Although the system requirements of Windows 11 caused quite a stir by excluding even relatively modern PCs, the operating system appears to run fine on a computer with a single core Intel Pentium 4 (Cedar Mill) processor that is 15 years old.
This astonishing feat was accomplished by “Carlos SM,” who tweeted about it and then shared a video showing how the near-ancient system functioned. The news was picked up pretty quickly by PC Mag.
Windows 11 in Cedar Mill Pentium 4Machine specifications:Intel Pentium 4 661 3.6GHzASUS P5Q4GB DDR2 800Nvidia Geforce GT 710120GB SSDInstalled using Windows 10’s PE installer.
As you can see, the PC consists of an Intel Pentium 4 661 (1-core, 2-thread) CPU on an Asus P5Q (LGA 775) motherboard, with 4 GB DDR2 RAM (at 800 MHz) and an Nvidia GeForce GT 710 graphics Map. A 120 GB SSD is provided for storage (and for the sake of completeness, Carlos also provides a CPU-Z validation of the system).
On this hardware, Carlos managed to install Windows 11, following the steps of a Windows 10 PE installer. He notes that “Windows 11 is installed in MBR/Legacy Boot mode, no EFI emulation involved”.
Carlos further notes that Windows Update works fine. He installed Patch Tuesday’s recent cumulative update for Windows 11 without a hitch. As you’d expect with a system like this, Microsoft’s operating system is sometimes on the slow side.
Analysis: New OS, old PC – but not without risks
It’s quite an eye opener to see how low the specs can get to still run Windows 11, especially since the minimum system requirements state a dual-core CPU, not a single-core model like the one used here.
The big sticking point for many computers is the TPM 2.0 provision, which Microsoft has implemented for security reasons (much like Secure Boot). It’s not surprising that this wonderful PC has neither. However, as we have seen, it is possible to upgrade to Windows 11 on a non-TPM machine with workarounds that Microsoft has released.
Even then, Microsoft strongly advises against doing this. They suggest that this can lead to ‘device malfunction’ or even ‘damage’. Plus, they can’t guarantee you’ll get updates (but as Carlos has discovered, that’s not an issue yet).
It’s strange that you can install Windows 11 on a PC with an unsupported single-core CPU through an unofficial method, and still not have an official install on a PC with a 7th-generation processor from Intel, which is just came on the market five years ago. Carlos tweet also to note that this Pentium CPU is not even the oldest one you could install Windows 11 on.
