Is my microprocessor really too old for Windows 11?

[Bj0rnjj]

I bought my Omen 870-006 3-4 years ago and this one has "Intel (R) Core (TM) i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz". Windows says that this microprosessor is not supported for upgrading to Windows 11. Can this be true?

And which processor can I possibly insert into this PC, which is compatible with the rest of the PC?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

Your PC has the best processor the motherboard can support, so there are no W11-capable processors you can upgrade to.

OMEN by HP Desktop PC - 870-006no (ENERGY STAR) Product Specifications | HP® Customer Support

If you're interested, I can give you two easy ways to bypass the W11 hardware checks so you can perform an in-place upgrade to W11 on your PC, allowing you to keep your installed programs, files, and settings, and a way to easily go back to W10 after the default 'return to W10' period expires, in case W11 doesn't work properly on your particular PC.

I'm running W11 on PC's with much older Intel processors than yours, such as the i7-2600 and even the Pentium E8300.

They work fine.

[NonSequitur777 · Accepted solution]

Hi @Bj0rnjj, I concur with @Paul_Tikkanen,

If you want to dabble getting W11 to work on a legacy PC with a non-approved but admittedly still very decent performing 6th Generation Intel processor, Paul has got your back.

Looking a bit more more closely at your Thimphu/-K motherboard, it looks to me that you could potentially squeeze in an Intel i7-7700K to achieve a marginal 5~7% performance improvement: to be honest, not particularly interesting, if only because the i7-7700K is also on Microsoft's W11 no-go processor list.

Speaking of the Thimphu/Thimphu-K (= capital city of Bhutan: who thinks up these names? -But I digress) motherboards, I could find zero documentation showing any differences whatsoever between the two versions: same chipset (Z170), same SSID (2B4B), same Form Factor (uATX), same everything.

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777