Could anyone recommend a CPU?

marshedpotato

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Hello everybody!
I am tasked with sourcing parts and building a PC for my sister who is very interested in gaming. At the moment she uses mine while I am at work, but she has finally gotten herself a job and wants to use her first pay cheque on parts for me to build her a PC. However, I am struggling to pick out a CPU. She will not be doing anything CPU intensive. No video editing, no CAD software, quite literally just web browsing and video games. As such, the majority of the budget will be going into the GPU, and we will be looking to spend as little as possible on everything else.

I don't want her to have to spend money on processing power that she is ultimately never going to use, but at the same time I don't want to cause a CPU bottleneck when she's playing high end games. What CPU would this wonderful community recommend for this situation?
Thanks in advance for any advice.
 
Without knowing budget and games a good CPU is the i5-4460 which is around $180. This gives you the power to support high end cards and demanding games, but not going ultra high end.

If games she needs to play is older less demanding titles then the i3-4160 is likely a good option.
 

marshedpotato

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Thank you for the suggestions. Would you say an i5 is essential for playing new releases?



She'd like to be able to play new releases on her 1080p monitor at highish settings. it doesn't have to be maxed out but she wants it to look good. she would also like at at least enough fps for no noticable lag (35+?) the video card we have chosen is the R9 390, so we're basically looking for the minimal cpu to not bottleneck this card.

Edit: Sorry, bits I missed: Yes I'm happy to overclock the CPU, and there is no budget but I just don't want her to have to spend money on processing power she won't use (at the same time I don't want to cause a CPU bottleneck)
 
an i5 is needed to play modern demanding games at good fps without bottlenecking the cpu.

the 4460 will play any modern game with any modern graphics card well without bottleneck.
If you want to help overclock the 4690k is a very good cpu. If you have a microcenter nearby you can often get a good deal on it there with a motherboard.
I personally wouldn't find the 4690k worth more then $30 more
 

ZENprime

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i5-4460 or the K unit which is overclock able has 4 strong cores in it


Right now most games push Quad-core CPUs usage into the 80-90 %

GTA V for example can reach a 100% usage on a Quad-core CPU

Web browsing and Gaming is 2 different things ; web browsing just needs a modern dual core CPU which is cheap however gaming needs at most a true Quad core with strong cores for processing Game's data

390 is a pretty strong GPU so you need a good CPU with it so you do not lose fps with CPU bottle-necking

So if you are interested in OC you need a Core i5-4690K with an aftermarket cooler ( hyper 212 for example )
In my opinion do not expect much from overclocking on intel ; on stock performance the i5-4690k has only 1-3 fps higher than the i5-4460

So in gaming you will never reach "processing power that you will not use" except if you go for an i7 .
There is not much different between i5 and i7 in gaming , i7 only has higher threads count so you get less CPU usage and allow you to run other programs WHILE intensive gaming