Best Price to Performance CPU

[Zeorth]

I’ve been looking at a lot of CPU’s and I just can’t decide which one to buy. So what do you get think is the best price to performance gaming cpu and 1080p with a GTX 1080

[Sir Asvald]

GTX 1080 is way overkill for 1080p gaming. What is your budget for the CPU?

[RobFRaschke]

If you're going to overclock, the Ryzen 3 1400, if you're not I'd got with the i3-8100 or 8300. IMHO. 

[Yqmxh]

i5-8400 or i3-8100

[Zeorth]

5 hours ago, Abdul201588 said:

GTX 1080 is way overkill for 1080p gaming. What is your budget for the CPU?

Not really a set number. I’ve been looking at the i7 8700, i5 8400, Ryzen 5 2600X and Ryzen 7 2700X. I can’t decide

 

5 hours ago, RobFRaschke said:

If you're going to overclock, the Ryzen 3 1400, if you're not I'd got with the i3-8100 or 8300. IMHO. 

I’m not overclocking. 

[subrooz]

5 hours ago, OreoPandas said:

Not really a set number. I’ve been looking at the i7 8700, i5 8400, Ryzen 5 2600X and Ryzen 7 2700X. I can’t decide

 

I’m not overclocking. 

If you're not overclocking, I suggest the Ryzen 5 2600X or the Ryzen 7 2700X if you can afford to spend on it. They both come with an amazing stock cooler, and since you don't want to overclock, its a good choice. 

 

Also to touch on the GTX 1080. If you plan to only play 1080p, a GTX 1070 is more than enough, even a 1060 can manage with most games. However if you plan to upscale in the future, then the GTX 1080 will be good.

 

[Zeorth]

1 minute ago, subrooz said:

If you're not overclocking, I suggest the Ryzen 5 2600X or the Ryzen 7 2700X if you can afford to spend on it. They both come with an amazing stock cooler, and since you don't want to overclock, its a good choice. 

 

Also to touch on the GTX 1080. If you plan to only play 1080p, a GTX 1070 is more than enough, even a 1060 can manage with most games. However if you plan to upscale in the future, then the GTX 1080 will be good.

 

I already have the GTX 1080. I was looking at ryzen but then a lot of people said that since I’m only gaming I should go for Intel but idk. 

[Zeorth]

So I’m getting a cpu purely for gaming to pair with my GTX 1080. I’ve been looking a lot and it seems like the best price to performance cpus are Ryzen 5 2600X and the i5 8400. Which one should I pick and are there any better ones? I won’t be overclocking and planing on using the stock cooler. And which motherboard?

[Firewrath9]

2 minutes ago, OreoPandas said:

So I’m getting a cpu purely for gaming to pair with my GTX 1080. I’ve been looking a lot and it seems like the best price to performance cpus are Ryzen 5 2600X and the i5 8400. Which one should I pick and are there any better ones? I won’t be overclocking and planing on using the stock cooler. And which motherboard?

the i5-8600k is my choice, the ryzen is better than the 8400, but only because its a lot more expensive. Ryzen is better for multitasking and as for mobos, for the ryzen, get a nice cheap x470 mobo from anyone but msi. for the 8400, get the cheapest b360 mobo and as for the 8600k get a z370 HD3 or HD3P as they perform pretty well and are really cheap. 

[Blebekblebek]

Doesn't matter which one you prefer, if "cheaper" is what you looking for then you are going to spend more for DDR4 Ram anyway

But technically, Ryzen is a better choice

[Emberstone]

For pure gaming you're better off with an Intel processor as Ryzen is usually a bit behind in that regard. As Firewrath9 said, getting at least an 8600K would suit you a bit better than an 8400 if you've got a GTX 1080, but it would still do fine and shouldn't bottleneck the GPU except in fairly CPU-bound scenarios, like e-sports titles and MMO's.

[Zeorth]

1 hour ago, Firewrath9 said:

the i5-8600k is my choice, the ryzen is better than the 8400, but only because its a lot more expensive. Ryzen is better for multitasking and as for mobos, for the ryzen, get a nice cheap x470 mobo from anyone but msi. for the 8400, get the cheapest b360 mobo and as for the 8600k get a z370 HD3 or HD3P as they perform pretty well and are really cheap. 

I won’t be overclocking which is why I opted for 8400 instead of 8600k. As for the price difference the 2600X and the 8400 costs the same here. 

 

1 hour ago, Blebekblebek said:

Doesn't matter which one you prefer, if "cheaper" is what you looking for then you are going to spend more for DDR4 Ram anyway

But technically, Ryzen is a better choice

So I should go for ryzen?

 

1 hour ago, Emberstone said:

For pure gaming you're better off with an Intel processor. As Firewrath9 said, getting at least an 8600K would suit you a bit better than an 8400 if you've got a GTX 1080, but it would still do fine and shouldn't bottleneck the GPU except in fairly CPU-bound scenarios, like e-sports titles and MMO's.

I won’t be overclocking and don’t really want to spend more on a aftermarket cooler but will the 8600k be a big difference?

[Emberstone]

2 minutes ago, OreoPandas said:

I won’t be overclocking which is why I opted for 8400 instead of 8600k. As for the price difference the 2600X and the 8400 costs the same here. 

If you're not overclocking, I'd recommend saving up and getting an i7-8700 then, so you've at least gotten the best the platform can offer without tweaks.

[Firewrath9]

1 minute ago, OreoPandas said:

So I should go for ryzen?

if its the same price yes.

[Zeorth]

1 minute ago, Emberstone said:

If you're not overclocking, I'd recommend saving up and getting an i7-8700, then, so you've at least gotten the best the platform can offer without tweaks.

I have enough for the 8700 but many said that the 2600X has better price to performance. 

[Emberstone]

2 minutes ago, OreoPandas said:

I have enough for the 8700 but many said that the 2600X has better price to performance. 

For purely gaming, the i5-8400 has better performance per dollar than the 2600(X). Intel has both the IPC and optimization advantage for games.

 

It's when you want to do other things, like video editing, that Ryzen's benefit shows.

[Zeorth]

2 minutes ago, Emberstone said:

For purely gaming, the i5-8400 has better performance per dollar than the 2600(X). Intel has both the IPC and optimization advantage.

I’m very confused. Some are saying 2600X and some 8400. How should I choose?

[Emberstone]

2 minutes ago, OreoPandas said:

I’m very confused. Some are saying 2600X and some 8400. How should I choose?

This shows stock and overclocked results.

 

Keep in mind his Ryzen performance on the overclocked result is based on 3400 MHz memory.

[Zeorth]

1 hour ago, Emberstone said:

This shows stock and overclocked results.

 

Keep in mind his Ryzen performance on the overclocked result is based on 3400 MHz memory.

This is the 2600 not the 2600X

[Emberstone]

5 minutes ago, OreoPandas said:

This is the 2600 not the 2600X

It's the closest I can find because most people don't buy the X variants as the non-X variants can very easily be overclocked to match/surpass them. (This is one of the reasons you should consider overclocking. It actually saves you money, and won't kill your CPU unless you push start pushing 1.5v or something through it.)

 

The TL;DR of that video is that Intel usually wins unless you buy expensive memory and really get nitty gritty with tweaking memory timings, which is not easy to do and is usually quite time consuming even for seasoned overclockers. This will be true for the 2600X as well.

 

If you were doing some kind of multithreaded work, I'd be much more inclined to recommend Ryzen, but since you said this is a purely gaming machine and you won't be doing any kind of tweaking, you'll get better performance out of the Intel chip.

[Zeorth]

44 minutes ago, Emberstone said:

It's the closest I can find because most people don't buy the X variants as the non-X variants can very easily be overclocked to match/surpass them. (This is one of the reasons you should consider overclocking. It actually saves you money, and won't kill your CPU unless you push start pushing 1.5v or something through it.)

 

The TL;DR of that video is that Intel usually wins unless you buy expensive memory and really get nitty gritty with tweaking memory timings, which is not easy to do and is usually quite time consuming even for seasoned overclockers. This will be true for the 2600X as well.

 

If you were doing some kind of multithreaded work, I'd be much more inclined to recommend Ryzen, but since you said this is a purely gaming machine and you won't be doing any kind of tweaking, you'll get better performance out of the Intel chip.

Ok. So 8400 or 8700?

[0x00000001]

some games need more cores and threads like assassin's creed origins ,bf1 ... in this case i think ryzen better

[Emberstone]

22 minutes ago, OreoPandas said:

Ok. So 8400 or 8700?

Of course the 8700 is a fair bit better. But you need to decide if the extra ~$100 USD is worth it. Hardware Unboxed and many other channels have benchmarks for the i7-8700 vs. the 8400. I can't make that choice for you.

 

I personally play a lot of Heroes of the Storm and Guild Wars 2, so I went with the 8700K and overclocked it even though I only have a GTX 1070 because the raw single-thread power benefits my use case a lot. But just because I like the 8700K doesn't mean it would make sense for you. Totally your decision.

[RobFRaschke]

This thread has been a perfect example of why a lot of people just don't build their own systems, and why there are so many new build threads even still. 

 

I retain my previous suggestions for gaming specific workloads. As you've said that you're not going to be overclocking, the i3-8100 or if you want the extra clockspeed out of the box, the 8300.

 

 

8th generation Core i3s are quad core, with great base clockspeed and really impressive turbo speeds. The i5-8400 literally just adds hyperthreading, which will better saturate the four cores with data, but just doesn't help in most games. Support for 4 cores is pretty good in modern triple A titles, but not higher than 4, so going to an i7 is just a waste of money.

 

You'll see much greater effect from getting a BIG SSD, or adding optane to your large storage drive, so your game library is fast, than you'd ever see from going from the i3 to the i7.

 

Ryzen gives you the ability to overclock, and either more cores, or multi-threaded support over their price comparable Intel counterpart. Overclocking is moot for you, and gaming just doesn't need the cores. So Intel is the choice.

[Emberstone]

1 hour ago, RobFRaschke said:

The i5-8400 literally just adds hyperthreading, which will better saturate the four cores with data, but just doesn't help in most games.

The i5-8400 is a six-core without hyperthreading. Lol.

 

It performs like a stock i7-6700K in the real world. Given that newer AAA games like Doom, BF1, Overwatch, etc. can saturate 6+ cores, a 6c/6t processor is a smarter choice than a 4c/4c CPU when a GTX 1080 is involved.