Upgrading old computer for my son

[Bryan Harmon]

Hello! I'm trying to take my mom's old computer and upgrade it so my son can play his games on it. She has 4gb of Ram, Windows 8.1, 64 bit OS, I have taken my old gtx 645 gpu and installed it, the cpu however is very old. It is an intel pentium cpu G6950 @2.80 Ghz.

My question is.. is all I need to do is replace the cpu with an up-to-date one like say an i5? Will that cpu go in there? If not any suggestions on what will or what to do? I can try to provide more specs if need be. Thanks for your help!

 

[kanewolf]

According to Intel's website that is an LGA1156 socket CPU. You will have to determine what motherboard you have. Check the manufacturer's website for the latest BIOS. Install that before the CPU upgrade. The website will also have a list of supported CPUs. That will tell you what you can update to.

 

[Bryan Harmon]

Thx. I found out the motherboard is an MSI ms-7636. I found their website an am trying to find the motherboard there but it may be too old to show on their site. I'm going to try and call them monday. Thx!

 

[Mug3r]

Most likely you should buy an 1155 Motherboard and matching i5 processor and youre good to go.

 

[kanewolf]

This is the motherboard that comes up when Googling. Does the picture look correct?

If so, there here is the CPU list.

 

[Bryan Harmon]

This is the motherboard that comes up when Googling. Does the picture look correct?

If so, there here is the CPU list.

Thank you! I think that is it but hard for me to be sure although the current CPU is listed in the link to compatible CPUs you posted so I'm pretty confident it is. Thx a bunch!

I installed a new driver for the gpu and the computer is working surprisingly well with the old Pentium CPU but I think a new CPU and a couple extra GBs of ram will square his rig away for a while.