through modern bloated and unoptomized websites and software, and when you do find something optomized they are absolutely incredible.

[@KimPossibleShockwave]

Until a few years back, I had a Phenom II Black Edition as my daily driver. I only had to upgrade because of things like instruction sets. I might turn it into a retro gaming PC or a Linux PC. All it needs is a new power supply and a hard disk, heh.

[@danuhadipura8932]

Tried an athlon II not long ago (AM2 with 4gb of ddr2), and let's just say it was not a very enjoyable experience.

[@Compact-Disc_700mb]

@@KimPossibleShockwave Nice I hope you get it running again!

[@Compact-Disc_700mb]

@@danuhadipura8932 What were you trying to do with it and what OS were you using?

[@KimPossibleShockwave]

@@danuhadipura8932 The AM3 and AM3+ were a massive leapfrog in capability at the time over AM2. It's just AMD then tried their infamous FX chips after and, well, ya know. They redeemed themselves with Ryzen, though. Maybe you could repurpose the DDR2 machine as a Linux driver?

[@KryptonicHD]

I love watching people record outside because the lighting is almost always immaculate xD and it's free space! Whoohooo

[@redeki1410]

My mans a pro at sniping on eBay these days

[@fx78945]

competitive ebay as an e-sport

[@davidp4456]

Not so long ago I was so good at snipping I felt guilty. Now everybody is doing it. I generally place an early bid to try and expose the competition, but come the end there are 6 or seven new bidders just waiting to strike in the dying seconds. It was much more fun when I used to win all the time.

[@danialonderstal3564]

Scored a 780ti and a 4760k with 16gb ram from the side of the road, pc was basically still brand new, RGB and quiet as. Was like a gaming pc used in a office haha

[@markianclark9645]

@@danialonderstal3564 ...you too...I like roadside PC's...communal dustbin PC's...Garden wall PC's...ex boss PC's...I've had all those...eBay 'buy now' for like 10 pounds or less are also close behind...Shuttle PC's small cubic shapes I like for cheap...also quad core thin clients for around 20 pounds each...I get old Laptops for free these days which never happened a decade ago...I really like my 'new' old Asus ROG gaming Laptop...around 2011 ish...my only iCore computer even if it is a mobile i5 processor...if i get my mini ITX i3 finished one of these days...I'll have another...

[@vojtechadame5860]

I'm surprised that the "500W" PSU survived overclocking. I took apart some of these things and they even omit EMC filter.

[@VladSuperKat]

It is because the 430 does not consume much 49 Watts.

[@kaltblut]

this PC doesn't draw more than around 120-150w

[@NecroFlex]

ahh yes, the Q6600, the best bang for buck quad core of its time and it held on for a long time. With a decent overclock you could game on it for many more years. These days, due to the old architecture and lack of some instructions, some modern games won't even launch on it (plus, the actual cores being 2+2 since it's basically a dual-dual core CPU stitched together).

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

That's where the 45nm chips come in. They bring SSE4.1, which should help with most of the anticheats and DRM that want it.

[@thetiredtechnician5845]

Just finished the video, and hey. That's a very nice optimistic ending to it. I think I agree with budget when he says it's still absolutely usable. Sure it might not be top spec or anything. But if you just need a dektop and you need something, anything that can browse the modern web. Yeah that certainly still works. However, that being said you can get access to systems that are still better for around the same price point or better. Even into 4th gen. Or if you're willing to dip your toes into it, old xeons n things. But yeah, good stuff. It can absolutely be grandma's email machine still.

[@satsumagt5284]

I suppose it would be even snappier if running Linux

[@Sevarrius]

Jeez, that's a great PC for a fiver. I had a Q6600 in my first custom gaming PC back in 2007. kept it overclocked at 4.3ghz via the bios with water cooling till it was replaced with an i5 2500k in 2011 which turned out to be an even more insane overclocker(+5ghz). Can't remember the last time I bothered overclocking a CPU, seems somewhat redundant with most modern CPU's.

[@MadIIMike]

As far as the newest CPUs go, they don't overclock well at all as they have very little headroom, so I'd recommend not spending the extra money on unlocked cpus and higher end chipsets.

[@Nordlicht05]

​@@MadIIMikemy feeling is that they go with power limits and heat pretty much higher than back in the day. Simply that the power demand goes through the roof.

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

Since XFR2 on AMDs side there is no reason to Overclock for me, the cores under stress boosts as high as it can, gains in productivity are minimal and usually in games worse than just leaving it alone.

[@AndyB243]

Modern CPUs = undervolt, they are pushed too far from the factory. Old CPUs = go wild with the OC if you have good thermal paste and cooling.

[@Stoney3K]

@@MadIIMike That's because the newest CPU's more or less come "overclocked" out of the box, that's what Turbo mode does. It just cranks up the multiplier right up to the processor's power or thermal thresholds, so you get blazing fast clock speeds at low loads, but they come down once your CPU load increases. It's basically a dynamic overclock compared to the static overclocks we used to do in the early 2000s.

[@jake20479]

i have a QX9650 system paired with a 1660ti i built for shits and gigs, when i installed an SSD in it it went from sluggish to actually surprisingly decent for everyday web browsing. you could easily give it to your parents and they would have no idea its not a modern pc. its actually snappy. i wouldnt load up games with it.. lol.. but for your daily youtube, emails, web surfing; no problem. works just fine. crazy how quickly gpus age while a cpu from 07ish can chug along just fine

[@dikbozo]

giving the Q6600 another round of modern computing would be most welcome. fromwhat you show here, it seems it could be quite positive. Thanks again, old sod.

[@Dee_Just_Dee]

About the later notes in the video... hoo yeah, old PCs are still so _very_ usable for simpler tasks like web browsing, watching videos and doing office work. I picked up a ho-hum HP Pavilion around 2009 and used it up until early 2018 with zero upgrades or tweaking. And not just for browsing the web and watching KZbin, but also for DVD ripping and simple video editing. (Side-note: one of its cool little features even by today's standards was that it had one of its 5¾-inch optical drive panels populated with a multi-memory-card card reader plugged directly into one of the motherboard's USB headers.) While I ended up replacing that old Pavilion with a first-gen Ryzen in early 2018, you know what else I did around the same time? I picked up a refurbished notebook that was circa 2013, replaced its HDD with an SSD, and had plenty of fun browsing the web and watching KZbin on it. Heck, I'd still be using that ~2013 notebook as a little office/video workhorse if not for the fact that its motherboard and battery faults have gotten bad enough that it isn't even 100% reliable while plugged in.

[@Jomenaa]

Your videos are such a treat everytime. When you said "Q6600" I literally raised my fist a bit in the air and quietly said "Yes!" xD

[@paulcullen814]

There is usually a sticker inside the case, on the bottom just inside the side panel. It will have build, QC and pack number stamps on it. Each person has their own number so they can trace who worked on it. Also on the label should be the model number of the PC plus the build date. My number for most of the time I worked in production at Novatech was 13.

[@TheDavidPoole]

Human mac addresses 😃...🤔...😁

[@NavyDood21]

If anyone is working on old computers and has a lot of crappy thermal paste on things, use something like mineral spirits to clean it up. Alcohol does nothing to actually dissolve and clean up the paste and you would be just as well off using water. If you really need to clean the stuff you will need to use something to dissolve it. My last job involved putting lots of thermal paste on RF power supplies. It says right on the container that you need mineral spirits or turpentine to dissolve the stuff and not just spread it around. Just food for thought if you every have issues getting old thermal paste off of things.

[@ffwast]

So far I've gotten by perfectly fine just wiping it off (or scraping since it's more like dried clay by now)

[@quademasters249]

Must be that formula. The compound on PC's dissolves when you use alcohol wipes.

[@DarthYuuki]

My god, that's an astonishingly good pick for the price to performance.

[@watercannonscollaboration2281]

Now that I haven’t been spoiled by my university’s ewaste bin for a few years, this is a really neat find. $6 and you even get a quad core too!

[@DjAle1]

Huh. My university tracks every little piece of obsolete sh and god forbid something's missing. Yes, I'm mad.

[@Orodreth888]

Can confirm. Had a Core2Quad until recently. Ran fine. Only updates made it tank.

[@HWandW]

It's interesting how you prepared this PC compared to how I have done it. I don't typically power on PCs when I get them. I had a bad PSU kill a motherboard from blindly turning on a PC. My first step is to open them (preferably outside). 1) I don't want any bugs, dust, and smells in my house. 2) I can blow the dust out outside and then not have to clean up inside. 3) with a PC that old, I'm not concerned with vacuuming it out to save on my borrowed air compressor and then I'm not spending $ on canned air. 4) The next thing I do after a general cleaning is applying GD900 (decent & cheap thermal paste from China) on both the CPU & GPU. 5) then I'll test the PSU. 6) Then I'll look over the motherboard looking for burned out components, swollen/popped capacitors, and unplugged stuff before turning it on. Another difference is that I probably would have loaded Win7 because it typically runs better than 10. I have tried tiny10 on a core 2 duo late 2009 macbook, but it was lacking video drivers. However, Win10 is more appealing to a broader market and that's important for resale. Then if everything worked fine I'd list it locally for $50 (and not take less than $35). Alternatively this would make a great XP gaming machine with a GTX 750 Ti. But XP gaming PCs didn't sell well in my locale. I'm also surprised that the tape trick didn't work. Correct me if I'm wrong, I thought that was for getting cheap socket 771 Xeons to run in socket 775.

[@dingdongbells3314]

7:19 that indicator actually gives me PTSD flashbacks to red ringing Xboxes, but overall a banging PC I would've loved to have way back in the day when I was stuck on an aging 3.33ghz single core Celeron-D because broke college student

[@pjcnet]

You got an absolute bargain, it can actually play some good games that aren't even decades old, incredible.

[@Theutmostgeek]

Your cheap computer purchases are very infectious! I keep on finding myself with these older systems. Mostly LGA 775 like this one. Still seems like the old q6600 has something to give

[@henryokeeffe5835]

7:20 You have the power led connector in the hdd indicator header. I have managed to do the same on my PC :)

[@RyderWestwood]

Nice! You should make another video with it adding a more capable budget GPU to the mix.

[@TheNiteNinja19]

The C2Q and their laptop equivalent Core 2 Extreme QX's, are still competent CPUs and actually outperform current Celerons. Get well soon! And thanks for sharing this find, it's a great PC that deserves a second life.

[@catriona_drummond]

Interesting configuration. You have Q6600 on a board that supports DDR3, so it's a G41 or newer chipset, which came out at least one year later than that CPU. I wonder if a downgrade may have happened at some point.

[@SillyKlaus]

I never thought I'd see this brand anywhere but my house! I've owned a Novatech NSPIRE Black Edition for ages.

[@wertywerrtyson5529]

Q6600 is from 2007 and the GT430 from 2010. Either they were still selling Q6600 in 2010 or the GT430 was an upgrade made later. I think a Q6600 could probably handle a more powerful card. I think my friend had an HD 4890 with his Q6600.

[@ShieyV2komputroniks]

Could been they still had 775 in Stock since its a ddr3 board

[@antoinevs7201]

Man the price of used tech in the UK is crazy cheap.

[@davidp4456]

No it’s not. This man just knows a bargain when he sees it.

[@Cmdrbzrd]

nah

[@Shaz8389]

It varies a lot. You can get really lucky with bad descriptions but that's true pretty much everywhere.

[@quademasters249]

I picked a faster machine out of the trash when I was mowing my lawn. Machines this old really aren't worth the space they take up. Ebay is chock full of $35 PCs

[@anasevi9456]

Love it when you find a retro gem rather than a heap of shite for these astoundingly cheap buys. Congrats mate!

[@gorky_vk]

Usability is also a curse of these old configuration. I have compaq 5700 with q9550, 8 gigs of DDR2-800 and 9600gt. It constantly in the way and I meant about leaving it in recycling yard thousands time already but then it's always a same story - I turn it on, saw that it still booting and running, play some of the old games installed on for a while and then begin to think "why throwing something that still can be used" just to never use it again until next time it is in the way and I start to think about recycling that damn think :D

[@AveragePootis]

I still cant believe you are back full time, i have missed the content and narration

[@bdude92]

This is exactly the content we come here for! What a bargain!

[@natr0n]

Very nice change from the abysmal systems and performance as per usual.

[@ViewtifulSam]

Lovely PC tbh, incredible price to performance and actual usability! Great video

[@dfrostedwang5478]

Until as late as 2018 I was still using a Q6600 machine as a spare LAN PC, with I think Windows 7 at first then 10 later. It had a 750Ti graphics card that I still use to this day. Oh, and a 1440x900 monitor. The motherboard was an oddball that took either DDR2 or DDR3, so it ended up with 8GB DDR3. It was great for family wanting to play LAN games like (very modded) Minecraft, CSGO, Civ IV and V, CK2, Planetary Annihilation, War Thunder; a lot of titles you wouldn't expect to be playing still. Rimworld worked actually *fine* for us, I think because the multiplayer mod let another PC handle a lot of CPU heavy stuff. Even CPU bound games like Cities Skylines ran perfectly okay. Other games we regularly played on it include KSP, Fallout 3/NV, Just Cause 2, all 3 Bioshocks, all the Saints Row games, Skyrim of course, it just worked. Even GTA V as shown here. In fact I didn't own GTA V, one of the people using the Q6600 bought it specifically to play it on that machine and it worked no problem. This was a considerable upgrade for my little cousins coming over to LAN, because previously they were using a Pentium 4. Let me tell you, the P4 **can** run most of those games, but it doesn't like it. It was a Dell Optiplex SFF that I took tin snips to in order to fit the GPU. All that, and the Q6600 actually cost me negative money. I sold a (completely worthless, ARM) chomebook to someone wanting a laptop and they paid $50 and gave me their old Q6600 desktop as a bonus. Best trade deal ever.

[@samarjitmallick2077]

Never stop uploading dude

[@leunqm]

I love these kind off videos, really shows how you can get some gaming even if your system is really old, i have two cousins with a lga 775 pentium processor and 1gb ram having fun playing gta san andreas and bully. Good video as always!

[@crackheadbob8531]

I’ve been enjoying the videos! Can you do some benchmarks on KSP?

[@braxtonbunner4990]

Watching this on my Q9650 Core2 Quad machine perfectly fine, 1080p zero issues. These old chips can for sure handle daily modern web stuff just as well as the modern PC's. Mine also has 10 GB DDR3 1066 GTX 1050 TI 1TB ADATA SSD.

[@rot_studios]

Those old Core2Quads still kick ass to be honest. Such good CPUs

[@daddust]

I don't know, first thing might be to open the computer so you don't get shocked when you plug in or press on.

[@BazT47]

Pauses video at 3:05 as forgot to make tea to drink while watching your video! It is so cool that you're making regular videos again!

[@reditus2]

My mum has my old gaming PC from back when the q6600 released and she uses it often. It is still working perfectly. Off the top of my head it has a q6600, 16GB ram, GTX 1660. That CPU for its age is a beast. When I go visit her I can play modern games on it with decent graphics and the processor does surprisingly well.

[@VladSuperKat]

16 GB of ram are you sure?

[@DanielCardei]

@@VladSuperKat GA-EP45T-UD3LR

[@VladSuperKat]

@@DanielCardei I have Ep43-DS3l with 2x2gb Mushkin 1200MHZ DDR2 sticks

[@reditus2]

@@VladSuperKat Yes, it has a Biostar Motherboard TPower I45, look it up. It supports 16 GB

[@JohnPamplin]

I was a huge Core 2 Quad fanboy back in the day. You put 8-16GB of DDR3-1333 in there for dual-channel memory, a decent SSD, and a 900 or 1000-series nVidia GPU, and that old thing would be fine. You basically got the whole thing for the price of a used cooler, so honestly a few upgrades wouldn't set you back.

[@Stoney3K]

With the proper board you could even do DDR3-1600. With a 400MHz FSB and 1:1 memory timings (which was my setup) you would have a rig that was blazingly fast.

[@RJRC_105]

Oh wow. You could tape overclock this as well? Like the Celeron 300A which could be taped to 450MHz and get a 50 percent overclock out the bag with the standard cooler? Very nice.

[@Stoney3K]

The Q6600 is an absolute killer of a CPU. If you're lucky and you have the C0 stepping, you're looking at an overclock that you can easily push to 3,2GHz or even 3,6 (400 x9) stable and with some fiddling, even make 4GHz in experimental settings. Pair it with 16GB of memory and something like a GTX1060, and it can even run games released today. In terms of desirability, it's out there together with the monster AMD 2600+ "Barton" socket A processor which was one of the best overclockers in its day. Also, the hard drive indicator "feature" is probably because someone has the LEDs on the front panel connector reversed.

[@Eyeball1975]

I had a Q6600, 6800GT and 4gb ram. Beast. Had it oc'd to 3.2 for years and had no problems. It's still sat in a cupboard "just in case"! Along with another 1 or 2 old builds..

[@stevethepocket]

I bought my first brand-new computer in 2008 for just over a grand. It had the Q6600. I had no idea at the time that it was such a beast of a processor or that it had launched at over $800 a little over a year earlier. I was expecting the whole computer to last me maybe five years before I needed to buy a new one, because most of my life that's how long computers tended to survive before they either died or got too slow to use anymore. But over a decade later, it remained the only part of the computer (besides the case and motherboard) I hadn't needed to upgrade-and I never even tried overclocking it! At one point in 2021 it refused to turn on anymore, and after trying a few parts swaps I gave up and stashed it away. Made do with a SFF Dell I'd picked up from a school's e-waste bin until I snagged a 2011-ish tower with an FX4100 and dumped my power supply and graphics card into it... I swear it actually runs _worse_ than the Q6600 did.

[@nojustno242]

Yeah, the FX chips were kind of a bummer and really didn't come close to the current hardware Intel was offering.

[@TheSpotify95]

Aah, it was the Q6600 and GT430 combo! Really surprised you got a quad core CPU along with 6GB of DDR3 and a GT430 at that price! I'm even more surprised it's running DDR3 (presumably 1066MHz) as most Core 2 Duo's and Core 2 Quads were DDR2 only.

[@HQdefault64]

The ram was 1333, it said "1333 mhz supported" on the motherboard.

[@UKVampy]

God I hated those cpu coolers with the push pins.

[@cyphaborg6598]

I still do lol.

[@Nordlicht05]

I hadn't really problems with it. I had one wich i in it's last usage in a arcade cabinet strapped down with super cheap cable ties because I lost somehow a clip. But I changed the q for a duo and unterclocked it. Don't need that power for arcade games. Bit the mainboard has a problem I think. Was maybe the reason I got rid of it as my first pc.

[@danehenry895]

Those Intel coolers were crap 💩

[@arthasmenethil2201]

I ditched the 12th gen cooler as soon as I opened the box.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

I still have one around and after one too many mount and dismount the push pins decided to die. So I replaced them with screws. Works just as well. Went even so far and cut myself a backplane. Now I can mount it like any other aftermarket cooler.

[@bryanobrien2726]

I've still got my old Win 7 machine with the QX6850 and an HD 5770 . It was a great PC , I kept it because it has a couple of HD DVD drives in it . If I ever need to watch or rip an HD DVD I'm all set .

[@bills6093]

With Intel Flex Mode memory, 4 gigs of the ram will indeed run in dual channel mode, and the remaining 2 gigs will run in single channel mode, IIRC. AMD has a similar mode, don't know what they call it, though. Flex Mode dual channel is not quite as good as true dual channel with matched sticks, but it's much better than single channel.

[@user-yv2cz8oj1k]

I got an ITX Q6600 system for free when I picked up a GPU. DDR3 memory which I upgraded to 8GB for about £12, updated the onboard graphics to a £30 GTX 660 3GB, slapped in a spare SATA SSD. Ran really quick, but when I replaced the Q6600 to a £12 Q9400, it's even better as it supports more processor functions.

[@Exo-Exibit]

Bro woke up one day and decided to cook michelin star grade content

[@alexrick5092]

Man youre so inspiring, you really showed how a 5$ pc could comfortavly get you by

[@dathekingofguildwars]

Loving the videos man, you are a ledgend :)

[@sluggger]

That was a good era for hardware. I had one of those exact LGA 775 socket motherboards with a Pentium dual core in it, and I ended up running it in a bunch of configurations back in the day. Adding more RAM, upgrading the CPU to a core 2 duo then to a core 2 extreme or quad, can't remember which - maybe both. I don't remember even having to change to a new motherboard chipset, it seemed like there were a lot of CPUs going in and out of just the one board with no problems, maybe my memory fails me. I paired it with quite a few GPUs too - went from an ancient 8600 GT graphics card in the initial build (which died on me) all the way up to a (relatively) modern GTX 960.

[@PatrickBaptist]

Why would you plug it up and try to turn it off before opening it up¿ Things could have rattled loose from being shipped. But it wanted an internet connection to install because the pirated windows you used likely has a little something extra that isn't from microsoft and it needed to "call home" to whoever has the backend tools LOL or to download a payload to install. I never have the internet connected when I install windows. Fun to watch though. It's a intel chip of course it runs toasty when you turn it up lol.

[@computerrefurbishment9748]

Great video. Glad you are back!

[@AeiKei]

I think the original configuration had a Core 2 Duo E8xxx processor as the G41 chipset is newer than the Q6600. Someone just slapped a cheap Q6600 upgrade at some point. In terms of LGA775 processors the best you can get are the modded Xeons, I still have 2 pc's around rocking 2 modded Xeons, I think an e5450 and an x5472 if i'm not mistaken, both heavily overclocked over 4ghz

[@bozzy7946]

Even without the overclock you got a great setup, for less than value menu! In the states people wanna sell pentium 4s for $30+.

[@Anthrocarbon]

The Q6600 was such a treat to find hiding in the e-waste ex-business fleet systems I used to salvage. What a great chip for its used-but-good niche! I like it as much as the first wave of Athlon 64 chips for doing its brand proud. (Shame about all those AMD construction vehicle codename chips, though. I loved my Phenom II until I upgraded and found out how much marketing slop I chugged down.) Quad cores era was such a good time to be a bit of a hardware geek; too informed not to be excited, and too technically green to let performance margins cause ruinous stress. Man, I need to host a LAN. Get some SC tower defence and D2 party runs going. I've lost my uber micro...

[@osrr6422]

That'd make a pretty decent Win XP box.

[@jakajakman]

good videos with good music, thank you for this

[@rl8073]

I love the jazz you have playing

[@zeroman0460]

Hi Budget Builds! Good Video by the way. Are you planning to swap to Linux for future builds when Windows 10 goes out of support?

[@Tomatgurka]

You should burn yourself a disc copy of Knoppix to use for those computers with malfunctioning drives / no OS installed. Very handy to have a OS that loads into RAM to check what the hardware is and if it works.

[@ChineseSweatShoppe]

"this is a something", spot on bud, spot on

[@Centuria-lj9tq]

I am watching this entertaining video on a core 2 duo E8600 paired with a Radeon HD6670 DDR5. Still working absolutely fine for the daily business.

[@KimPossibleShockwave]

Ah, Novatech. I still order from them sometimes; they're a bit pricey, but they have good support and product quality. My old driver, before I upgraded to Ryzen from second hand parts a few years back, was a Phenom II Black Edition unlocked from them. Worked like a dream for over ten years before the processor just being too old caught up with me [instruction sets, et cetera]. I do wish they'd kept Klarna, though!

[@jvacxp1069]

A few months ago picked up a hd5870 eyefinity 2gb for $35 it's really nice. Love the vid

[@goopah]

Yep, my Q6600 is still going strong after all these years. It's a Dell system (white and silver case) bought at Best Buy with Windows Vista pre-installed. Also 6GB of ram, and despite always running Vista, it's been rock solid. Granted I upgraded a few things (add'l HD, an nVidia GTX 260 video card, and a bigger PSU), but it's been just a great rig. I haven't gamed on it for quite a while, and quit using it entirely a few years ago, so my first sentence can be called into question unless and until I fire it up again, but I was happy with it right up until the day I put it in the closet. 🙂Oh, and I also paid a lot more than $6 for it!

[@o-hogameplay185]

13:34 it reminds me to what i do sometimes. i have a Tesla M40 GPU that is outside my PC due to cooling, and i can just pu behind the exhaust anything i want to defrost from the freezer. the card isnt that hot, but it is still very good at it

[@dimancor2925]

I had q6600 in my old system. 2007, Crysis 1 had great performance. Had this PC till 2017

[@poeskey]

I snagged a desktop with an extreme in it but i havent gotten around to getting it up and running.

[@plastichairball]

Ah this brings back memories of my old Acer Veriton. A Q6600 paired with 8 GB of DDR3 and a GTS 450. It was a great machine.

[@potatusha793]

man, the Q6600 was a budget overclocking beast back in the day, gave me flashbacks to when I used to watercool... I had a EVGA 750i FTW motherboard 'cos I couldn't afford the 780is and an XFX 8800 GTS 640mb :D and if I remember the tape trick only worked with very early versions of the Q6600, intel cut the tracks internally or something along those lines once people clocked onto it..

[@PrebuiltKernel]

it's nice to see a lot q6600 lovers here... i still use mine too with 4.1ghz OC

[@lalnablehector1285]

The GTA V one doesn't actually surprise me, i had an Optiplex with 8GB DDR2. a Q6600 FSB OC'd to 3.0ghz with a watercooled GTX 480 and it ran really quite well but you had to have that CPU overclock, if i ever forgot to open the program to modify the FSB speed (to get the overclock) then the FPS dropped to below 30. Its crazy the difference an OC made on those old Core 2 CPU's. For those that are curious, i used to use SetFSB to alter the FSB speed which in turn alters the CPU clock speed, this was a way to overclock on a board with no OC'ing functions, it meant you could get a much more precise OC than with just tape.

[@Z-GRADT]

I have a Q6600 from back in the day. Man, 17 years ago. Running Vista. It lasted me a good while. I replaced it with an Ivy Bridge eventually if I remember right. Skipped a couple generations with no problem.

[@ruikazane5123]

I just saw that fan on the CPU and said, "hell yea core 2" and a QUAD at that! Curious how would it do with something like a Maxwell card (750 Ti?) and let the CPU strech out whatever it got. Our old rig, a C2Q and a 9800GT...hope you get to test the Extreme CPUs and try your luck!

[@SmallGadgetMan]

I would love to see a budget build for gaming that is also very power efficient!

[@ok-eh3lk]

I'd love for you to do a video with the Q6600. I have one of my own and have always wanted to know what's realistic with it nowadays and the most appropriate GPU to be paired with it

[@randar3]

Q6600 was superb in its day. I had it as a CPU in the fist gaming PC I ever built for myself. 4GB of Platinum OCS DDR2 RAM, yum!

[@Wushu-viking]

Amazing value for $6. But That cooler is not adequate for the C2Q Q6600. It doesn't even have a copper core, like those sold with the Q9xxx 45nm models. Looks like a stock cooler from one of the Pentium models of the 45nm LGA775. I guess the fan runs at full speed all the time during higher CPU load, due to the temps. The stock cooler for the Q6600 was quite a beefy one (with copper core), and could manage 3 GHz with ease, keeping the CPU cores around 70c @full load.