Performance difference between two (maybe three) CPUs.

December 31, 2015

Hello there,

First, I need to provide some background, I guess. I'm building myself a silent "workstation" - internal components will be cooled passively. Of course, I'm going to take a good care of case airflow, and it's going to be cooled by a silent 200mm fan on the front and additional exhaust fan/s - to be frank, Enthoo Evolv ITX gives me some wiggle room in that regard. The goal is obviously to get as silent as possible, and with that setup I believe I'll be able to go really low on the scale

The machine will be mostly used as my main working PC with some limited gaming capabilities (who doesn't enjoy some Hearthstone, SC2, CS:GO or League from time to time?) - and I'm basically asking to be 100% sure before I pull the trigger on either CPU.

What I already have is a passively cooled GTX 750Ti. I've tested it in another build of mine, with some airflow it won't exceed 80 degrees Celsius even if torture tested in Furmark for longer periods of time. During my typical "gaming" workloads it won't even hit 50-60, and while working it stays at comfy 30-35.

I also have a Zalman FX-70 0 dB cooler, which I can't wait to install. However, in order to install it, I need something to install it on.

And here's my question:

Obviously I'm limited to low-TDP CPUs, even though Zalman claims the cooler can easily handle even 95W TDP - not that I believe that claim, I'm not even willing to try.

Question is: Should I go for a 35W i5-4590T (2.0 GHz, 3.0 with TurboBoost), or should I rather get a 45W i5-4690T (2,5->3,5)? Or maybe go for something really crazy, such as the 35W TDP i7-4765T? (Now that's a CPU you rarely see in builds, isn't it?)

How noticeable will be the difference in performance between the 4590T and 4690T? Will the 500 MHz matter in the long run, especially given that I'm not going to run Witcher MCMDVIII or Star Citizen on it, and even if I wanted to, the GPU is kinda crappy anyway?

Also - just to make sure - wouldn't the GPU be a bottleneck in most cases anyway? I mean, people build budget gaming PCs with 4460s and 6400s and they run everything without any problems.

Thanks in advance for your answers and discussion

ZetZet · December 31, 2015

Definitely 4690T.

Or a Xeon, when running low clockspeed extra threads would be nice.

Morgan MLGman · December 31, 2015

Xeon E3-1231v3 has TDP of 80. Could it fit with your cooler?

December 31, 2015

Xeon E3-1231v3 has TDP of 80. Could it fit with your cooler?

Well, according to Zalman it would. They even claim it can cool LGA1155/6 i7 Extreme passively, but I hardly believe that claim, especially with their testing method - with 1 case fan.

Although I'm gonna need to try and source a Xeon then to test it with the cooler.

Definitely 4690T.

Or a Xeon, when running low clockspeed extra threads would be nice.

At first I thought about 1240Lv3 (25W TDP, 4c/8t 2GHz -> 3GHz TB), but they're.... Well, impossible to get anywhere, and it would be perfect for a build like that

Hans Power · December 31, 2015

If you're short on cash the 4590T will be more than enough, especially with that GPU. CPU power on almost any recent Intel Quad core will be more than enough for gaming since most games rely much more on the GPU anyway. That said if you want some wiggle room for the future and plan on a GPU update the 4690T would be a wiser choice.

Also these videos by Awesome Sauce Hardware might be helpful to you:

for part 1 &

for Part 2

Be aware that he uses an i5 6600K which runs cooler than the i5 4690k for example because Intel put the Power delivery on the board with Skylake while it's on the CPU with Haswell CPUs. You should get pretty good results on the 4690T, though but that's just an educated guess.