Intel i5-6400 6M Skylake

[Interista]

Hello,
I'm planning to upgrade my PC which is mainly for gaming so what do u think about i5-6400 6M Skylake for gaming and how is the cooling of this CPU. i'll get also "Kingston HyperX FURY 8GB DDR4 2666Mhz" and "Asus Z170-A Intel Z170 DDR4 USB 3.1 ATX Motherboard" . what do u think of these choices. and the compatibility between them notice that the motherboard and the CPU max supported is DDR4 2133 and the RAMs is DDR4 2666Mhz . Thank you.

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Z170-A/

http://ark.intel.com/products/88185/Intel-Core-i5-6400-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_30-GHz

 

[modernwar99]

The stock cooler will do its job and keep it cool. The max supported by Intel is just what they officially support, you can use 2666MHz and up RAM with no problem on that mobo. Might have to manually set the XMP profile to 2666MHz in the BIOS though. Mobo is kinda overkill for a locked CPU... nothing a $90-100 mobo can't do.

 

[Interista]

The stock cooler will do its job and keep it cool. The max supported by Intel is just what they officially support, you can use 2666MHz and up RAM with no problem on that mobo. Might have to manually set the XMP profile to 2666MHz in the BIOS though. Mobo is kinda overkill for a locked CPU... nothing a $90-100 mobo can't do.

Thank you for the fast reply. unfortunately i don't have a lot of available choices for the mobo that supported DDR4. the cheapest mobo that's available for me and supported the DDR4 RAM, and 6th gen CPU is GIGABYTE GA-Z170X-GAMING 3 Intel Z170 DDR4 which is cheaper just by 15$.

 

[Interista]

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-6400+%40+2.70GHz
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=intel+core+i5-4460+%40+3.20ghz&id=2230
I would not build a gaming rig around the lower end of skylake, it is still very bad value for money at the moment. You would save around £75 or $120 building a gamer using haswell.

So i5-6400 and i5 4460 is almost the same ? here in my country the 6400 is just more by 15$ of i5-4440 and i5-4460.
what do u suggest for the CPU?

 

[geofelt]

Your choices are compatible and reasonable.
Much depends on prices you need to pay.

With a locked Skylake cpu, you can use the cheapest lga1151 motherboard available.
If you have the possibility of a future "K" suffix upgrade, then you want the Z170 based motherboard.

As to ram, there is no advantage to ram faster than the default 2133 speed.
The only exception is if you intend to use the integrated graphics, and not a discrete gaming card.
Here is more info on Skylake ram scaling:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1478-page1.html

You might see if the i3-6320 is available where you are; It looks to me like a very good budget gaming cpu:
http://techreport.com/news/28957/the-skylake-core-i3-6320-is-the-gamer-new-best-friend

 

[modernwar99]

Benchmarks put the i5 6400 ahead by about 14% in single core and multi core performance. We'll have to wait for youtubers to get some gaming benchmarks put together... but with the way the i5 6600k beat the i5 4690k, I bet it'll be the same result. Haswell is still better for the money though.

 

[modernwar99]

There is something wrong with CPUmark and skylake CPUs. According to CPUmark, the i7 4790k is faster than the i7 6700k which isn't true. Both Geekbench and Userbenchmarks puts the i5 6400 ahead by a decent amount.

 

[Interista]

First of thank you all for the comments which is rly helpful, So after all i think i would go from Skylake to Haswell as well from DDR4 to DDR3.

Asus Z97-K Intel Z97 ATX Motherboard LGA 1150
with i5-4460

which gonna save like 90$, so worth the saving ? i don't mind to pay these 90$ to get better gaming PC if possible.

 

[modernwar99]

Not worth $90 more imo. Spend that $90 on a better GPU or SSD or something. Go with the Haswell.

 

[Interista]

Which ever way you look at it, if skylake IS 14% faster, any benchmark that puts the 6400 well in front of a 4460 is full of crap cos the 4460 has 14% higher base clock speed anyway.
500 megahertz. Claims of supremacy wildly exaggerated.
Save the $'s, buy a bigger graphics card.
Use this ram with a 'Z97' motherboard if it is the same price where you are;
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231538&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-PCPartPicker,%20LLC-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=

The RAM is 55$ here, but I already have Kingston 8GB DDR3 1333Mhz , do u think it's worth to go with the GSkill ?

 

[Interista]

Back
After being looking around, I was thinking about getting PC that lives for more 5 years or more without upgrading it.
so maybe i go with i5-4690K with the Z97-K mobo. but im worry about the CPU temps cuz I live in hot area which i think i can't count on the stock CPU fan.

 

[Interista]

my final setup will be as below :

Asus Z97-K Intel Z97 ATX Motherboard LGA 1150

Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz 6MB LGA 1150 CPU, Retail

Cooler Master K380 Window USB 3.0 Gaming Case

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB DDR3 1866Mhz

XIGMATEK LOKI II 92mm HYPRO Bearing CPU Cooler

and i already have 650 watt gigabyte PSU and AMD R9 270x VGA.

 

[modernwar99]

You might want to also look a better case that comes with more fans or buying 1 or 2 aftermarket ones. Most Rosewill cases are cheap (not sure in your country) and come with 3+ fans. I say this because if your ambient case temp is higher because of the air temps around it, you're just going to be "cooling" everything with air that's already hot. I mean a CPU cooler will still help, but keeping the case temps low in warmer climates seems to provide the best cooling.

 

[Interista]

You might want to also look a better case that comes with more fans or buying 1 or 2 aftermarket ones. Most Rosewill cases are cheap (not sure in your country) and come with 3+ fans. I say this because if your ambient case temp is higher because of the air temps around it, you're just going to be "cooling" everything with air that's already hot. I mean a CPU cooler will still help, but keeping the case temps low in warmer climates seems to provide the best cooling.

I think i'll get one more fan cooling case as start and i'll see later if need one more. one for the front and one extra for the side would be great. thank you

 

[Interista]

I would like to thank you all for helping. finally i got my whole setup as mentioned above i5-4690K ..
but after bought my new setup i noticed that there is i5-6600K available with only more 15$ more 🙁
should i be sad ?

with only more 65$ i could get this CPU with kingston 8GB DDR4 2666mhz & H170 mobo.

 

[nzgamer374]

Try ddr3l memory insted of ddr4

 

[Ravi Singh 1]

Your choices are compatible and reasonable.
Much depends on prices you need to pay.

With a locked Skylake cpu, you can use the cheapest lga1151 motherboard available.
If you have the possibility of a future "K" suffix upgrade, then you want the Z170 based motherboard.

As to ram, there is no advantage to ram faster than the default 2133 speed.
The only exception is if you intend to use the integrated graphics, and not a discrete gaming card.
Here is more info on Skylake ram scaling:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1478-page1.html

You might see if the i3-6320 is available where you are; It looks to me like a very good budget gaming cpu:
http://techreport.com/news/28957/the-skylake-core-i3-6320-is-the-gamer-new-best-friend

Getting the z170 is worthwhile, many benchmarks shows core i5 6400 can to oc'3d to 4.4 ghz on z170. Which is very good, plus faster ddr 4 ram above 2600mhz+ now boosts fps by 20-25% on newer games.

So oc'ed core i5 6400 + faster ddr 4 ram will give him a great boost.