Best $75-100 used cpu

[Mattsoup]

I'm building a budget rig for gaming and some light cad work. I have about $100 budgeted to cpu and I know I can get a better chip used than new. Since I'm not used to buying used parts I'd love some input on where to look and what to look for in the price range.

[Amazingasian]

I'm building a budget rig for gaming and some light cad work. I have about $100 budgeted to cpu and I know I can get a better chip used than new. Since I'm not used to buying used parts I'd love some input on where to look and what to look for in the price range.

Might be able to find a used i5-2500k.  I would definitely look for an unlocked i5 with 4 cores.

[minibois]

i5 4460 could be in that price barely, maybe i5 4440.

You could look into older socket like Ivy and Sandy bridge, but if you do that you must make sure you can find a good motherboard for it.

 

Best case scenario you can find a second hand 2600 or even 2600K, but LGA 1155 boards are not easily found much anymore. Especially overclocking ones (Z77)

[ZestyJalapeno]

You can probably get a used i5 3570k/2500k/3570/2500 if you look hard enough and try as many auctions as you can on eBay. These will work with chipsets H61, B65, B75, Z68, H77, Z77, and some others but that's all I can list, pretty much any mainstream LGA 1155 board and you can find them somewhere. 

[Bananasplit_00]

unlocked quad core is probably your best bet for preformance

[Mattsoup]

You can probably get a used i5 3570k if you look hard enough and try as many auctions as you can on eBay.

I know basically nothing about cpus, so I need a range of model numbers or something to look for. The only real requirement is to not bottleneck an r9 380, Radeon 7950, or gtx 960 or lower

[jimakos234]

you could find an ivy/sandy bridge i5 for a good price, or a socket 1366 i7

or a fx8320E/fx 8350/fx 8320

[ZestyJalapeno]

I know basically nothing about cpus, so I need a range of model numbers or something to look for. The only real requirement is to not bottleneck an r9 380, Radeon 7950, or gtx 960 or lower

Okay.

 

These are the list of Intel Ivy/Sandy Bridge (2nd and 3rd gen) CPUs that you can probably find floating around:

 

Sandy Bridge:

 

i5 2500

i5 2500k (k denotes an unlocked chip so you can overclock but I wouldn't go anywhere near overclocking a used chip from 2012)

 

Ivy Bridge:

 

i5 3470

i5 3570

and i5 3570k

 

None of these quad cores will bottleneck any graphics card. They're faster per clock than even what AMD is selling now and whatever is in the consoles.

 

They will reliably work on motherboards with these LGA 1155 (the socket they have for the CPU) chipsets without needing a BIOS update:

 

Z77

Q77

H77

Q75

B75

Z75

Z68

Q67

Q65

O67

H67

H61

B65

 

Of these chipsets, the ones you can still probably find today are Z77, Z68, H61 and B65 but I'm sure there are some others on the used market. If there's a letter after the chipset ie. B65M,  don't worry that just denotes the size of the motherboard.

 

My advice is to buy a new H61 board because you don't want them going wrong in the future. CPUs on the other hand usually never break down if you don't abuse them.

[Gerr]

Use Passmark.com's CPU Benchmarks to gauge the general CPU horsepower of various CPU's and pick the best bang for the buck you can find.