Old Build That Might Work Today

[P4TCH]

Greetings Tom's community, long time reader first time poster.
A friend of mine wants to travel through Africa to Asia with just a backpack and a little bit of money. Why is this relevant, you may ask? He's selling his machine, an old gaming one, and he's willing to do it for just 400€ (340 pounds). The PC was build back when I7 started being all fresh and new.

Components (I still need details, but general idea):
I7 920
ATI 4890 (Don't know the exact model)
3x1Gb DDR3 1866 (I think, I'll be asking more details)
500Gb HDD (I have 2 more HDDs, so this doesn't worry me at all)
700W PSU (good quality one, can't remember the one)
All mounted in an Asus Rampage 2 Extreme

I think the major flaw is, as always on an old PC, the Graphics card. I was going to build my own I3 with an Ati 7850 as a placeholder for a 660 (or 760/860 by the time I upgrade), but that's all about it.

Now what do you think of the build for the price? I think it's just a good one...

Thanks in advance.

 

[manofchalk]

I think thats a pretty good deal. Throw a decent graphics card and 8GB of RAM at it and you'l have a very respectable gaming rig.

 

[P4TCH]

I thought of getting an SSD. The games I play are STALKER SoC with STALKERSOUP mod and DOTA 2. May start playing skyrim, but more of an occasional every now and then game, so I think the graphics card can wait a bit more. I don't know if there are plans from neither nvidia nor ati to release new series, but if there is, I will definitely upgrade to the current mid-high card, which I think it's the 660 Ti.

I'm no hardcore gamer, as you can see, but I need to enjoy the game I play...and I can't right now. The most intensive task for the processor will probably be running VMs, go figure.

I've also just noticed that the maximum RAM speed that MOBO accepts is 1066. With DDR3 speeds, the difference between a 1066 module and for example a 1800 one isn't that big, the difficult thing is actually finding that module, since I think they don't sell those on Spain anymore... Old rig... Yeah... Could I use 3 of the same RAM module above 1066 for the tri-channel?

I pray for the processor not to break lol

 

[ScrewySqrl]

you can probly use it as is for a while, the 4890 was the very top, dual graphics model in 2008, so it should manage 1920 gaming as is. for expanding RAM, you have to use triple-channel, so go with 3x2GB for 6gb of RAM. Get 1333, and you can step it down to 1066 at tighter timings.