What is the best processor and graphics card i can put into my motherboard

Nathan Kearney

Honorable
Jul 9, 2013
4
0
10,510
the motherboard i have is a Gigabyte GA-G41M-Combo and i want to just put a new graphics card and processer in so i can play games a lot smoother and maybe higher speced games what are the best i can put into this
 
Solution
The CPU socket on that board limits what you can stick in there..... LGA 775. Something like http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116903&IsVirtualParent=1
would be nice. Close to 3GHz clock speed(you may need a better heat-sink for it). As far as video cards, you can put in whatever your power supply can feed. You have 16x PCI slot and you can upgrade to DDR3 RAM up to 8GB on that board if you are still using DDR2. Beyond these things..... it would be time to buy a new mother board because stock of New Socket LGA 775 CPU is slim to none on the popular websites.
That is an old board and an old socket that doesn't support an new CPU's. You could pickup a Core 2 Quad Q 6000 series for about $50 on Ebay, but depends on what you already have in there for a CPU if it's worth it or not. Are you using DDR2 or DDR3 ram with the board? Graphics card, you can't go too high or it will bottleneck the CPU.

Honestly, I would build a new PC. That board doesn't have a lot of room to go anywhere fast enough for todays games.
 
The CPU socket on that board limits what you can stick in there..... LGA 775. Something like http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116903&IsVirtualParent=1
would be nice. Close to 3GHz clock speed(you may need a better heat-sink for it). As far as video cards, you can put in whatever your power supply can feed. You have 16x PCI slot and you can upgrade to DDR3 RAM up to 8GB on that board if you are still using DDR2. Beyond these things..... it would be time to buy a new mother board because stock of New Socket LGA 775 CPU is slim to none on the popular websites.
 
Solution

Wolfshadw

Titan
Moderator
It appears that there are three revisions of that motherboard. In each case, the best processor you can install is going to be the Intel Core2Quad Q9650. As for the best graphics card, the NVidia Titan is the best card you can install, but it would be bottle-necked by the processor. You probably wouldn't want much more than a Geforce GTX670/GTX770 or Radeon HD7970.

-Wolf sends
 
I doubt his power supply could handle Titan. I always have my suspicions about builds that contain combo technologies(this board accepts either DDR2 or DDR3) as they usually have been built on a budget with upgrading in mind. The problem is that by the time the end user wants to upgrade... the upgrades are already old news and we are in a new hardware cycle.