AMD vs Intel CPU's ( For a ~£900 Gaming Build )

[HybridWolf]

AMD vs Intel CPU's ( For a ~£900 Gaming Build )

So, my question is which CPU Manufacturer to date has the best CPU for the gaming spectrum?
I'm not keeping as up-to-date with the AMD vs Intel fight as I have been, all I know is that there are the 8th gen processors from intel that are coffee lake? AMD Has pushed out their vega infused cpu's, but thats about as far as I can go for now.

My current build is this >>> https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/NB3RJ8 (Pretty much set on the current components )

I need insight on whether to go AMD or Intel, I would prefer to go Intel because their newest CPU's are supposedly destroying the market recently...

Thanks in advance,
-TheHybridWolf

 

[Eximo]

Intel CPUs offer higher per-core performance. This is certainly better for games and direct FPS output at the high end. AMDs big advantage now is much cheaper motherboards and more cores for the money.

GTX1060, while a great card, is still 'mid-range'. So if you are targeting 1080p@60hz, it really doesn't matter. If you have any secondary uses for the PC, they would become more important. Say, video streaming, video editing as common examples. Then the additional cores from AMD are more useful then per core performance.

 

[Eximo]

Your cooler really eats into the budget (not really necessary with the Intel), but here are some options:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i5-8400 2.8GHz 6-Core Processor (£143.99 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Deepcool - CAPTAIN 240EX WHITE 153.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£73.47 @ Scan.co.uk)
Motherboard: MSI - Z370-A PRO ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£89.98 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: Kingston - FURY 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2666 Memory (£91.97 @ SmartTeck.co.uk)
Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£112.74 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: Zotac - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB AMP! Edition Video Card (£259.98 @ Novatech)
Case: NZXT - S340 Elite (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£73.52 @ Aria PC)
Power Supply: Corsair - CXM (2015) 450W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£46.92 @ Box Limited)
Total: £892.57
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-03-28 17:37 BST+0100

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600 3.2GHz 6-Core Processor (£147.50 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Deepcool - CAPTAIN 240EX WHITE 153.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£73.47 @ Scan.co.uk)
Motherboard: ASRock - AB350 Pro4 ATX AM4 Motherboard (£70.98 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (£101.88 @ More Computers)
Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£112.74 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: Zotac - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB AMP! Edition Video Card (£259.98 @ Novatech)
Case: NZXT - S340 Elite (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£73.52 @ Aria PC)
Power Supply: Corsair - CXM (2015) 450W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£46.92 @ Box Limited)
Total: £886.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-03-28 17:42 BST+0100

 

[madmatt30]

Ryzen 1600, dumped the aio , its unnecessary & puts you over budget.

Rather 16gb ram & a secondary hard drive .

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600 3.2GHz 6-Core Processor (£147.50 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: ASRock - AB350 Pro4 ATX AM4 Motherboard (£70.98 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: Team - Dark 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (£149.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£112.74 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Western Digital - Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£35.99 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: Zotac - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB AMP! Edition Video Card (£259.98 @ Novatech)
Case: NZXT - S340 Elite (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£73.52 @ Aria PC)
Other: Corsair CP-9020102-UK CX Series CX550M ATX/EPS Semi-Modular 81 Plus Bronze 550 W Power Supply Unit (£48.99 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £899.69
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-03-28 17:41 BST+0100

I5 8400

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i5-8400 2.8GHz 6-Core Processor (£143.99 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: ASRock - Z370 Pro4 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£96.89 @ More Computers)
Memory: Team - Dark 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (£149.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£112.74 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Western Digital - Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£35.99 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: Zotac - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB AMP! Edition Video Card (£259.98 @ Novatech)
Case: NZXT - S340 Elite (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£73.52 @ Aria PC)
Other: Corsair CP-9020102-UK CX Series CX550M ATX/EPS Semi-Modular 81 Plus Bronze 550 W Power Supply Unit (£48.99 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £922.09
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-03-28 17:43 BST+0100

Esit - me & eximo on the same wavelength.

 

[DSzymborski]

Nothing really to add other than to stress to people coming across this topic that Matt and Eximo are definitely on the right track of what one should be looking for at this budget in 2018.

 

[HybridWolf]

Your cooler really eats into the budget (not really necessary with the Intel), but here are some options:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i5-8400 2.8GHz 6-Core Processor (£143.99 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Deepcool - CAPTAIN 240EX WHITE 153.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£73.47 @ Scan.co.uk)
Motherboard: MSI - Z370-A PRO ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£89.98 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: Kingston - FURY 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2666 Memory (£91.97 @ SmartTeck.co.uk)
Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£112.74 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: Zotac - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB AMP! Edition Video Card (£259.98 @ Novatech)
Case: NZXT - S340 Elite (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£73.52 @ Aria PC)
Power Supply: Corsair - CXM (2015) 450W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£46.92 @ Box Limited)
Total: £892.57
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-03-28 17:37 BST+0100

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600 3.2GHz 6-Core Processor (£147.50 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Deepcool - CAPTAIN 240EX WHITE 153.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£73.47 @ Scan.co.uk)
Motherboard: ASRock - AB350 Pro4 ATX AM4 Motherboard (£70.98 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (£101.88 @ More Computers)
Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£112.74 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: Zotac - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB AMP! Edition Video Card (£259.98 @ Novatech)
Case: NZXT - S340 Elite (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£73.52 @ Aria PC)
Power Supply: Corsair - CXM (2015) 450W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£46.92 @ Box Limited)
Total: £886.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-03-28 17:42 BST+0100

Looks good, will see if I can get a less pricey cooler that will suit that processor nicely, as for @madmatt30 , the extra 1tb of space is not needed, I hardly ever surpass 200 Gb of storage with whatever I do, with most of that storage being used for games. So that £36 can go to some good quality thermal paste and possibly a better motherboard + ram if I decide to go Ryzen.

Since I don't do video editing at all or anything taxing at all, just some drawing on Paint Tool Sai (Which my current Pentium G850 with Intel HD 2000 can deal with quite well ) and stuff of that sort, nothing demanding anyways, so I deem Ryzen almost useless for gaming, which is likely incorrect.

What I also want to know is, will any of these CPU's bottleneck the GTX 1060?

 

[Eximo]

I must say I don't like shopping for PSUs in the UK. So keep an eye out for deals on decent power supplies. 450W is really marginal. You could opt for the 550W model.

I can understand going for the cooler for appearances sake. But if we were doing that I would change a lot of things to match. There are some nice black/white boards and decent black/white video cards out there, and cases that match that theme or come with white bladed fans and such. To legitimize the need for a cooler, you could go straight for the i5-8600k and overclock it.

Differences would obviously be the memory capacity. There are a few games out there that will use most of that 8GB up, but memory prices are high right now too. With Intel you are still forced onto the Z370 platform which have some nice features though.

Another option would be to downsize the SSD (though I do like 500GB of SSD) and spend that on CPU or memory (or power supply)

 

[Eximo]

Bottleneck is that boogeyman term that is slightly misunderstood. At some point everything is going to be a bottleneck to one thing or another, and it really depends on what you are doing. In this case we have maximized the CPU and GPU in the given budget, so it doesn't even matter if it does. It can't really get better without spending more money.

These would be very well balanced upper mid-range builds. The Intel build should produce higher FPS in most titles, but again, if your monitor isn't high refresh rate that won't matter all that much.

You can expect 1920x1080@60FPS in pretty much all titles at very high settings. There are a few that might push you down a little lower. 2560x1440 you can expect medium settings to keep you in the 40-50FPS range. (I am talking recent AAA title release, less demanding games and older games will basically be covered by a 1060 6GB)

I don't know about you, but I have a few games that are 50GB+ on their own, so 500GB seems the appropriate size for you if it is to be the only storage.

 

[HybridWolf]

I must say I don't like shopping for PSUs in the UK. So keep an eye out for deals on decent power supplies. 450W is really marginal. You could opt for the 550W model.

I can understand going for the cooler for appearances sake. But if we were doing that I would change a lot of things to match. There are some nice black/white boards and decent black/white video cards out there, and cases that match that theme or come with white bladed fans and such. To legitimize the need for a cooler, you could go straight for the i5-8600k and overclock it.

Differences would obviously be the memory capacity. There are a few games out there that will use most of that 8GB up, but memory prices are high right now too. With Intel you are still forced onto the Z370 platform which have some nice features though.

Another option would be to downsize the SSD (though I do like 500GB of SSD) and spend that on CPU or memory (or power supply)

Could you suggest something along the lines of this build I put together through Matt's suggestions?

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/3dK7WD


I swapped the ram out for 3200Mhz since it had the same CAS Latency as the 3000 Mhz ram (CL16), Got a nicer Motherboard and threw in a paste for lower temps while overclocking this Ryzen chip ( I heard the included cooler is really good ) to push a bit more performance, even if I would prefer a nicer water-cooled build for the aesthetics.

 

[Eximo]

You should try sticking to the QVL for memory just in case. AMD is not as forgiving as Intel in that regard:

http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/SocketAM4/STRIX_B350-F_GAMING/ROG-STRIX-B350-F-GAMING_Memory_QVL_180125.pdf?_ga=2.25828349.1399697597.1522256893-899280411.1522256893

Pick out one of those 3200kits.

AS5 is a little dated, but nothing wrong with it. Looks like they sell single use Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut for a fiver. That would be about the best you could hope for in compound terms.

You've darkened up the build a bit, so if you wanted a CPU cooler to match a little more you can look into BeQuiet products. Though nothing wrong with the stock cooler.

As for GPUs, that is about the best deal around, so I would snatch that up before it is gone.

 

[madmatt30]

Paste ??

Master gel maker nano

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B018WJZDR0/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_ma9UAbXPE7CHT

I will never use anything different again.

It has to be applied/spread with the included spatula rather than the pea or cross method as it's very very thick but for me at it's pricepoint there is NOTHING better out there.

Still a fairly unnecessary purchase though imo

Your last build is good , no issues at all - you will end up with a secondary hard drive at some point in time though I have no doubt.

BF1, GTA 5 , Infinite Warfare & windows 10 take up nearly all my 275gb ssd.

You can still do a 240mm aio in budget , just not the captain ex.

To be fair the lite 240 uses the same header pump , the fans are slightly noisier, performs the same if not slightly better.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600 3.2GHz 6-Core Processor (£147.50 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master - MasterLiquid Lite 240 66.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£46.64 @ Ebuyer)
Motherboard: ASRock - AB350 Pro4 ATX AM4 Motherboard (£70.98 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: Team - Dark 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (£149.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£112.74 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: Zotac - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB AMP! Edition Video Card (£259.98 @ Novatech)
Case: NZXT - S340 Elite (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£73.52 @ Aria PC)
Other: Corsair CP-9020102-UK CX Series CX550M ATX/EPS Semi-Modular 81 Plus Bronze 550 W Power Supply Unit (£48.99 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £910.34
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-03-28 18:48 BST+0100

Id still do a 240/250gb ssd & a secondary though.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600 3.2GHz 6-Core Processor (£147.50 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master - MasterLiquid Lite 240 66.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£46.64 @ Ebuyer)
Motherboard: ASRock - AB350 Pro4 ATX AM4 Motherboard (£70.98 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: Team - Dark 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (£149.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Storage: Crucial - MX500 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£65.02 @ Novatech)
Storage: Western Digital - Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£35.99 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: Zotac - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB AMP! Edition Video Card (£259.98 @ Novatech)
Case: NZXT - S340 Elite (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£73.52 @ Aria PC)
Other: Corsair CP-9020102-UK CX Series CX550M ATX/EPS Semi-Modular 81 Plus Bronze 550 W Power Supply Unit (£48.99 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £898.61
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-03-28 18:52 BST+0100

 

[HybridWolf]

Thanks for both of your hard work, I can't decide which one to pick as the best answer, so I hope it wont bother the one who didn't get it by much, you both worked pretty hard.

Thanks,
-TheHybridWolf