Need cpu opinions for new build

Dark_Fuzzy · December 28, 2015

So now that Christmas is over i finally have the money to get away from my old Q6600. Case,gpu,psu and hd are all taken care of now time to buy the rest.

Firstly i have about 250USD(150 of that is an amazon gift card) to put towards a board,ram and cpu with another 100 in a few weeks.

Currently for the board I'm looking for something decent right at $100 or less.

For ram I'm looking at a single stick of HyperX 8gb 1866 and I'll toss in another stick as soon as i can.

So that leaves me with about $200 for the cpu. I've been looking at either an i3 4170 or an i5 4460.

Both look fairly good for the games i play(Mostly Warframe, World of Tanks, and Elite Dangerous) but id like to be able to run games like The Witcher 3, Fallout 4, ARK, and maybe Arma 3. My question is how well will the i3 run things only having two physical cores and the i5 only turboing to 3.4ghz.

If anyone has either of these two please do share how well they run some of the above games. And if anyone has better cpu suggestions I'll gladly accept them. I'm also not completly turned away from buying used parts except for maybe the board.

HKZeroFive · December 28, 2015

This should do nicely. I'd recommend getting a CPU cooler like the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO for $25 for overclocking as soon as possible, if not now:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($223.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Motherboard: Asus Z97-A ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($92.98 @ Newegg)

Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($39.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Total: $356.96

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-12-28 01:51 EST-0500

As for knowing how it runs on games, I'd need to know what your GPU is. But the i5 shouldn't bottleneck any GPU.

Dark_Fuzzy · December 28, 2015

I'll be using an Asus strix gtx 960 2gb. I didn't think any desktop i5 would really bottleneck much but i've been seeing mixed opinions on the 4460.

HKZeroFive · December 28, 2015

I'll be using an Asus strix gtx 960 2gb. I didn't think any desktop i5 would really bottleneck much but i've been seeing mixed opinions on the 4460.

If you plan on overclocking, go for the build I gave you. If you don't, then go for a i5 4460 and a H97 mobo and save some money. The i5 4460 is an excellent CPU and shouldn't bottleneck.

I'm unfamiliar with Elite Dangerous' required specs but both CPUs should run Warframe, WoT, Fallout 4, Witcher 3 with Hairworks off at 1080p at around 60 fps with the GTX 960. ARK runs like garbage for pretty much everyone so I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't run well for you.