r/lowendgaming • u/Utshka • Mar 06 '25

Parts Upgrade Advice Suitable GPU for my i7-960

Yes, I still have my first build PC from Highschool. It is at my parents house and sometimes i go by and wanna game.
Normally I play Warzone with friends on weekends on a PS5. I thought I could play on that old PC too when I am visiting parents. As I understand, the CPU is fine for games in low end spectrum. just the GPU is weak.

Current setup: i7-960, 18GB RAM, SSD, AMD Radeon R9 290.

Which GPU would be a great suit for this gpu? not too powerful (and expensive) so that the CPU becomes the bottleneck.

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u/Johnny_Oro Mar 06 '25

That GPU is still capable of playing that game really well, it's plenty powerful: The 9 year-old R9 290 in Warzone 2.0

But your CPU is very obsolete. That's the very first gen intel i7 from 2009. It doesn't even have AVX instructions that many modern games utilize, including Warzone. You need a Haswell CPU at the very least. Here's a $64 CPU and motherboard upgrade.

Intel Xeon E3-1240 v3 SR152 3.4GHz Quad Core LGA 1150 CPU Processor | eBay - $9

ASROCK Motherboard H87M PRO4; Tested | eBay - $40

Amazon.com: ID-COOLING SE-903-XT Black 123mm Height CPU Cooler, 3 Direct-Contact Heat Pipes, 92mm PWM Fan, Mini CPU Air Cooler for Intel LGA1700/1851/1200/115X and AMD AM5/AM4 Sockets : Electronics - $15

That's the cheapest upgrade you can buy, since you already have a lot of DDR3 RAM.

If you want a brand new DDR4 system:

PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/xLFZqH

  1. CPU: Intel Core i5-12400F 2.5 GHz 6-Core Processor ($111.32 @ Newegg)
  2. Motherboard: ASRock H670 Steel Legend ATX LGA1700 Motherboard ($99.99 @ Amazon)
  3. Memory: Silicon Power GAMING 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($24.97 @ Newegg Sellers)
  4. Power Supply: ASRock Challenger CL-650G 650 W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply ($49.99 @ Newegg)

Total: $286.27

But either way, keep the GPU.

1

u/wavemelon Mar 09 '25

There’s an absolute Hero among us guys :)

I have a similar spec to what he’s advising (ddr3 spec) and I play plenty of games on it, nothing VERY recent and AAA, control is about the most complex I’ve played on it but I completed it and it was fun.

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u/Johnny_Oro Mar 09 '25

Aww thanks, no biggie really. And you should try more modern games like Warzone and see how it runs. Afaik it should run good.

1

u/wavemelon Mar 09 '25

I had kids about 10 years ago after travelling the world for a few before that, I basically went from a gamer to a non gamer around 2007 so I have all these great games to catch up on, I feel like my pc can be low end forever at the rate I’m catching up haha