My 12-year-old son and I have been enjoying salvaging, repairing, and restoring old electronics together. Our current project is a retro gaming PC built primarily from donated and discarded parts. We currently have four 16GB DDR3 modules, two GTX 1050 Ti graphics cards, a 1TB hard drive, a 500GB SATA SSD, a 256GB NVMe SSD, a Corsair CX500W power supply, several keyboards and mice, wireless and USB expansion cards, and plenty of internal cables. The memory makes us think we may be looking at a platform such as an Intel Core i7-4790K, although we are open to older Xeon options if the RAM is compatible. We expect the system to handle many games from around 2017–2018 and earlier, along with lighter modern and indie games such as No Man's Sky and RimWorld. I would appreciate advice on choosing a compatible motherboard, case, and CPU-cooling setup, along with anything important to check before assembling the machine.
2 Answers
Make sure those really are standard desktop DDR3 DIMMs and not registered or ECC server memory. Genuine 16GB DDR3 modules do exist, but they are less common than 8GB sticks, and compatibility depends heavily on the motherboard. Check the exact part numbers and whether the modules are unbuffered before buying a board. If they are compatible, an older Xeon platform could be worth considering because the chips often offer lots of cores and cache for very little money, but the motherboard still needs to support the specific memory type.
The power supply’s model matters much more than the 500W label. A good 450–500W unit is plenty for a system with one GTX 1050 Ti, but some inexpensive units are poorly built and can be unreliable or unsafe. The Corsair CX500 is a more useful starting point than an unknown generic supply, though you should check its age, condition, connectors, and exact revision before trusting it. I would also plan around one 1050 Ti unless you have a specific reason to use both, since dual-card support is limited in many games and adds heat and complexity.
They are Kingston HyperX and G.Skill modules with heatsinks, and we have already tested that each one is a working 16GB stick. We’ll still check the exact specifications before choosing the board.