i3 Processors and Microsoft Security Updates – EOL November 2026

[JazzFlute]

17 minutes ago, DavR said:

I think the 8th Gen or above requirement for Windows 11 is just a very broad brushstroke, a line in the sand to say they aren't supporting anything older than a certain date. Plenty below that works fine, but Microsoft don't want the hassle of supporting older hardware long term.

 

As you've noted, older processors functionally identical still work just fine. I'm just today scrapping a laptop with a 6th Gen i5 in it, which while being unsupported, actually still benchmarks higher than some Celerons we have which are supported. 

Yes, it’s definitely a broad brushstroke. The i3 systems I mentioned in the original post all work well and are still very fast. Replacing them would cost around £500 depending on the specification, or £300 just for a processor upgrade. There doesn’t seem to be much consideration for sustainability from Microsoft here. I have laptops with supported 8th‑gen (and newer) processors that run noticeably slower than these i3 machines. It feels like a huge waste of perfectly good hardware — especially when components such as RAM are already in short supply and memory prices have doubled.

[BKGarry]

Isn't it something to do with 8th Gen being the first Intel Generation that it must have TPM2.0, and before that it wasn't so the 8th Gen comes hand in hand with the TPM 2.0 requirement?

[itskdog]

2 minutes ago, BKGarry said:

Isn't it something to do with 8th Gen being the first Intel Generation that it must have TPM2.0, and before that it wasn't so the 8th Gen comes hand in hand with the TPM 2.0 requirement?

 

Yeah, my understanding is there's certain security features such as TPM2.0 along with fixes for hardware vulnerabilities such as Meltdown & Spectre.

 

I also doubt that devices of that age will be getting the necessary UEFI updates from the OEM to support the updates for the 2023 Secure Boot certificates, lowering the security profile of the device once the 2011 certificates expire in a few months.

[ICTDirect_Dave]

9 minutes ago, JazzFlute said:

 

Replacing them would cost around £500 depending on the specification, or £300 just for a processor upgrade.

Just wanted to pop up here and say that £375 gets you a HP EliteDesk 800 Gen 9 with 12th Gen i5, 8GB DDR5 and 256GB NVMe .

And if you wanted laptops its even better.  £315 for EliteBook 830 Gen9 with 13.3" 1920 x 1200 display, 12th gen i5, 16GB DDR5 and 256gb nvme.

 

Edited April 27 by ICTDirect_Dave

[Garacesh]

Full sympathy for wanting to keep older kit running (I, too, toyed with the idea of running unsupported when 11 first came out, back when I was in education) but you've had nearly five years to refresh old kit and Microsoft have always made it clear that old kit + Win11 is risky and they could stop support at any time. Even if I had run unsupported kit I'd have been pestering the bean counters for upgrade money.

 

Schools have no money, I get it, but it's time to put your foot down and get some new kit order. MS have obviously decided since carrot didn't work, guess it's gonna have to be stick. 

[JazzFlute]

17 minutes ago, ICTDirect_Dave said:

Just wanted to pop up here and say that £375 gets you a HP EliteDesk 800 Gen 9 with 12th Gen i5, 8GB DDR5 and 256GB NVMe .

And if you wanted laptops its even better.  £315 for EliteBook 830 Gen9 with 13.3" 1920 x 1200 display, 12th gen i5, 16GB DDR5 and 256gb nvme.

 

 

Looking for 16GB Teacher classroom PC,s with 3 outputs/Good motherboard and to last, I belive the jump from 8GB to 16GB is £50

[ICTDirect_Dave]

Yeah it's a pricey upgrade, but we could squeeze that a little if you wanted a few.  But those HP EliteDesk motherboards are exceptional and you're getting three outputs out of the box (2 x DP, 1 xHDMI), 3 years (5 if you're spending more than £5k) warranty and you get to deal with me!

 

 

[JazzFlute]

4 minutes ago, ICTDirect_Dave said:

Yeah it's a pricey upgrade, but we could squeeze that a little if you wanted a few.  But those HP EliteDesk motherboards are exceptional and you're getting three outputs out of the box (2 x DP, 1 xHDMI), 3 years (5 if you're spending more than £5k) warranty and you get to deal with me!

 

 

Thanks for message but I have a supplier i use.

[itskdog]

37 minutes ago, JazzFlute said:

Thanks for message but I have a supplier i use.

 

At least means you've got another contact for your three quotes, I suppose. Buying PCs will usually get you over the threshold for requiring multiple quotes.

[JazzFlute]

1 minute ago, itskdog said:

 

At least means you've got another contact for your three quotes, I suppose. Buying PCs will usually get you over the threshold for requiring multiple quotes.

 

So many cold calls and emails these days, have a choice of about 10 at least 😂

[ICTDirect_Dave]

2 minutes ago, JazzFlute said:

 

So many cold calls and emails these days, have a choice of about 10 at least 😂

 

Ah, but none of them are me.  And to be fair, if you're looking for more modern refurb like this, I'm fairly confident we'll be by far the most affordable option.

[DrBeaker]

22 hours ago, DavR said:

 

Out of interest, what part of the DfE Standards would you be failing this hardware on?

 

Guidance around devices seems to mainly be around ensuring they have adequate support etc at time of purchase, not specifying a limit to years in service anywhere. The only "hard" spec I can see is around what wifi standards devices should support.

 

I'd say this bit https://www.gov.uk/guidance/meeting-digital-and-technology-standards-in-schools-and-colleges/laptops-desktops-and-tablets

 

 

7 hours ago, BKGarry said:

Isn't it something to do with 8th Gen being the first Intel Generation that it must have TPM2.0, and before that it wasn't so the 8th Gen comes hand in hand with the TPM 2.0 requirement?

 

 

6 hours ago, itskdog said:

 

Yeah, my understanding is there's certain security features such as TPM2.0 along with fixes for hardware vulnerabilities such as Meltdown & Spectre.

 

I also doubt that devices of that age will be getting the necessary UEFI updates from the OEM to support the updates for the 2023 Secure Boot certificates, lowering the security profile of the device once the 2011 certificates expire in a few months.

 

That's what I thought... 8th Gen CPU's were the MINIMUM CPU spec along with TPM 2.0

 

6 hours ago, Garacesh said:

Full sympathy for wanting to keep older kit running (I, too, toyed with the idea of running unsupported when 11 first came out, back when I was in education) but you've had nearly five years to refresh old kit and Microsoft have always made it clear that old kit + Win11 is risky and they could stop support at any time. Even if I had run unsupported kit I'd have been pestering the bean counters for upgrade money.

 

Schools have no money, I get it, but it's time to put your foot down and get some new kit order. MS have obviously decided since carrot didn't work, guess it's gonna have to be stick. 

 

I always tried but get told off for doing that.

 

5x years is a fair goal I think.

 

Schools have no money for front-line services and kit it seems https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/7-key-findings-annual-academy-trust-accounts-report. 

 

[Ditto]

9 hours ago, JazzFlute said:

 

Yes, it’s definitely a broad brushstroke. The i3 systems I mentioned in the original post all work well and are still very fast. Replacing them would cost around £500 depending on the specification, or £300 just for a processor upgrade. There doesn’t seem to be much consideration for sustainability from Microsoft here. I have laptops with supported 8th‑gen (and newer) processors that run noticeably slower than these i3 machines. It feels like a huge waste of perfectly good hardware — especially when components such as RAM are already in short supply and memory prices have doubled.

Sustainability topic on the TPM 2.0 issue - see https://www.edugeek.net/forums/topic/221193-windows-11-e-waste-mountian-this-year/

 

I have searched widely, but have struggled to find a real world example that shows having TPM 2.0 over TPM 1.2 would have prevented a cyber hack. Certainly no articles saying millions of users impacted! For sure TPM 2.0 is better and addresses a number known issues/design flaws, but TPM 2.0 is already known to have it's flaws. Sure better to move forwards on security matters, but enough the justify the massive e-waste mountain, especially for domestic users. Maybe better still, make it a requirement of manufactures to have a replace TPM device solution.

[Ditto]

2 hours ago, DrBeaker said:

 

I'd say this bit https://www.gov.uk/guidance/meeting-digital-and-technology-standards-in-schools-and-colleges/laptops-desktops-and-tablets

 

 

 

 

 

That's what I thought... 8th Gen CPU's were the MINIMUM CPU spec along with TPM 2.0

 

 

I always tried but get told off for doing that.

 

5x years is a fair goal I think.

 

Schools have no money for front-line services and kit it seems https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/7-key-findings-annual-academy-trust-accounts-report. 

 

Or another way - it was all spent on CEO salaries and teacher pay rises (don't begrudge them) 😛

[itskdog]

12 hours ago, DrBeaker said:

 

I'd say this bit https://www.gov.uk/guidance/meeting-digital-and-technology-standards-in-schools-and-colleges/laptops-desktops-and-tablets

 

 

 

 

In "When to meet the standard" it only says when purchasing new devices (other than the OS requirement which should be in place already), and it doesn't say you have to throw them out as soon as the warranty expires, just that when you purchase them they should have 5 years of manufacturer support left (which I would assume means 14th Gen/Series 2 Intels or whatever the new AMD equivalents are now they've both reset their numbering schemes, not the 12th Gens being quoted earlier in this thread, as any PCs being sold with those must already be a few years old by now)

[msi_school]

23 minutes ago, itskdog said:

 

In "When to meet the standard" it only says when purchasing new devices (other than the OS requirement which should be in place already), and it doesn't say you have to throw them out as soon as the warranty expires, just that when you purchase them they should have 5 years of manufacturer support left (which I would assume means 14th Gen/Series 2 Intels or whatever the new AMD equivalents are now they've both reset their numbering schemes, not the 12th Gens being quoted earlier in this thread, as any PCs being sold with those must already be a few years old by now)

I would say the DfE standard that applies to aged hardware is:

 

Devices should be safe and secure

Why this standard is important 

Keeping devices safe and secure will protect those who use them, the network and the data on them. This will: 

• make it easier to apply security and safeguarding policies to each device 
• minimise the risk of cyber security incidents and data breaches 

If the device is not getting updates is is not applying security and safeguarding polices and thus also it no longer minimises the risks of cyber security incidents.

[itskdog]

1 hour ago, msi_school said:

I would say the DfE standard that applies to aged hardware is:

 

Devices should be safe and secure

Why this standard is important 

Keeping devices safe and secure will protect those who use them, the network and the data on them. This will: 

• make it easier to apply security and safeguarding policies to each device 
• minimise the risk of cyber security incidents and data breaches 

If the device is not getting updates is is not applying security and safeguarding polices and thus also it no longer minimises the risks of cyber security incidents.

 

Usually I find that driver updates continue to come out through Windows Update even after the OEM stops publishing them on their own website, and of course Windows Updates are independent of the hardware itself, devices we bought in 2019 are supported for Windows 11 (albeit starting to show their age in terms of slowdowns, so we're planning on retiring them once we've retired our Windows 10 devices that we've put ESUs on)

 

[DavR]

4 minutes ago, itskdog said:

 

Usually I find that driver updates continue to come out through Windows Update even after the OEM stops publishing them on their own website, and of course Windows Updates are independent of the hardware itself, devices we bought in 2019 are supported for Windows 11 (albeit starting to show their age in terms of slowdowns, so we're planning on retiring them once we've retired our Windows 10 devices that we've put ESUs on)

 

I suppose the argument on that one is that yes you're getting Windows Updates, and driver updates, but are you getting BIOS updates? These seem to be more relevant these days due to Meltdown and Spectre, then the Secure Boot certificate updates. 

 

It depends on your risk appetite though, what level of "supported" you're willing to accept. I'd say that our "fully supported" devices are in the minority, here, at the moment. And I'd be surprised if there are many schools who are fully supported for every device, even if they've cleared the hurdle of being a supported config for Windows 11.

[itskdog]

5 minutes ago, DavR said:

I suppose the argument on that one is that yes you're getting Windows Updates, and driver updates, but are you getting BIOS updates? These seem to be more relevant these days due to Meltdown and Spectre, then the Secure Boot certificate updates. 

 

It depends on your risk appetite though, what level of "supported" you're willing to accept. I'd say that our "fully supported" devices are in the minority, here, at the moment. And I'd be surprised if there are many schools who are fully supported for every device, even if they've cleared the hurdle of being a supported config for Windows 11.

 

For our ProBooks, BIOS Updates have been coming through via Windows Update without issue, only our cheaper HP 250 laptops haven't been getting those as while they come with Windows Pro, they have the consumer BIOS from Insyde rather than HP's in-house "commercial" BIOS.

 

I still remember when the conventional wisdom was "Only install BIOS updates if you're having an issue that the update might resolve".

[TheRobins]

Recently done an upgrade to an older i3 machine to Windows 11 (it only hosts our weather station)

 

 

I did ask co-pilot, and it seems to be they dont mind older gen CPU's as long as they have a TPM2.0 chip. 

 

Its response was - 

 

Perfect — that’s actually a very good position to be in.

Your Core i3‑6100T (6th‑gen Skylake) is unsupported only because of Microsoft’s CPU allow‑list, not because of TPM. Since you already have TPM 2.0, upgrading to Windows 11 is straightforward and relatively low‑risk.

Below is the best approach specifically for your hardware.

---

✅ Your Situation (Summary)

• ✅ TPM 2.0 present → excellent
• ✅ Likely supports UEFI & Secure Boot
• ❌ CPU unsupported (Intel 6th gen) → artificial block
• ✅ Windows 11 runs very well on i3‑6100T in practice

➡ You only need to bypass the CPU check

 

 

[DavR]

2 minutes ago, TheRobins said:

❌ CPU unsupported (Intel 6th gen) → artificial block

 

LOL, interesting response from Co Pilot, of all things, that the CPU check is an "artificial" block 😂 Can we quote you on that, Microsoft?

 

Still failing the minimum spec though, and as such unsupported / support could be withdrawn at any time. Albeit a lesser risk.

[TheRobins]

My thoughts entirely, But I am sure Microsoft wouldnt allow it to say it if it wasnt true,

 

I wouldnt use it on user devices, but for the weather station it will do for now. 

[ICTDirect_Dave]

6 hours ago, itskdog said:

 

which I would assume means 14th Gen/Series 2 Intels or whatever the new AMD equivalents are now they've both reset their numbering schemes, not the 12th Gens being quoted earlier in this thread

Actually, you'd be just fine with the 12th gens I reckon (of course i would, I'm selling em).  HP's most recent bios update for the 8th gen 800 g4 was just before christmas last year.

You get long-term support with the top-tier kit from the main manufacturers.