Budget Gaming CPU

[Nrx]

I need help deciding on a budget CPU for gaming. I mostly play GPU based games and my GTX 970 handles that well. I want a budget CPU that wont bottleneck this GPU but is all around good for gaming.

 

Nothing above 210 pleaseeeeee 

[GDRRiley]

2 minutes ago, Nrx said:

I need help deciding on a budget CPU for gaming. I mostly play GPU based games and my GTX 970 handles that well. I want a budget CPU that wont bottleneck this GPU but is all around good for gaming.

 

Nothing above 210 pleaseeeeee 

what CPU do you have right now

[Cela1]

210... what currency?

[Nrx]

1 minute ago, GDRRiley said:

what CPU do you have right now

4440

[Nrx]

1 minute ago, Cela1 said:

210... what currency?

Oh sorry USD
 

[GDRRiley]

4 minutes ago, Nrx said:

I need help deciding on a budget CPU for gaming.

[henkka_scorpio]

with a discount you could get a i5-6600/6500 for the price point.

 

[GDRRiley]

http://pcpartpicker.com/product/dY3RsY/intel-cpu-bx80646e31220v3 that should do well sorry am having some issues with the forum. Why do you need something better your FPS will not go up much  

[Cela1]

4 minutes ago, Nrx said:

Oh sorry USD

Would 210 be for mobo and CPU or just CPU? And the 4440 is still pretty capable so I don't see any need to upgrade anyways.

[Nrx]

4 minutes ago, Cela1 said:

Would 210 be for mobo and CPU or just CPU? And the 4440 is still pretty capable so I don't see any need to upgrade anyways.

My computer is very slow. Takes about 30 seconds to start up anything except Chrome

[Knaj]

2 minutes ago, Nrx said:

My computer is very slow. Takes about 30 seconds to start up anything except Chrome

Check for viruses or malware.

Also check your startup menu and remove unnecessary tasks

[GrissmIN]

14 minutes ago, Nrx said:

I need help deciding on a budget CPU for gaming. I mostly play GPU based games and my GTX 970 handles that well. I want a budget CPU that wont bottleneck this GPU but is all around good for gaming.

 

Nothing above 210 pleaseeeeee 

Your current CPU will not bottleneck your GPU at all. The Haswell i5's are great CPU's. I used to run a Ivy Bridge i5 in my PC with a 970. I have never experienced any bottleneck issues with it. The truth is that most games still don't utilize more than 1 or 2 cores. If you really want to upgrade your CPU, I would save up money and wait until you can afford an i7 and get a real performance boost. 

However, if you don't feel you need the i7 for actual computing power, you can put your budget into something like a new PC case, and NZXT Hue for RGB lighting, etc. and just make your PC look bad ass. Perhaps some custom sleeving for your PSU.

 

To branch off what Cela1 and Knaj have posted--

 

If you do not yet have an SSD as a boot drive, get one. That should be your first upgrade. SSD's will gain you HUGE performance boosts in day to day tasks, launch times, etc. 

Also, yeah run a few programs such as CCleaner, Malwarebytes, and AdwareCleaner from bleeping computer to check and make sure there are no viruses on your PC.

[Cela1]

4 minutes ago, Nrx said:

My computer is very slow. Takes about 30 seconds to start up anything except Chrome

That may be a slow hard drive or low ram levels not the CPU, do you mind sharing your system specs?

[Knaj]

4 minutes ago, Cela1 said:

That may be a slow hard drive or low ram levels not the CPU, do you mind sharing your system specs?

Agreed, the 4440 shouldn't be bottle necking a 970 whatsoever

[Nrx]

2 minutes ago, Cela1 said:

That may be a slow hard drive or low ram levels, do you mind sharing your system specs?

Yeah sure, but to note, i got this PC as a gift a very long time ago and my parent bought it from Alienware. So the Mobo is from alienware. Ive rebuild it in a new case and got a new GPU tho. 

 

CPU - 4440 (Stock fan) 

GPU- GTX 970 ACX Superclocked

Seagate 1tb 

2x 4gb ram sticks from alienware

600 watt PSU (Unknown brand cus im too lazy to take apart my case ATM) 

(If i missed anything just tell me cus im pretty tired right now)

[GrissmIN]

10 minutes ago, Knaj said:

Check for viruses or malware.

Also check your startup menu and remove unnecessary tasks

I would say the culprit of the slow system is the Seagate hard drive. I would invest in a solid SSD from a brand such as Kingston, Samsung, or Intel and have it as your boot drive, and then keep the Seagate as a mass storage drive for things you do not access often. 

 

I have found that after about 3-4 years HDD performance really starts to decline. 

 

Samsung Evo -500GB SSD - this is a solid choice, comes in various capacity for your data needs.

[Nrx]

3 minutes ago, GrissmIN said:

I would say the culprit of the slow system is the Seagate hard drive. I would invest in a solid SSD from a brand such as Kingston, Samsung, or Intel and have it as your boot drive, and then keep the Seagate as a mass storage drive for things you do not access often. 

Upgrade the motherboard? Also any recommendations for an SSD

[Cracklingice]

What 4400?  There are many and this is just the intel side.

http://ark.intel.com/products/88179/Intel-Pentium-Processor-G4400-3M-Cache-3_30-GHz

http://ark.intel.com/products/76292/Intel-Core-i5-4400E-Processor-3M-Cache-up-to-3_30-GHz

http://ark.intel.com/products/29753/Intel-Core2-Duo-Processor-E4400-2M-Cache-2_00-GHz-800-MHz-FSB

http://ark.intel.com/products/40739/Intel-Pentium-Processor-T4400-1M-Cache-2_20-GHz-800-MHz-FSB-Socket-P

[GrissmIN]

1 minute ago, Nrx said:

Upgrade the motherboard? Also any recommendations for an SSD

Upgrading the motherboard will not give you any performance gains. The only thing you might gain is more SATA ports to connects drives to which it sounds like you will have at most 2, plus perhaps a DVD drive, and maybe new I/O on the back.

 

See my above post, I've linked an SSD from newegg. 

[Nrx]

2 minutes ago, Cracklingice said:

What 4400?  There are many and this is just the intel side.

http://ark.intel.com/products/88179/Intel-Pentium-Processor-G4400-3M-Cache-3_30-GHz

http://ark.intel.com/products/76292/Intel-Core-i5-4400E-Processor-3M-Cache-up-to-3_30-GHz

http://ark.intel.com/products/29753/Intel-Core2-Duo-Processor-E4400-2M-Cache-2_00-GHz-800-MHz-FSB

http://ark.intel.com/products/40739/Intel-Pentium-Processor-T4400-1M-Cache-2_20-GHz-800-MHz-FSB-Socket-P

All of those dont have three fours in the number. I have the i5 4440

[Cela1]

2 minutes ago, Nrx said:

Upgrade the motherboard? Also any recommendations for an SSD

Motherboard *should* be fine, I recommend a SSD that isn't a Kingston V-Now

[Dabombinable]

3 minutes ago, Nrx said:

All of those dont have three fours in the number. I have the i5 4440

Oh, that's fine then. Mine only bottlenecked my GTX 970 in very specific circumstances. Such as Fallout 4 while downtown and while it was raining (for quite a while I used my i5 4440 with my GTX 970, until I upgraded to the 4790K).

[GrissmIN]

2 minutes ago, Nrx said:

All of those dont have three fours in the number. I have the i5 4440

Samsung

Intel

These are some of the top SSD makers on the market. These are the 500 range GB size, but you can find them in smaller capacities such as 250 and 120GB for a cheaper price. 

[Cracklingice]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Core-i7-4770-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-3-90-GHz-SR149-/222184841709?hash=item33bb3fa1ed:g:KdEAAOSwygJXhZaY

 

Would have to double check to make sure your board supports it, but it should.  It's still fourth generation.  K skus for overclocking seem to be about 60 bucks more than the one I linked.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Core-i7-4770k-3-5-Ghz-Quad-Core-/162131324035?hash=item25bfc7ac83:g:1n0AAOSww9VXgRdu

 

I wouldn't think for the 210 usd you've requested that you could fit a motherboard and cpu that would be an upgrade from where you're at now.

 

You can then turn around and sell the i5 4440 on ebay for around 125-150 and use that cash to get a solid state drive if you want.  That would put you in pretty good spot.

[Pendragon]

1) Get a boot drive ssd. Samsung 850 Evos are the some of the best in the market. https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-850-EVO-2-5-Inch-MZ-75E250B/dp/B00OAJ412U/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1468454321&sr=8-2&keywords=850+evo

2) Do a fresh install. Manually backup every document or anything you want to keep and reformat the disk the HDD and install windows on the ssd. 

3) Get 2x4 stick of ram that would match the speed, and the CL latency of the alienware one (this is a bit flaky at times), or just get 2x8 gb sticks of whatever ddr3

 

Step 2 is just to remove any possibility of infected processes or malware. Completely optional to skip formatting the HDD.