Question about Intel Skylake or Haswell (Locked CPUs)

[Carlitox]

Hello everyone. First of all, this is my first question on Tom's Hardware and being a site that solved lots of my doubts in the past, I want to say thanks to all the community. You really rock!

Now onto the question. I am planning a completely new build for gaming, since my current PC is ancient to say the least (Pentium E5300 LOL). Now, we have heard about Skylake CPUs and how it is a good start for people with old PCs but not for Haswell users. I live in Uruguay, and the price of CPUs here is brutally higher, an i5 4690k costs 330 bucks. Due to local regulations, I'm unable to buy anything in Amazon/Newegg/etc. that exceeds USD200. There is this Skylake i5 6500 that costs about 210 bucks on Amazon and I'm waiting for holiday season to see if it drops below 200. There is also the Haswell i5 4590 priced at 200 bucks. I don't really want to OC, so locked CPUs are fine with me. Is it worth to wait and see if I can grab the Skylake, given the difficulties I have to deal with? I really want something I can upgrade later, but with the LGA1151 out I fear the 1150 is going to die.

Any suggestions will be appreciated. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

 

[popatim]

By the time you upgrade again 1151 will probably be dead too. Haswell games better than skylake so dont be afraid to grab the 4590. Add in the cheaper ddr3 and you might be able to get a better gpu than you were planning.

 

[Sensei Gamer]

I would recommend just getting the i5 4590. It is an excellent CPU in my opinion if not overclocking. the performance difference between the haswell and the Skylake isn't very significant, It's just newer and a bit better, well this is mostly because Intel doesn't have any competition so they decided that they don't need to improve much in the next generation CPUs. AnywayHere in Argentina everything is bloody expensive! the i5 4590 is like around $360!

Make sure that in your gaming rig, The Graphics card is the most expensive and the best. CPU comes second and then the rest of the components. So CPU doesn't have to be the best and not to bottleneck the graphics card. What GPU are you getting anyway? Cheers

 

[Sensei Gamer]

Or maybe an AMD FX 8350, Kind of an awesome CPU too, for it's price and you get 8 cores. Kind of power hungry though.

 

[Carlitox]

Exactly my thoughts about the GPU. There's no way I can get a GPU from the US so I'm planning to grab a GTX970 here for around 550 bucks. I don't think a 4590 is going to bottleneck, I've seen plenty of reviews that say it's crazy awesome and cheap and that made it my first choice. I really hope I can grab a holiday deal, having it only go down 10 bucks would allow me to ship it here and save 100 bucks. Gaming is hard in the third world!

I was extremely tempted for AMD. They are powerhouses and super cheap. However, I've noticed cooling issues, and as you say, they're hungrier and more for enthusiasts on a budget. Plus the AM3 socket doesn't leave much room for an upgrade. With an i5 I can maybe get a Devil's canyon in some years' time.

My build would basically be: Intel Core i5 4590/4690 (depending on sales, if the 4690 happens to drop below USD200 during the holidays, I'll grab it), nVidia GTX970 4gb, Kingston HyperX RAM 2x8gb, MSI gaming MOBO (lots of models in consideration). I'm planning on getting an aftermarket cooler too, since my bedroom gets really hot in the summer and even my current, rather domestic PC has troubles.

Thanks for your answers popatim and Sensei Gamer!

 

[Sensei Gamer]

Exactly my thoughts about the GPU. There's no way I can get a GPU from the US so I'm planning to grab a GTX970 here for around 550 bucks. I don't think a 4590 is going to bottleneck, I've seen plenty of reviews that say it's crazy awesome and cheap and that made it my first choice. I really hope I can grab a holiday deal, having it only go down 10 bucks would allow me to ship it here and save 100 bucks. Gaming is hard in the third world!

I was extremely tempted for AMD. They are powerhouses and super cheap. However, I've noticed cooling issues, and as you say, they're hungrier and more for enthusiasts on a budget. Plus the AM3 socket doesn't leave much room for an upgrade. With an i5 I can maybe get a Devil's canyon in some years' time.

My build would basically be: Intel Core i5 4590/4690 (depending on sales, if the 4690 happens to drop below USD200 during the holidays, I'll grab it), nVidia GTX970 4gb, Kingston HyperX RAM 2x8gb, MSI gaming MOBO (lots of models in consideration). I'm planning on getting an aftermarket cooler too, since my bedroom gets really hot in the summer and even my current, rather domestic PC has troubles.

Thanks for your answers popatim and Sensei Gamer!

Well a good choice you made! A GTX 970 is one of the best in price per performance. GTX 960, too low in performance, closer to a GTX 950 and a GTX 970 is just around $100 more. A GTX 980, kind of a bit too expensive. The only thing in between the 2 is the GTX 970. Recommend the GTX 970 to anyone who has the money. Plus if you SLI the GTX 970 in the future. You would get a performance similar to the GTX TITAN/GTX 980Ti or even exceed it. Nice choice of parts you got there! Good luck and cheers! 😀