Unsure about CPU choice

[Devryd]

Budget (including currency): about 1000€

Country: Germany

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: mainly gaming

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

Only the PC is needed.

 

Hi guys,

I am planning a rig for a friend and I am not really sure which CPU I should choose. He is mainly gaming on the PC but also a little bit of protein folding (studing pharmacy at universaty), but that wont happen a lot. I have 3 CPU choices and I dont really which one to chose:
r5 5600x
i5 12400f
i3 12100f

All of these GPUs will likely be paired with a GTX 1070 or 1080.
What would you chose?
Afaik, the Ryzen CPU should be a little better than the others, but not a whole lot. The i3 is good for gaming and also a little bit cheaper, but has less power in productivity workloads.

Thanks for your help

[RONOTHAN##]

It will depend a lot on the prices you can find these parts for (I don't know the German market well enough to know where to look for pricing). For most scenarios, the 12400F and 5600X will be about the same performance, and since the 12400F is usually quite a bit cheaper, it would be my choice with a cheaper H670-B660 board. If they're the same price though, I'd probably go for the 5600X since the motherboards tend to be a bit cheaper. 

 

The 12100F is a really good CPU, but if the system will do real work, the extra 2 cores will be greatly appreciated since it would mean he can fold in the background while he plays games, or if he just wants to leave it to fold, it would be about 2/3 the time (I think that's how the numbers work out, mental math is hard). I'd only go for the i3 if it's the difference in price between say a 1080 and a 1080 Ti or some higher tier GPU, or if you just can't fit the i5 or R5 in your budget.

[Devryd]

1 minute ago, RONOTHAN## said:

For most scenarios, the 12400F and 5600X will be about the same performance, and since the 12400F is usually quite a bit cheaper, it would be my choice with a cheaper H670-B660 board. If they're the same price though, I'd probably go for the 5600X since the motherboards tend to be a bit cheaper. 

The i5 is about 50 Euros cheaper but the boards are, as you said a little more expensive. With a cheap h660 board, the intel system is still about 30€ cheaper. I think I will go with the intel then.