Best CPU for R9 290?

[llyr1900]

Hello everyone.
Just bought a sapphire tri-x r9 290 for my PC build. Just wondering what CPU to pair with it. My budget for the CPU is around £150 although I wouldn't mind going for something like a sandy bridge processor as long as it's capable.
Thanks in advance.

 

[rolli59]

Modern I5 example http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80646i54440

 

[logainofhades]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor (£131.94 @ Aria PC)
Total: £131.94
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-30 20:13 GMT+0000

 

[RazerZ]

Any i5 4xxx would be perfect. I'd get the cheapest version available to you at the time as you won't see a difference in gaming performance between the variants.

 

[Navman72]

The above posters already answered your question, just wanted to throw in since you mentioned it that Sandy Bridge is PCI-E gen 2 and your card is PCI-E gen 3 you might as well get a current generation processor that can utilize all the power that card has to offer, the price difference really is negligible.

 

[llyr1900]

Thanks, I was looking at a friend's i5-2500k for about £120 but I guess a 4460 would be better.

 

[RazerZ]

If he/she's willing to throw in a cpu cooler and a motherboard which you can overclock with for a decent price, you could match the latest i5's performance.

 

[llyr1900]

The above posters already answered your question, just wanted to throw in since you mentioned it that Sandy Bridge is PCI-E gen 2 and your card is PCI-E gen 3 you might as well get a current generation processor that can utilize all the power that card has to offer, the price difference really is negligible.

As navman said, surely I would be bottlenecking the graphics card?

 

[RazerZ]

Not at all.

The performance loss will be minimal, you won't even notice it.

 

[llyr1900]

really? O... What is the difference between the gen 2 and 3 pci-e therefore?

 

[llyr1900]

If that's true, could you recommend a motherboard?

 

[logainofhades]

No single GPU solution can fully saturate PCI-E 2.0 x16. It is nothing to worry about. If you get your friend's 2500k, then the Asrock Z77 extreme4 is my recommendation. If you go with the 4460, then I would go with this combo.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor (£131.94 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H97-D3H ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£75.54 @ Aria PC)
Total: £207.48
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-30 20:33 GMT+0000

 

[llyr1900]

what if, in the future, I added a second 290? would there then be a problem?

 

[logainofhades]

You would want a better board if you did that with the i5 4460. You would want something more like this.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor (£131.94 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-SLI ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£88.76 @ Scan.co.uk)
Total: £220.70
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-30 20:36 GMT+0000

 

[llyr1900]

so if I did that with the 2500k, would the PCI-E 2.0 bottleneck the performance? I'm only interested as you said "Single GPU solution".

 

[logainofhades]

You will still be fine with 2x R9 290 with PCI-E 2.0 on the board I recommended.

 

[llyr1900]

Thank you so much!