Xeon E3-1230v5 vs i5-6600

[divided_throwaway]

I know that Xeons are not really designed for consumers, but I thought that I might get it for a possible rig, if I can afford it. It might be somewhat likely, since I spent £700 on a rig that I'm going to return, and I might get £100 later on; granted, I don't think I've been refunded when my order of a monitor through Amazon got cancelled, I haven't yet been paid for the work I done to get the £100 and I'm a bit worried I'll not get the money at all as a result, even though I might not need the system at all.

 

The CPU's cheaper and slower than the Skylake i7s, but unlike the i5s, it has extra threads, and is a bit more expensive than the i5s IIRC. I might be able to benefit from the extra threads during game development, since I noticed that in Task Manager that all the threads on the i7s in the computers in college are being used in heavy rendering tasks. I read from this website that 3D rendering is mostly GPU bound, but the bottom comment was saying it was CPU bound (and the thread got closed from some necroposter):

 

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2202924/xeon-rendering.html

 

I insist on using Skylake CPUs for a better upgrade path (i.e. no need to swap out RAM as well) and that sweet USB 3.0 that two of my hard drives are already using unlike my current laptop, but I feel like it's easier to upgrade the GPU than the CPU despite that. If I do get pissed with the Xeon, I could always replace it with a Kaby Lake i7 later on.

 

I've only seen one or two benchmark pages between these two CPUs, and I'm curious to know a bit more about it if possible:

 

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-E3-1230V5-vs-Intel-Core-i5-6600

 

Here's my build log: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/7Nx2bj

[Xanthe_2871]

This isn't really my area of expertise, but I think that looks like a solid plan. If you plan to use it for heavily multi-threaded applications then this should work very nicely!

 

Do you need a black WD drive though? Why not blue? It's cheaper.

[1Reshiram12]

6 minutes ago, divided_throwaway said:

I know that Xeons are not really designed for consumers, but I thought that I might get it for a possible rig, if I can afford it. It might be somewhat likely, since I spent £700 on a rig that I'm going to return, and I might get £100 later on; granted, I don't think I've been refunded when my order of a monitor through Amazon got cancelled, and I'm a bit worried I'll not get the money at all as a result, even though I might not need the system at all.

 

The CPU's cheaper and slower than the Skylake i7s, but unlike the i5s, it has extra threads, and is a bit more expensive than the i5s IIRC. I might be able to benefit from the extra threads during game development, since I noticed that in Task Manager that all the threads on the i7s in the computers in college are being used in heavy rendering tasks. I read from this website that 3D rendering is mostly GPU bound, but the bottom comment was saying it was CPU bound (and the thread got closed from some necroposter):

 

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2202924/xeon-rendering.html

 

I insist on using Skylake CPUs for a better upgrade path (i.e. no need to swap out RAM as well) and that sweet USB 3.0 that two of my hard drives are already using unlike my current laptop, but I feel like it's easier to upgrade the GPU than the CPU despite that. If I do get pissed with the Xeon, I could always replace it with a Kaby Lake i7 later on.

 

I've only seen one or two benchmark pages between these two CPUs, and I'm curious to know a bit more about it if possible:

 

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-E3-1230V5-vs-Intel-Core-i5-6600

 

Here's my build log: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/7Nx2bj

Well you can sue amazon and get a nice little boost to your budget lol. I would go with the i5 however, because the faster single thread will make up for the slower extra threads imo.

[divided_throwaway]

Just now, Xanthe_2871 said:

This isn't really my area of expertise, but I think that looks like a solid plan. If you plan to use it for heavily multi-threaded applications then this should work very nicely!

Thing is, I might consider making YT videos, but I don't consider myself a creative professional (yet). At the very least, Chrome and Firefox have some multithreading, and because of my currently entry-level system requirements, I use those very often.

[Xanthe_2871]

1 minute ago, divided_throwaway said:

Thing is, I might consider making YT videos, but I don't consider myself a creative professional (yet). At the very least, Chrome and Firefox have some multithreading, and because of my currently entry-level system requirements, I use those very often.

I think that processor will do fine in anything that doesn't require a single, super powerful core.

[divided_throwaway]

7 minutes ago, 1Reshiram12 said:

Well you can sue amazon and get a nice little boost to your budget lol. I would go with the i5 however, because the faster single thread will make up for the slower extra threads imo.

I'll check my bank statement in a while, since it'll take time to record all the transactions that have gone through.

 

I know the i5 is more practical, but a) Intel's integrated graphics are useless for all but office workers and average consumers and b) why not a Xeon? I just wanna be a little crazy here.

 

The only barriers for me are cost and availability, and then the i5 will be the only option for me.

[divided_throwaway]

7 minutes ago, Xanthe_2871 said:

This isn't really my area of expertise, but I think that looks like a solid plan. If you plan to use it for heavily multi-threaded applications then this should work very nicely!

 

Do you need a black WD drive though? Why not blue? It's cheaper.

Blue only runs at 5800 RPM, and I have a broken WD Scorpio Blue laptop hard drive (from improper shutting down, since some Linux distros take a long time to shut down). If I want to game on it, I need a bit more reliability and speed than what's offered on standard hard drives.

 

Still, they're cheaper per gigabyte than the external hard drives that my uni offers. I got a 4 TB HDD from eBay for £110, they sell 2 TB hard drives at uni for £99. Granted, I've got a Seagate brand, and they're notorious for their unreliability for anything outside average consumer use.

[kjvnasa]

I'd go for the xeon but that is just personal preference