- Jul 17, 2018
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- 10,870
Morning everyone,
In my neverending quest to provide a better gaming experience for my cousin, I'm thinking of building him a bare 'gaming' PC, with the cheapest part available that still allows for decent 1080p gaming (I know 1080p gaming itself is a spectrum, but hear me out). Which means going deep into the realm of older CPUs. I know, the newer i3s are quad-core now, and something like 1600 is an incredible proposition, but with the extremely limited budget I have now, we'll have to get off our high horses and well, see things from a 'cheapskate' perspective.
I'll go straight to the point, what is the barest, most 'minimal' CPU, that is still viable for 1080p 60 fps gaming? My cousin currently plays on an ULV / MX150 laptop so pretty much any CPU (within reason) will be an upgrade. For years, I always thought it's the i5-2400. But I gave mine a try yesterday and man, that thing was slow (I'm not really a 'gamer' so my game choices are limited, tried it with Mirrors Edge and Destiny 2, that thing struggled). Sold it for $30 as an extra towards this new PC.
Now, what about the i7-2600? Or maybe the i5-3470? Are those two CPUs still viable? Or even better, how about the old i7-860? Checking around comparing cinebench scores seems to show the old i7-860 to be not that far away from my Ryzen 3 1200, which is impressive.
I'll do a price comparison for a bit. Let's say I'm building the everyone's go-to 1600 build.
$150 for the CPU (couldn't find it for anything less than that, going used),
$60 for A320 motherboard,
$50 for 8 GB of DDR4 RAM.
$260 for the core build.
If I were to build an i5-3470, as an example, it'll be something like
$50 for the CPU,
$35 for the H61 motherboard,
$40 for the 8 GB RAM (what's going on with RAM prices anyway?).
$125 for the core. That's like half the price (and of course with all the repercussions of old platform and slower performance). Throw in a RX 470 for $120, a SEASONIC YEAHHH PSU for $60, and an 1080p monitor, hard drives, case and standard peripherals for $150. $455 for a full build.
Of course, 3470 is no match for 1600, but hey if it does 60 fps in the games he play I don't see any reason to go any higher, am I right?
Anyway, back to the main question, so what's the 'lowest' CPU still viable for 60 fps 1080p gaming? What about from the AMD side (I've seen some FX series like FX-6300 go as low as $40, but I'll be brutally frank I have no idea about the motherboards and the likes). Then there's these Xeons, X3450 for $20 with "comparable" performance to the i7-870. I mean, there's so many choices.
Sorry if this post looks like just a wall of text filled with the ramblings of a madman, I'm not good when it comes to expressing my intent. I'd really appreciate any inputs
In my neverending quest to provide a better gaming experience for my cousin, I'm thinking of building him a bare 'gaming' PC, with the cheapest part available that still allows for decent 1080p gaming (I know 1080p gaming itself is a spectrum, but hear me out). Which means going deep into the realm of older CPUs. I know, the newer i3s are quad-core now, and something like 1600 is an incredible proposition, but with the extremely limited budget I have now, we'll have to get off our high horses and well, see things from a 'cheapskate' perspective.
I'll go straight to the point, what is the barest, most 'minimal' CPU, that is still viable for 1080p 60 fps gaming? My cousin currently plays on an ULV / MX150 laptop so pretty much any CPU (within reason) will be an upgrade. For years, I always thought it's the i5-2400. But I gave mine a try yesterday and man, that thing was slow (I'm not really a 'gamer' so my game choices are limited, tried it with Mirrors Edge and Destiny 2, that thing struggled). Sold it for $30 as an extra towards this new PC.
Now, what about the i7-2600? Or maybe the i5-3470? Are those two CPUs still viable? Or even better, how about the old i7-860? Checking around comparing cinebench scores seems to show the old i7-860 to be not that far away from my Ryzen 3 1200, which is impressive.
I'll do a price comparison for a bit. Let's say I'm building the everyone's go-to 1600 build.
$150 for the CPU (couldn't find it for anything less than that, going used),
$60 for A320 motherboard,
$50 for 8 GB of DDR4 RAM.
$260 for the core build.
If I were to build an i5-3470, as an example, it'll be something like
$50 for the CPU,
$35 for the H61 motherboard,
$40 for the 8 GB RAM (what's going on with RAM prices anyway?).
$125 for the core. That's like half the price (and of course with all the repercussions of old platform and slower performance). Throw in a RX 470 for $120, a SEASONIC YEAHHH PSU for $60, and an 1080p monitor, hard drives, case and standard peripherals for $150. $455 for a full build.
Of course, 3470 is no match for 1600, but hey if it does 60 fps in the games he play I don't see any reason to go any higher, am I right?
Anyway, back to the main question, so what's the 'lowest' CPU still viable for 60 fps 1080p gaming? What about from the AMD side (I've seen some FX series like FX-6300 go as low as $40, but I'll be brutally frank I have no idea about the motherboards and the likes). Then there's these Xeons, X3450 for $20 with "comparable" performance to the i7-870. I mean, there's so many choices.
Sorry if this post looks like just a wall of text filled with the ramblings of a madman, I'm not good when it comes to expressing my intent. I'd really appreciate any inputs
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