[X] My Assistant

Bottleneck calculator sites have been widely acknowledged as nonsense by the PC community, please don't rely on them. The worst one seems to be Userbenchmark,

I think I have upgraded one of those before if you can get cheap 16gb ram Kingston hyper x ddr3, Intel 4790k (needs new heatsink like coolermaster 212+), a GTX 1080. Probably needs a better power supply.

Intel 4790k - $70-80
Gtx 1080 - $100-200
Kingston Hyper X 16gb ddr3 - $40
Corsair CX550 - $60-75
That would be decent for a while longer, and possibly get the upgrades for $200.

jesus christ dude that's horrifying. I've picked up 7th gen intel parts at the dump, paying for 4th gen is insane. You can literally get a 13100 that outperforms a 4790k by almost double for less money than that. And that's not even counting the difference in quicksync performance from having VP9 and AV1 hardware decoding.

Seriously, go to your local dump or recycling center. I built a 7700 machine with 32gb of 2133 ram and a 256gb nvme drive out of bits I found laying around there. Only GPUs I found were a 750 ti and 570 though, not much of a score there.

This post has been edited by altereggo: Jul 24 2025, 07:44

jesus christ dude that's horrifying. I've picked up 7th gen intel parts at the dump, paying for 4th gen is insane. You can literally get a 13100 that outperforms a 4790k by almost double for less money than that. And that's not even counting the difference in quicksync performance from having VP9 and AV1 hardware decoding.

Seriously, go to your local dump or recycling center. I built a 7700 machine with 32gb of 2133 ram and a 256gb nvme drive out of bits I found laying around there. Only GPUs I found were a 750 ti and 570 though, not much of a score there.

E-waste recyclers tend to charge to decent parts here. You can still get lucky with part pulls but you can also get unlucky with dead parts from the free stuff. Depends where you live.

In gaming with a GTX 1080 an overclocked 4790k at 1080p it will keep up with a 13100. In media encoding the 13100 will easily win.

A newer CPU will be better, but thats the best drop in solution to upgrade their old comp with near zero effort and an extremely limited budget.

Hunting facebook market place, e-waste recyclers and the dump requires a bit more effort depending on your location.


Here a 4790k is $40-90
A 13100 is $110-170

1995-20??
IBM
In our family we still have a [Idk exactly] IBM from ~1995. Came with Win95, upgraded it when Win98 came out. It was officially "retired" somewhere around 2007, but every so often we fire it up for some reason or another. [Been a couple years since last ran].

2002-2012
Dimension 2400
My first "personal" computer was a 2002 Dell 2400. Windows XP. Got struck by lighting, repaired, upgraded, etc.
Used it till about 2012 when I got another Dell [XPS]. I definitely have the fondest memories with that one, I cant start it anymore [I think power supply?] but been toying around with the idea of gutting it and building a sleeper pc with it. [Yay grown up money!]

2012-2020
Dell XPS
I got this one used at Goodwill, I think it was a 2008 model? Windows 7, didn't really abuse it but hardly used it for the time I had it except for watching TV lol

2020-Now
Built
I decided to finally build one in 2020. Was just buying the parts one part at a time throughout 2019. Windows 10/11 now. So far so good! It's been a beast!

1995-20??
IBM
In our family we still have a [Idk exactly] IBM from ~1995. Came with Win95, upgraded it when Win98 came out. It was officially "retired" somewhere around 2007, but every so often we fire it up for some reason or another. [Been a couple years since last ran].

2002-2012
Dimension 2400
My first "personal" computer was a 2002 Dell 2400. Windows XP. Got struck by lighting, repaired, upgraded, etc.
Used it till about 2012 when I got another Dell [XPS]. I definitely have the fondest memories with that one, I cant start it anymore [I think power supply?] but been toying around with the idea of gutting it and building a sleeper pc with it. [Yay grown up money!]

2012-2020
Dell XPS
I got this one used at Goodwill, I think it was a 2008 model? Windows 7, didn't really abuse it but hardly used it for the time I had it except for watching TV lol

2020-Now
Built
I decided to finally build one in 2020. Was just buying the parts one part at a time throughout 2019. Windows 10/11 now. So far so good! It's been a beast!

That's legitimately impressive. You can actually do stuff with win95?

That's legitimately impressive. You can actually do stuff with win95?

Yup! There's some old software and file formats that only works on that system. It stays off the internet [the 56k modem insures that lol] just for security reasons

We still had an impressive floppy disk archive that we were still working on converting to discs back in 05-06 so we still needed the legacy system for.

Now I don't really think there's anything left of value on it so we hardly turn it on.

I used laptop for 8 years which was gtx 960m with i7 6700 hq if I remember it correctly from 2017 I still have this laptop but it barely survived as as of right now it struggles to just have one tab running on browser