Component advice please

[JohanHH]

Hi
My brother is in need of a new pc, and this is what he is considering:

Intel® Core™ i5-7500
16GB DDR4-2400 Crucial Ballistix RAM
Asus GeForce GTX 1060 6GB OC

Will this be able to run Overwatch and PUBG?
Is the upgrade from 1060 --> 1070 worth the investment for future proofing?

Thank you

 

[gussrtk]

that's a poor choice for the CPU. as far as "today" goes, your primary choices (mid-high range) are ryzen1600, i5-8400-i5-8600k, i7-8700.

gtx1060 GPU is great for 1080p gaming, GPU is a hard choice to make though, because Volta is coming out later this year, so the investment today is kinda shadowed by what you can get in a few month's wait time. Ram is good but, if choosing another CPU, the ram will change in mhz suggestion.

 

[Aeacus]

Actually, i5-7500 isn't poor choice since it's still competitive CPU, even at today's standards,
i5-7500 vs i5-8400: http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-7500-vs-Intel-Core-i5-8400/3648vs3939

What is a poor choice is AMD FX-series CPUs, e.g FX-8350.

As far as pricing goes, Kaby Lake setup (with i5-7500) can be up to $50 cheaper than the Coffee Lake setup (with i5-8400) since the MoBo in Coffee Lake setup jacks up the price.

Though, Coffee Lake setup gives better performance and would last longer before upgrade is due. But both setups are still fine to play Overwatch and PUBG on high/ultra settings @ 1080p with 60+ FPS.

Go with GTX 1070 if you're planning to use 1440p monitor. Else-ways, stick with GTX 1060 and use extra money to improve other aspects within the build.

 

[gussrtk]

Actually, i5-7500 isn't poor choice since it's still competitive CPU, even at today's standards,
i5-7500 vs i5-8400: http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-7500-vs-Intel-Core-i5-8400/3648vs3939

What is a poor choice is AMD FX-series CPUs, e.g FX-8350.

As far as pricing goes, Kaby Lake setup (with i5-7500) can be up to $50 cheaper than the Coffee Lake setup (with i5-8400) since the MoBo in Coffee Lake setup jacks up the price.

Though, Coffee Lake setup gives better performance and would last longer before upgrade is due. But both setups are still fine to play Overwatch and PUBG on high/ultra settings @ 1080p with 60+ FPS.

Go with GTX 1070 if you're planning to use 1440p monitor. Else-ways, stick with GTX 1060 and use extra money to improve other aspects within the build.

as far as what you've said, I do believe that you would 100% agree with me, that as far as making a purchase TODAY, the 7500 is not one of the top choices by far. it only works in a tight budget situation, which here doesn't seem to be the case in any way because of the GPU debate.

I think that we don't have to straight up compare to i5-8400, but you could compare to my "lowest" choice, the ryzen1600. In this case, do you still say that the i5-7500 is a better buy than a 6 core ryzen 1600? (likely at same end price). Besides, lets face it, 4 core CPUs are slowly being weaned out, 6core CPUs are the ones to go for if you want to get a good life use out of your system.

 

[Aeacus]

As far as PC's go, it's not about the CPU cores but it's about the usage of PC. By looking what OP wrote, it can be seen that PC would be used mostly for gaming. And since Intel CPUs have better single- and quad-core speeds, they are better suited for gaming than Ryzen CPUs. Though, Ryzen CPUs with good multi-core speeds are better suited for workstation usage (e.g video rendering).

It's true that there's more value in i5-8400 than it is in i5-7500. Performance wise, Core i5/i7 Kaby Lake CPUs are still good chips and i wouldn't wrote those off.

 

[gussrtk]

As far as PC's go, it's not about the CPU cores but it's about the usage of PC. By looking what OP wrote, it can be seen that PC would be used mostly for gaming. And since Intel CPUs have better single- and quad-core speeds, they are better suited for gaming than Ryzen CPUs. Though, Ryzen CPUs with good multi-core speeds are better suited for workstation usage (e.g video rendering).

It's true that there's more value in i5-8400 than it is in i5-7500. Performance wise, Core i5/i7 Kaby Lake CPUs are still good chips and i wouldn't wrote those off.

Yes I totally agree with your point on single core performance in gaming, but that doesn't actually answer my question. Do you think i5-7500 > ryzen 1600? especially in 3 years+ time? currently both CPUs have a trade off in FPS, and both can be built on similar budget. why would you lead someone to think that the 7500 is a great choice? Single core perfomance goes far, but ability to overclock the ryzen 1600 takes it further. Pair it with a decent <80$ motherboard and you can get 3.8Ghz (with stock cooler). as games come out with higher core utilization, the 7500 doesn't look like such a great chip.

and the link that you showed before, the benchmark comparison (which really is BS, no one looks at benchmarks, it's about real world use.). yeah, the 8400 is about 5-8% better at single core tasks, BUT, multicore tasks are at 38%? higher on the 8400. Most games today, use more than 1 core, generally 4 across the board, with some 6core games, which carry popular titles. That 38% multicore gain on 8400 is not worth the 50$? that you said OP would save?

really, just set the person on the right path, without wasting their money. I know you know your <mod edit language>, I see it in your profile. Yep, there is no reason to exclude the 7th gen, but there is also no reason not to show OP the benefits of current gen CPUs. Lets face it, if it is about single core speed, and 4 cores is all that matters.. then we might as well offer OP an i3-8350k, which has 4 cores at 4.0Ghz and will end up at about ssame price range as i7500 build. As Russle Peters said... "DO THE RIGHT THING" haha

 

[logainofhades]

While I do agree that a 1600 R5 is a better overall option than an i5 7500. I do recommend watching the language though. This is a family friendly site.

 

[Aeacus]

Yes I totally agree with your point on single core performance in gaming, but that doesn't actually answer my question. Do you think i5-7500 > ryzen 1600? especially in 3 years+ time? currently both CPUs have a trade off in FPS, and both can be built on similar budget. why would you lead someone to think that the 7500 is a great choice? Single core perfomance goes far, but ability to overclock the ryzen 1600 takes it further. Pair it with a decent <80$ motherboard and you can get 3.8Ghz (with stock cooler). as games come out with higher core utilization, the 7500 doesn't look like such a great chip.

and the link that you showed before, the benchmark comparison (which really is BS, no one looks at benchmarks, it's about real world use.). yeah, the 8400 is about 5-8% better at single core tasks, BUT, multicore tasks are at 38%? higher on the 8400. Most games today, use more than 1 core, generally 4 across the board, with some 6core games, which carry popular titles. That 38% multicore gain on 8400 is not worth the 50$? that you said OP would save?

really, just set the person on the right path, without wasting their money. I know you know your <mod edit language>, I see it in your profile. Yep, there is no reason to exclude the 7th gen, but there is also no reason not to show OP the benefits of current gen CPUs. Lets face it, if it is about single core speed, and 4 cores is all that matters.. then we might as well offer OP an i3-8350k, which has 4 cores at 4.0Ghz and will end up at about ssame price range as i7500 build. As Russle Peters said... "DO THE RIGHT THING" haha

To answer your question;
Is i5-7500 a good overall choice? Yes, since it's a good performing CPU, despite not being the latest tech.
Is i5-7500 the best overall choice? No, since there are better CPUs with same amount of money available.
How about future proofing between i5-7500 and R5 1600?
For web browsing and gaming, i5-7500 is better. For production work, R5 1600 is better. That also includes when upgrading CPU: i7-7700(K) for Intel and Ryzen 7 for AMD.

While the Ryzen CPUs do have OC ability compared to the non-K Intel CPUs, majority of users don't OC their CPUs. CPU OC is more for an enthusiast thing than common practice. Still, there are gains with CPU OC to increase minimum FPS and reduce stutter but that doesn't apply to all games. Some games (e.g CPU bound) do benefit for CPU OC but other games (e.g GPU bound) doesn't benefit almost at all from CPU OC. And of course, there are also downsides. Running CPU clock on constant high clocks (e.g 3.8 Ghz) will wear out CPU much faster than running it with stock clocks (e.g 3.2 Ghz). Not to mention the additional heat produced by the CPU which in turn increases the noise CPU cooler makes to cool it down.

About benchmarks.
Without looking for performance comparison, how would you know if one CPU would better than the other? Read the core/thread count and base/boost clocks?
There are some sites which show synthetic benchmarks which don't show the real-world performance (e.g PassMark) while other sites (like UserBenchmark) compare the real world performance submitted by the users themselves.
Also, i included the CPU comparison to show for the OP that one gen older CPU isn't a poor choice as you claim it to be. If you don't want to compare CPU performance then it's fine by me but that doesn't mean other people don't want to compare CPU performances.

It seems that you have mixed up the quad-core and multi-core performance. Here's a little description how CPU core performances are classified:
single-core performance = performance of 1 core; e.g web browsing, office apps.
quad-core performance = performance of 4 cores; e.g gaming.
multi-core performance = performance of 6 and more cores; e.g virtual machines, audio/video rendering.

i5-8400 is basically i5-7500 with 2 extra cores. That's why i5-8400 has that much better multi-core performance over i5-7500, while the single-core and quad-core performance is about the same between the two CPUs. Those 2 extra cores on i5-8400 help greatly with production use, while for gaming, i5-8400 has slightly higher average FPS over i5-7500. Depending on a game, the gain is 5-20 FPS.

But when it comes to the price to performance ratio, then the i3-8350K is currently the best value CPU there is. As far as going with either i3-8450K, i5-8400 or R5 1600 goes, that depends on the user and main usage of the PC.
Gamers Nexus made a nice review of i3-8350K that should help to decide which CPU out of those three to go for,
youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_OQlw5G_5Y

With the limited info OP gave to us, we don't know if he's considering to buy those parts as brand new or is he looking towards used/prebuilt system that someone else sells.
If it's the first option then going with Intel's 8th gen CPU would give more performance for the money. But if it's the latter then going with the i5-7500 setup would be better, especially when he gets it with a cheap price.

@ OP
Here are Game Debate results with your presented setup and yes, it can run both games just fine as i stated earlier;
Overwatch: http://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=20810&game=Overwatch&p_make=Intel&p_deriv=Core+i5-7500+3.4GHz&gc_make=Nvidia&gc_deriv=GeForce+GTX+1060+Asus+Dual+OC+6GB&ram=16&checkSubmit=#systemrequirements
PUBG: http://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=33898&game=PlayerUnknowns+Battlegrounds&p_make=Intel&p_deriv=Core+i5-7500+3.4GHz&gc_make=Nvidia&gc_deriv=GeForce+GTX+1060+Asus+Dual+OC+6GB&ram=16&checkSubmit=#systemrequirements

 

[gussrtk]

Yes I totally agree with your point on single core performance in gaming, but that doesn't actually answer my question. Do you think i5-7500 > ryzen 1600? especially in 3 years+ time? currently both CPUs have a trade off in FPS, and both can be built on similar budget. why would you lead someone to think that the 7500 is a great choice? Single core perfomance goes far, but ability to overclock the ryzen 1600 takes it further. Pair it with a decent <80$ motherboard and you can get 3.8Ghz (with stock cooler). as games come out with higher core utilization, the 7500 doesn't look like such a great chip.

and the link that you showed before, the benchmark comparison (which really is BS, no one looks at benchmarks, it's about real world use.). yeah, the 8400 is about 5-8% better at single core tasks, BUT, multicore tasks are at 38%? higher on the 8400. Most games today, use more than 1 core, generally 4 across the board, with some 6core games, which carry popular titles. That 38% multicore gain on 8400 is not worth the 50$? that you said OP would save?

really, just set the person on the right path, without wasting their money. I know you know your <mod edit language>, I see it in your profile. Yep, there is no reason to exclude the 7th gen, but there is also no reason not to show OP the benefits of current gen CPUs. Lets face it, if it is about single core speed, and 4 cores is all that matters.. then we might as well offer OP an i3-8350k, which has 4 cores at 4.0Ghz and will end up at about ssame price range as i7500 build. As Russle Peters said... "DO THE RIGHT THING" haha

To answer your question;
Is i5-7500 a good overall choice? Yes, since it's a good performing CPU, despite not being the latest tech.
Is i5-7500 the best overall choice? No, since there are better CPUs with same amount of money available.
How about future proofing between i5-7500 and R5 1600?
For web browsing and gaming, i5-7500 is better. For production work, R5 1600 is better. That also includes when upgrading CPU: i7-7700(K) for Intel and Ryzen 7 for AMD.

While the Ryzen CPUs do have OC ability compared to the non-K Intel CPUs, majority of users don't OC their CPUs. CPU OC is more for an enthusiast thing than common practice. Still, there are gains with CPU OC to increase minimum FPS and reduce stutter but that doesn't apply to all games. Some games (e.g CPU bound) do benefit for CPU OC but other games (e.g GPU bound) doesn't benefit almost at all from CPU OC. And of course, there are also downsides. Running CPU clock on constant high clocks (e.g 3.8 Ghz) will wear out CPU much faster than running it with stock clocks (e.g 3.2 Ghz). Not to mention the additional heat produced by the CPU which in turn increases the noise CPU cooler makes to cool it down.

About benchmarks.
Without looking for performance comparison, how would you know if one CPU would better than the other? Read the core/thread count and base/boost clocks?
There are some sites which show synthetic benchmarks which don't show the real-world performance (e.g PassMark) while other sites (like UserBenchmark) compare the real world performance submitted by the users themselves.
Also, i included the CPU comparison to show for the OP that one gen older CPU isn't a poor choice as you claim it to be. If you don't want to compare CPU performance then it's fine by me but that doesn't mean other people don't want to compare CPU performances.

It seems that you have mixed up the quad-core and multi-core performance. Here's a little description how CPU core performances are classified:
single-core performance = performance of 1 core; e.g web browsing, office apps.
quad-core performance = performance of 4 cores; e.g gaming.
multi-core performance = performance of 6 and more cores; e.g virtual machines, audio/video rendering.

i5-8400 is basically i5-7500 with 2 extra cores. That's why i5-8400 has that much better multi-core performance over i5-7500, while the single-core and quad-core performance is about the same between the two CPUs. Those 2 extra cores on i5-8400 help greatly with production use, while for gaming, i5-8400 has slightly higher average FPS over i5-7500. Depending on a game, the gain is 5-20 FPS.

But when it comes to the price to performance ratio, then the i3-8350K is currently the best value CPU there is. As far as going with either i3-8450K, i5-8400 or R5 1600 goes, that depends on the user and main usage of the PC.
Gamers Nexus made a nice review of i3-8350K that should help to decide which CPU out of those three to go for,
youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_OQlw5G_5Y

With the limited info OP gave to us, we don't know if he's considering to buy those parts as brand new or is he looking towards used/prebuilt system that someone else sells.
If it's the first option then going with Intel's 8th gen CPU would give more performance for the money. But if it's the latter then going with the i5-7500 setup would be better, especially when he gets it with a cheap price.

@ OP
Here are Game Debate results with your presented setup and yes, it can run both games just fine as i stated earlier;
Overwatch: http://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=20810&game=Overwatch&p_make=Intel&p_deriv=Core+i5-7500+3.4GHz&gc_make=Nvidia&gc_deriv=GeForce+GTX+1060+Asus+Dual+OC+6GB&ram=16&checkSubmit=#systemrequirements
PUBG: http://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=33898&game=PlayerUnknowns+Battlegrounds&p_make=Intel&p_deriv=Core+i5-7500+3.4GHz&gc_make=Nvidia&gc_deriv=GeForce+GTX+1060+Asus+Dual+OC+6GB&ram=16&checkSubmit=#systemrequirements

you are quite right my friend, I hope we have some more run-ins later on. I like people who actually back up what they say, and you are one of them! Thank you for putting in the time to make a great response.