What is the best budget i7 or i5 cpu, Old Gen

[Deleted member 362816]

Please consider eBay for pricing. I am curious what is the best bang for the buck cpu for $50 or less in your opinion.

 

[jojesa]

Core i5 2500k

 

[boju]

What gen platform and usage?

 

[Deleted member 362816]

What gen platform and usage?

Gen doesn't matter to much to me. Want to get the best bang for the buck for a second computer.

 

[boju]

Whats it going to do game or general use? If gaming what gpu?

I could suggest an i7 2600k for good overclocking and HT which would see it strong (as it still is now with bit of overclock) into the next couple of years for it's 8 threads.

For general use an i7 920 is quite sufficient. An i5 2500k is good cpu as well but for multi threaded gaming it's 4c will be limiting.

 

[Deleted member 362816]

Whats it going to do game or general use? If gaming what gpu?

I could suggest an i7 2600k for good overclocking and HT which would see it strong (as it still is now with bit of overclock) into the next couple of years for it's 8 threads.

For general use an i7 920 is quite sufficient. An i5 2500k is good cpu as well but for multi threaded gaming it's 4c will be limiting.

To be honest I don't think this PC will see much gaming. I assume you mean 4t would be limiting for gaming? as most games only use 2-4 cores right now.

 

[ArchitSahu]

i7 3770, if you can find, non k or k version, would be a very good choice.

 

[boju]

Just for the argument, ghost recon, devision, witcher3, gta5, farcry5 and there are others do benefit using more cores/threads. The means of using more cores has already been and will continue. Not to say 4c 4t is obsolete but is quickly becoming a bottleneck with powerfull gpus in recent and upcoming multi threaded titles. Farcry5 is a good example with high cpu usages on modern 4c 4t cpus.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/multi-core-cpu-scaling-directx-11,4768.html

For general use any 1st 2nd gen i5 or i7 will do as they would be cheapest.

 

[Karadjgne]

I bought a i7-3770k from ebay for $50. However, trying to get a decent motherboard was a nightmare, took 3 months of constant searching and finally got an msi mpower z77 for $100.

Honestly, best bang for the buck for a total pc is shopping Craigslist or ebay for the full thing. Trying to part out a full pc now, especially with older gen Intel is far more expensive. You can get functional pc's in the want-adds for $150, if all that's needed is a windows, surfing, YouTube machine

Amazon has full functional, brand new pc's with OS for $200

 

[jojesa]

I bought a i7-3770k from ebay for $50...

What!!!
When!!
How!!!
I have built several budget PCs and the best I got was a i7-2700k for $54 @ 3AM.
You are very lucky!

 

[Deleted member 362816]

As for cpu bottlenecking in games like farcry 5 with 4core you must assume 1080p is where that is happening because at 4k ultra settings with a 7700k I get 60 fps steady with 33% cpu usage.

 

[boju]

1440p, 4k is a different can of worms

 

[Karadjgne]

FC5 at 4k is brutal. 1440p has @1.7x as many pixels as 1080p, but 4k literally has 4x the pixels. That's brutal for any game, requiring not only a decent cpu and a goodly amount of ram but also a top line gpu with at least 8Gb of vram.