Question Upgrade CPU for Gateway SX2850?

[Megane67]

Greetings,

I have a old i3 540 that I use to play some of my games and I wondered if it was possible to replace the CPU Processor with something faster and more powerful that wouldn't overload a Gateway SX2850 Motherboard as I'd rather avoid the expense of having to replace that, reinstall Windows, etc, etc. This i3 540 also uses Windows 7 64bit Home Edition, has a GTX 960 GPU and 8 GB of RAM. Any help you can give me would be appreciated, thank you.

 

[BFG-9000]

Someone here answered that question two years ago, reporting that i7-870 works.

 

[Megane67]

Okay, thank you very much!

 

[BFG-9000]

I don't know if I'd risk trying an i7-880 but that was the fastest in that family, especially as it's 2.5x as expensive as the i7-870 nowadays. But any of those i7s are twice the cores, twice the L3 cache and boost clocks to higher than your i3 (which completely lacks Intel Turbo Boost) so the upgrade should really help your GTX 960.

FWIW Userbenchmark shows Gateway SX2850 systems with i7-860 and i7-870 listed