what really is a value gaming CPU choice?

[atavax]

building a PC for a friend. wants to spend as little as possible, still would like to not have to upgrade anything but videocard for a long time. My brother is still using a i7 2600k for gaming. Like, the more i'm looking at CPUs it just seems like for gaming everything is so overkill. If we separate CPU hardware into tiers of budget, value, performance, and enthusiast, what are value CPUs for gaming? Can I justify i3ss and r3's? Also are there anything in the newest gens of motherboards that like he might regret not having in 5 years? Like my brother wants a new CPU/motherboard just so he can use m.2 SSDs...

[Dukesilver27-]

If you're in the US, 12400F is a pretty good value at $160, couple that with a decent B660M like $120-150 ish, you get a solid gaming CPU and board. 

If you want to go cheaper, Ryzen 5600 or 5600x with a cheap decent B550 board is also an option, would perform less than the 12400F, but could be quite a bit cheaper. 

SSD is certainly very important, a fast CPU alone can't make a PC runs fast and smooth. 

If you are on a very tight budget, cant go wrong with 12100. Although getting a 4 core cpu for gaming now is a bit of a gamble, game devs might start coding their game to utilize 8 cores because current gen consoles have 8 cores. 

[atavax]

15 minutes ago, Dukesilver27- said:

If you're in the US, 12400F is a pretty good value at $160, couple that with a decent B660M like $120-150 ish, you get a solid gaming CPU and board. 

If you want to go cheaper, Ryzen 5600 or 5600x with a cheap decent B550 board is also an option, would perform less than the 12400F, but could be quite a bit cheaper. 

SSD is certainly very important, a fast CPU alone can't make a PC runs fast and smooth. 

If you are on a very tight budget, cant go wrong with 12100. Although getting a 4 core cpu for gaming now is a bit of a gamble, game devs might start coding their game to utilize 8 cores because current gen consoles have 8 cores. 

thanks, I was leaning towards the 12400F honestly. I am in the US. Money isn't super tight, it's just not a burning money type of thing. I don't want to be like oh yeah, you need to spend $400 on a CPU.

[Brooksie359]

37 minutes ago, atavax said:

thanks, I was leaning towards the 12400F honestly. I am in the US. Money isn't super tight, it's just not a burning money type of thing. I don't want to be like oh yeah, you need to spend $400 on a CPU.

I think there is always a happy middle ground especially with gaming in mind. I find that i5s from intel are usually the best value for gaming along with r5s from AMD. Anything higher than that and you usually don't get a big enough bump in performance to justify the cost. That being said I wouldn't go with an i3 or r3 cpu as then you will more than likely need to upgrade your cpu much sooner and cost more money in the long run. 

[atavax]

3 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

I think there is always a happy middle ground especially with gaming in mind. I find that i5s from intel are usually the best value for gaming along with r5s from AMD. Anything higher than that and you usually don't get a big enough bump in performance to justify the cost. That being said I wouldn't go with an i3 or r3 cpu as then you will more than likely need to upgrade your cpu much sooner and cost more money in the long run. 

yeah, i'm leaning towards an i5, but like, is an i3 really going to need to be replaced? Like how many people are really having issues with a modern i3 bottlenecking their games?

[Brooksie359]

Just now, atavax said:

yeah, i'm leaning towards an i5, but like, is an i3 really going to need to be replaced? Like how many people are really having issues with a modern i3 bottlenecking their games?

Depending on the game yes the i3 will start to bottleneck in demanding AAA games especially as time goes on and games get more multithreaded. Also its not like you save all that much money skimping for an i3 yet you are giving up quite a bit in terms of hardware. I would say that it would be foolish to save a couple of bucks on the i3 only to have to upgrade the cpu much sooner than you would have with an i5. 

[RandomLord]

I’d say the r5 5600 is the budget king, with 6 cores and 12 threads, all for $138, coupled with the cheaper b550 boards, you really can’t beat the bang for buck of that combo.

[Deadpool2onBlu-Ray]

6 hours ago, atavax said:

building a PC for a friend. wants to spend as little as possible, still would like to not have to upgrade anything but videocard for a long time. My brother is still using a i7 2600k for gaming. Like, the more i'm looking at CPUs it just seems like for gaming everything is so overkill. If we separate CPU hardware into tiers of budget, value, performance, and enthusiast, what are value CPUs for gaming? Can I justify i3ss and r3's? Also are there anything in the newest gens of motherboards that like he might regret not having in 5 years? Like my brother wants a new CPU/motherboard just so he can use m.2 SSDs...

Anything over a Ryzen 5600/I5 12400 is kind of overkill unless you're running a really high end GPU. I would go for one of those or wait for the 13400 in January