In this video I look at upgrading from Windows 10 22H2 or Windows 11 23H2 on unsupported hardware. In this example I use a 7 year old OptiPlex 7050 with an i5-7500T, 16 GB of RAM, a NVMe SSD and a SMBIOS of 3.0. This system has all the technologies recommended for Windows 11 with exception to the processor. This high end 7th generation processor has higher capabilities than a low end 8th generation processor that Microsoft support, so this system runs okay.
Microsoft have placed a soft barrier that prevents upgrades on unsupported hardware by default however have outlined a registry bypass outlined below:
Note your millage may vary. Personally I would not recommend running Windows 11 on a system that has a processor below the hardware requirements of an 6th generation i3.