CPU Upgrade Advice

[haaris.hasan03]

Hey,

So I've been wanting to upgrade my processor to an i7 for a while now. Right now I have an i5-6400, which I have felt has not given me as much processing power as I wanted. I use my PC primarily for gaming. I'm wondering if I should upgrade my RAM first to 16gb before upgrading my processor. I would like some suggestions as to which i7 I should get if I were to upgrade the processor. Would the 8700 non-K be a good choice (I'm not looking to overclock)? It would be great if the processor has over 4 cores, which is why the 8700 seems like a viable choice for me. I don't want to spend over 300 dollars, thank you!

PC Specs:
Intel Core i5-6400 2.7Ghz
Asus - H110M-A Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2133 Memory
Toshiba - 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
ASUS GeForce GTX 1060 3GB
EVGA - 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply

 

[camieabz]

From CPU support list (check your own mobo model and rev to make sure!):

Core i7-6700 (3.4GHz, 4C, HT, L3:8M, GT2, 65W, rev.R0)
Core i7-6700K (4.0GHz, 4C, HT, L3:8M, GT2, 91W, rev.R0)
Core i7-6700T (2.8GHz, 4C, HT, L3:8M, GT2, 35W, rev.R0)
Core i7-7700 (3.6GHz, 4C, HT, L3:8M, Intel HD 600 series, 65W, rev.B0)
Core i7-7700K (4.2GHz, 4C, HT, L3:8M,Intel HD 600 series , 91W, rev.B0)
Core i7-7700T (2.9GHz, 4C, HT, L3:8M,Intel HD 600 series , 35W, rev.B0)

All are 4 core. Based on that list:

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/cpu/#s=13&sort=price&page=1&X=0,30000

Quick comparison shows that the 7700 is the best option over the 6700 and 7700T, and all are similar price, so I would recommend the 7700, if you are happy to upgrade and stay with 4 cores.

Compared with current CPU - http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-6400-vs-Intel-Core-i7-7700/3512vs3887

If you find you're using over half your RAM all the time, or if your gaming is being affected by a lack of RAM, upgrade it. Not really worth it otherwise. Check resmon for 'available RAM' to see.

One thing I would suggest for a faster setup is an SSD as boot (suggest Samsung 850 Evo 512MB as the cost to GB is good right now), which should improve overall system speeds a lot. But you'll have to clone your installation, or reinstall Windows, which can be a challenge for some, or a PITA if you have a sweet setup.

 

[haaris.hasan03]

I think I'll just upgrade RAM once games absolutely need it and to an SSD later, thanks for the suggestion.

But I was just wondering wouldn't the 8700 perform better than the ones you listed, with its 6 cores and 12 threads. It has 0.4 less base clock speed but wouldn't the cores and threads compensate for that? Also, the 8700 is a couple bucks cheaper on Amazon than the 7700. I would really like to upgrade from 4 cores and the 8700 seems to be the perfect candidate. Let me know your thoughts, thanks!

Edit: So I just came to the realization that the 8700 is not compatible with my motherboard and I think it's the chipset because the sockets match and unfortunately there aren't 6 core CPUs compatible with my mobo.