Good Upgrade On The Same Socket?

[RagePoweredGamer]

Hello you wonderful, wonderful people!

 

Short and sweet, I want to upgrade mom's computer. I built it a few years ago. She only played Runescape (and a LOT of Chrome) so I just threw an Intel Core i3-6300 in it. She's since picked up Elder Scrolls Online, and has 3 accounts. Having Chrome, and potentially multiple game instances open, I've noticed her pinning the CPU. I want to throw in an upgrade so she can do more things at once without slowing the PC to a crawl. She's got a PSU that came with the CoolerMaster case, which is like 400 watts, and only runs a Zotac 1050ti for her GPU, so the PSU calculator on Newegg says that only needs 276 watts. I figure that gives a bit of headroom to get her some more horsepower. Funds are tight this year, so I can't exactly just grab a Core i7 9th gen, upgrade the PSU, etc. So I wanted to ask the collective of hardware geniuses what I could put in there without changing other hardware.  Thank you for reading/helping!

LOVE YOU GUYS! 

[aisle9]

i7-6700K if it's a Z-board, i7-6700 if it's not. There's really no value in an i5 from 7th gen or earlier anymore. A straight four cores isn't gonna do much for you.

[RagePoweredGamer]

3 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

i7-6700K if it's a Z-board, i7-6700 if it's not. There's really no value in an i5 from 7th gen or earlier anymore. A straight four cores isn't gonna do much for you.

By straight 4, are you implying no hyperthreading? Because her current i3 DOES say it has hyperthreading. Obviously I don't want to drop that feature, but I didn't think that all i5's were sans HT. Doesn't that socket fit newer gens, too?

[SirWendall]

The 6700k is aging. I'll say for what my wife plays its fine. She doesn't run any MMOs but plays Sims 4, Apex Legends, and Halo Infinite. Its also paired with a GTX 1070 and overclocked to 4.7GHz.

[aisle9]

2 minutes ago, ragepoweredgamer said:

By straight 4, are you implying no hyperthreading? Because her current i3 DOES say it has hyperthreading. Obviously I don't want to drop that feature, but I didn't think that all i5's were sans HT. Doesn't that socket fit newer gens, too?

The 7000 series (aka Pointless Lake) CPUs will work with Skylake boards, so you could go to an i7-7700/7700K if you wanted. i5s from that generation do not have hyperthreading. The Skylake and Pointless Lake i3s did have hyperthreading; however, they were only dual core chips, so 2C/4T. Worse than an i5 with no HT, but a four-core chip with no HT isn't going to be very useful in 2021.

[jaslion]

7 minutes ago, ragepoweredgamer said:

By straight 4, are you implying no hyperthreading? Because her current i3 DOES say it has hyperthreading. Obviously I don't want to drop that feature, but I didn't think that all i5's were sans HT. Doesn't that socket fit newer gens, too?

6th and 7th gen will work 8th and 9th gen whilst using the same socket are NOT compatible due to changes intel made.

 

What is important is that you get either a 6700(k) or 7700(k) for at most 100$ anything more is to the point where just doing a platform swap is the better option. The i7's are also the only cpu's worthwhile as they meet the current min spec of 8threads for new games and it is basically mandatory if you have some stuff open in the background.

 

These cpu's compare to some of the lowest end new ones we have today.

[RagePoweredGamer]

7 minutes ago, jaslion said:

6th and 7th gen will work 8th and 9th gen whilst using the same socket are NOT compatible due to changes intel made.

 

What is important is that you get either a 6700(k) or 7700(k) for at most 100$ anything more is to the point where just doing a platform swap is the better option. The i7's are also the only cpu's worthwhile as they meet the current min spec of 8threads for new games and it is basically mandatory if you have some stuff open in the background.

 

These cpu's compare to some of the lowest end new ones we have today.

"new games"
We're talking about running Elder Scrolls Online (which she PREFERS on minimum settings) and Google Chrome. She really doesn't like other games, except for ones not worth mentioning like Skyrim, Terraria, Stardew Valley, Talos Principle, etc. 
As for those CPUs, looking at $180+ for a used one on Ebay for a 6700.

[YoungBlade]

7 minutes ago, ragepoweredgamer said:

"new games"
We're talking about running Elder Scrolls Online (which she PREFERS on minimum settings) and Google Chrome. She really doesn't like other games, except for ones not worth mentioning like Skyrim, Terraria, Stardew Valley, Talos Principle, etc. 
As for those CPUs, looking at $180+ for a used one on Ebay for a 6700.

Minimum settings puts less strain on the graphics card, but it generally only offers minor improvements for the CPU. In fact, because the graphics card is outputting more frames, it often puts more load onto the CPU.

 

If $180 is the cheapest you can find for an i7, you can consider an i5 6400/6600 or 7400/7600, but I wouldn't pay more than $75 for one. Ideally, you'd pay $50 or less. It's an upgrade, but compared to the current market, it's not great price to performance compared to what you have.

 

An i5 will offer better performance than the i3, you're only looking at about 40% better, as you are gaining 2 cores and some frequency, but not gaining threads, as you lose HT. The 6700 or 7700 should offer nearly double the performance, as you double the cores and threads while also increasing the clockspeed. In multithreading situations, those threads matter.

[jaslion]

12 minutes ago, ragepoweredgamer said:

"new games"
We're talking about running Elder Scrolls Online (which she PREFERS on minimum settings) and Google Chrome. She really doesn't like other games, except for ones not worth mentioning like Skyrim, Terraria, Stardew Valley, Talos Principle, etc. 
As for those CPUs, looking at $180+ for a used one on Ebay for a 6700.

A i5 won't help and 180 for a 6700 is a stupid ripoff. Literally cheaper to get like a second gen ryzen 2600 + b450 board new and it will be better.