Q6600 Interim Build

tomhumphrey · April 16, 2015

Hi guys,

I am eventually planning to build my first gaming PC which would be a 4690k and a 970 or similar, when funds allow of course.

Inspired by the LTT scrapyard wars series I decided to boot up the old family PC (Dell Inspiron 530) which hasn't been used in about a year to check its specs.

To my surprise it has a Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 in it with 8GB of DDR2, and a fairly low end Nvidia GPU from that era.

Was wondering your guys thoughts on possibly buying a GTX970 (or even a 290x) and putting it in there while I save up for the rest of the components for a more modern machine.

I understand a 970 may well be overkill for a processor like this but the whole idea is that when I buy a new CPU, mobo, case etc. I can just drop it in.

The PSU is a crappy 350W noname brand so I will have to upgrade that at the same time as the GPU (not sure whether I would buy a cheapish temporary one or a nice RM650 or something which is what i would want to use in my future build.

I have a 120GB SSD I can use from my old MacBook which should give it a nice speed boost.

So what do you guys think?
Is it worth the ~$600 AUD for an interim build or should I just continue to save?

btw I had a quick look in the bios (crappy dell mobo) and I couldn't see any cpu voltage controls so overclocking is probably a no-go

Thanks in advance,

Tom

ApolloX75 · April 16, 2015

Ha yeah, overclocking is probably very limited at best.

I ran my 970 with a Core2X and it bottlenecked a good amount but still worked very well.

A Q6600 will bottleneck a lot more obviously, but it would work alright. A 280X would be bottlenecked as well unless you can find a way to overclock.

Regarding the PSU you will definitely need something with a bit more grunt. Try an EVGA G2 or Seasonic unit. That Inspiron case should fit a normal PSU without too much trouble.