Refurbished system with i7 2600s or current gen i3?

[Ryan_43]

Currently looking to put together a budget gaming rig, but cant decide what approach I should take.


Should I build from the ground up with new parts with an i3 6100 (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/KMfKvK)

or

Should I use a refurbished pre-built Lenovo desktop w/ an i7 2600s and upgrade the RAM, HDD, GPU and PSU? (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Htxhbv)


Really having a hard time deciding, but leaning toward using the refurbished system since it has the i7 with 4 cores with hyperthreading, even though it is older. My only real concern is the system being refurbished/used.

I'm not planning on doing any drastic upgrades in the future or CPU overclocking (doesn't matter though, both chips are locked). At most, I would just upgrade the GPU once I feel the need for an extra power boost and/or CPU upgrade for the skylake build. Any advice or help would be appreciated!

 

[Joe Gallo]

Depends on the price difference, what games will you be playing, and when you want to upgrade. The i3 is actually better as a CPU unless you'll be doing video publishing and and editing. The i7 has about 80% of the power the i3 has.

 

[Ryan_43]

Depends on the price difference, what games will you be playing, and when you want to upgrade. The i3 is actually better as a CPU unless you'll be doing video publishing and and editing. The i7 has about 80% of the power the i3 has.

Using the prebuilt system is actually ~$50 cheaper. I guess what I am wondering is if it is worth the extra power and the cheap price to upgrade a refurbished PC rather than building one with new parts. So far, I'm pretty convinced with going with the refurbished system and upgrading it. Thanks for the reply!

 

[RobCrezz]

Depends on the price difference, what games will you be playing, and when you want to upgrade. The i3 is actually better as a CPU unless you'll be doing video publishing and and editing. The i7 has about 80% of the power the i3 has.

The i3 is only slightly faster in single/dual threaded tasks. in everything else the 2600 is better, even in the majority of recent games the 2600 would be better.

 

[kestzro]

As someone mentioned above i3 has better performance per core (but it has only 2 cores while most of the games reqs 4 cores). Btw I still have i7 2600 (running @ 3.7 ghz all 4 cores) paired with gtx 960 and have no problems at all. I tested it with gtx 970 (and I had decent performance). So if u are playing @ 1080p it wont bottleneck gtx 950 (I think it might bottleneck only if u are going to play at 720p).