MS-DOS games will run perfectly fine on your pc. Doom(1993), Doom II, all the quake games from the 90s. Also early 2000s xp/vista games should work as well. Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Bioshock, The Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind and The Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion.
Pretty much any game from 2006 and earlier should work for the most part on your pc. To the extent of performance, I am not 100% sure on it. But the earlier you go, the better. Windows XP games and MS-DOS games are your best friend.
Steam has many of these however I highly suggest you look into GOG.com ; its a great site for older games and they have even better sales at times than even Steam. They also have better versions of some of the classic dungeon crawlers and other rpgs and strategy games. Most of the games on GOG comes with a digital version of their manuals.
You can also go the emulation route but that has become more difficult these days with Sony and Nintendo cracking down on rom and emulator sites. But I'd be careful and do your research as some sites aren't exactly safe.