PC salvage build

[Death Hawk]

So I'm going to start building my first PC for "study and school work" *cough* gaming. My budget is as low as possible, like €300 (I live in Ireland ??) but the good news is that I'm heading into my dad's office to chat with their IT guys tí see what salvageable CPUs, motherboards and ram I can take. I know they have old desktops and servers that won't be seeing any use except for recycling so I want to know what CPUs in particular I should look for (specific models of Core i5, i7 and Xeon (or amd equivalent)) all would be probably be between 2008 and 2013 processors and I'm looking at pairing it with a Gtx 1050 so whatever CPU can match that with decent gaming preformance would be useful, just don't know what exact ones I should keep an eye out for. 

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Update:

It's been over a week since I posted, got a fail safe graphics card, a GT 730 off a friend and on Monday I begin my most majestic of salvage, going for whatever the best cpu they have is provided it's at least a quad core. Thanks for the advice guys! ?

Edited February 9, 2018 by Death Hawk

[G27Racer_188]

I'd say i5 4000 series and higher and 8 GB of memory.

[Death Hawk]

Thanks, I'll keep an eye out, any knowledge of gaming on an old xeon, I know they're not ideal but with old servers I could snatch a nice one for my build. 

[Herman Mcpootis]

skip any of the core 2s, i3s, pentiums and 1st-gen CPUs(except LGA1366 quad cores and above). see if you can get one that's as bog standard as possible, that way it'll be much easier to upgrade.

[userzero]

Just don't go too old if you manage to get yourself a Xeon chip as you'll struggle getting a board for it potentially, and risk not having a PCIe slot for that GPU

 

If you can salvage some kind of setup that includes a Xeon, motherboard with PCIe, then you are on your way really. Pretty self explanatory. Don't bother with anything of that era that isn't a Xeon though as chips of that age are shite. First gen i3's and old Pentium chips etc are crap for anything now.

 

And remember, it's about that single core clock speed when it comes to gaming, rather than loads of cores.

[ImNotThere]

if its an office see if they have any i7 2600 or as mentioned i5 4000 or i7 from 3000 or 4000

i doubt it but an old server may have dual x5650 which would be 12 core and 24 thread

[Death Hawk]

28 minutes ago, ImNotThere said:

if its an office see if they have any i7 2600 or as mentioned i5 4000 or i7 from 3000 or 4000

i doubt it but an old server may have dual x5650 which would be 12 core and 24 thread

Just looked at that Xeon, wow that is overkill but for an 8 year old chip it's insane. Preformance is roughly on par with an i5 6400 

[Ckdota]

Just let us know what you find! If you only find any core2duo/quad LGA771-775 computers you can make a nice build out of that with some inexpensive parts off ebay.

 

 

Good luck I am super interested what you find!

[Death Hawk]

Does the Xeon x5650 need a dual CPU set up or can it be used like a normal CPU provided i have the correct socket?

Or just server CPUs in general 

 

Edited January 25, 2018 by Death Hawk

[ImNotThere]

4 hours ago, Death Hawk said:

Does the Xeon x5650 need a dual CPU set up or can it be used like a normal CPU provided i have the correct socket?

Or just server CPUs in general 

 

if you can find a single x5650 then you can run it in most lga 1366 x58 mobos

[Death Hawk]

On 1/25/2018 at 5:40 PM, Ckdota said:

Just let us know what you find! If you only find any core2duo/quad LGA771-775 computers you can make a nice build out of that with some inexpensive parts off ebay.

 

 

Good luck I am super interested what you find!

Got an athlon II x2 215, best they had, checking back tomorrow for ram and a case with a side panel, any good AM3 cpu upgrades? 

[Ckdota]

3 hours ago, Death Hawk said:

Got an athlon II x2 215, best they had, checking back tomorrow for ram and a case with a side panel, any good AM3 cpu upgrades? 

 

Hmm I was never in camp AMD back then do the FX cpus fit in those builds? 

 

Let me know what model motherboard it is and we can look up the best possible CPU.

 

It is possible that the motherboard can support and AMD opteron cpu or a phenom x4  CPU but I will need more details.

 

But srsly? they didnt have a single core2duo system? oh well

[GloriousPain]

Any Xeon thats E3 or E5 at the start is atleast equivalent to an i5 sandy bridge at worst... 

 

Or Xeon (letter)55XX or 56XX is Nehalem or Westmere

[Death Hawk]

On 2/12/2018 at 10:19 PM, Ckdota said:

 

Hmm I was never in camp AMD back then do the FX cpus fit in those builds? 

 

Let me know what model motherboard it is and we can look up the best possible CPU.

 

It is possible that the motherboard can support and AMD opteron cpu or a phenom x4  CPU but I will need more details.

 

But srsly? they didnt have a single core2duo system? oh well

OK, another update, met up with a different it guy, he's offering me an I5 3570 and maxed out 16gb of ram, he called that amd system s*** which I completely agreed with, also he's throwing in a nice case too with plenty of cooling and expansion options, so thank you second hand unused PCs 

[Death Hawk]

The i5 system won't post, fans rev up and stop a few times and then syltay running at a constant speed, the bios is somewhat aware of what's going on in the system, gives beep errors when ram is removed, do systems fail to post and not give a beep code if the on board graphics are broken or the dvi ports on the back are dead/dirty? What other things cause no post and no error beeps

[Ckdota]

Is this a prebuilt or a custom system? You should look at the manual for these kinds of things.