CPU or ram memory

[DestLucks]

Alright im building a gaming pc and wanted to know whats the best investment.


Should i spend my extra money going from 8gbs to 16gbs

Or

I spend the extra money on a faster CPU.


Which of the 2 affect gaming the most.


Current build:


PCPartPicker part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/GDCGyf
Price breakdown by merchant: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/GDCGyf/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel - Pentium G4560 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor ($78.89 @ B&H)
Motherboard: MSI - B250M PRO-VD Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($52.39 @ OutletPC)
Memory: G.Skill - NT Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($80.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital - Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($43.78 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA - GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB ACX 2.0 Video Card ($154.95 @ B&H)
Case: Deepcool - TESSERACT BF ATX Mid Tower Case ($36.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - S12II 520W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($37.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $485.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-11-06 18:38 EST-0500

 

[geofelt]

I like your build as is.
If you ever will want 16gb of ram, it is better to buy it up front.
You motherboard has only two ram slots, so adding ram in the future will require a replacement, discarding the old.
That said, 8gb is sufficient for gaming and most uses. 16gb helps if you will be multitasking while gaming.

I would recommend deferring on the hard drive and buy a 250gb Samsung 850 evo.
You can always add a hard drive later if you need more space.

The word is out that the G4560 is an excellent budget gamer so the prices have been bid up over the list price of $64.
You might be able to find a slightly faster G4600 or G4620 for not much more.

 

[10tacle]

Well right now you'll get better general overall gaming performance at 1080p with a four core i5 processor instead of 16GB of memory. However, I will caution that more and more games are claiming that 8GB memory is the minimum spec and 16GB the recommended spec. This will only increase in the future.

If I were in your shoes, I'd lose that Pentium G4560 and spend more on an i5. Another option is to go ahead and make the jump to an 8th generation Coffee Lake i3 build which will be phenomenally faster than a previous generation G-series Pentium (and offers four real cores). Like this one for $140: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA24G6K34317

Of course you'd need to find a motherboard for the new Coffee Lake CPU as well, something like this:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813144115

Unfortunately there are no less expensive B or H series motherboards for Coffee Lake, so you would have to shell out more to get a Z-series motherboard for the current Coffee Lake generations. But it would allow you a nice upgrade path in the future whereas a previous generation Intel chipset (6th gen Skylake or 7th gen Kaby Lake) would not. So yes, you would be looking at $260 vs. $120 between the CPU and motherboard over your current setup with that Coffee Lake i3 build, or $241 vs. $120 with an i5 7600K CPU in your current configuration.

You can see where the G4560 stacks up against other CPUs here using an EVGA GTX 1080 FTW (make note that it isn't even as fast as a seven year old Sandy Bridge i5 2500K):

https://www.gamersnexus.net/images/media/2017/CPUs/g4560/intel-g4560-wd2_1.png