Well i am building a new gaming PC, plan to play 1080 for now then upgrade to 1440 in the near future. its my birthday today and plan to start to buy some components very soon. I just can’t decide what CPU to buy, i had originally planed to use AMD FX-8350/70 after i have good experiences with AMD in the past. But this seem a little bit of a poor choice with Zen around the corner.
I have considered a I3 but iv a lot of bench marking that says the FX series is better than the I3 for a lot of games. So the next choice is an I5, but most of the I5’s that seem to be the best ones to use like the 6500 are a little more than i really would like to spend! Plus the DDR4 ram is that bit dearer to buy, what all eats away at my budget. Starting to fell a little .
Its seem today there is far to many choices when it come to component these days! If it helps i plan to get a RX480, to go with what ever i choose.

The FX would be a poor choice even over i3, at least in the case of the latter you can upgrade to i5 or i7 down the line, whereas AM3+ is a dead platform now.

If budget is a major concern, just get a H81M motherboard and a cheap 2nd hand haswell i5 like the 4460 with 8GB DDR3. Costs around €180 here in Ireland, so around £150-160. Much more stable and reliable than the FX with good upgrade option to Haswell i7.

Or else just get a H110M, i3-6100 and 8GB DDR4, with a view to upgrading to i5 at some later stage. Depending on the game, a Skylake i3 is pretty solid performer - beats the FX in a lot of 2015/16 titles as well, though in games like BF1 the FX would be better.

Terrorfirmer said:

The FX would be a poor choice even over i3, at least in the case of the latter you can upgrade to i5 or i7 down the line, whereas AM3+ is a dead platform now.

If budget is a major concern, just get a H81M motherboard and a cheap 2nd hand haswell i5 like the 4460 with 8GB DDR3. Costs around €180 here in Ireland, so around £150-160. Much more stable and reliable than the FX with good upgrade option to Haswell i7.

Or else just get a H110M, i3-6100 and 8GB DDR4, with a view to upgrading to i5 at some later stage. Depending on the game, a Skylake i3 is pretty solid performer - beats the FX in a lot of 2015/16 titles as well, though in games like BF1 the FX would be better.

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BF1 is one of the main games I after, i haven't brought it for my PS as iv had enough of playing first person shoots on controllers and total war warhammer is the other main game. There is also a lot older games I have missed the years iv been on console.

Definitely go either new i3/H110M/DDR4 or 2nd hand i5/H81M/re-use old ram.

Going FX in 2016 makes little sense really - unless you pick up a good bargain second hand that's decently cheaper than 2nd hand i5, and only FX8320/8350, forget FX6300/6350.

AM3+ is a dead platform and at this point offers zero performance or longevity upgrades, whereas Haswell and Skylake both offer much superior options in the i5, and vastly superior upgrade potential in the i7.

Would an FX83x0 be faster in BF1 than i3? Yes, but as a platform it will need replacing much sooner than Haswell or Skylake. Single thread performance also sucks so in a lot of games, the performance is actually way worse than Haswell or Skylake i3.

2nd hand Haswell i5/board should be around the same price as FX8320/50 and 970 board, so it's a no brainer for Intel really.

Or else just wait it out until next year for Zen and Kabylake, if nothing else should drive down prices in general.

inflames said:

Well i am building a new gaming PC, plan to play 1080 for now then upgrade to 1440 in the near future. its my birthday today and plan to start to buy some components very soon. I just can’t decide what CPU to buy, i had originally planed to use AMD FX-8350/70 after i have good experiences with AMD in the past. But this seem a little bit of a poor choice with Zen around the corner.
I have considered a I3 but iv a lot of bench marking that says the FX series is better than the I3 for a lot of games. So the next choice is an I5, but most of the I5’s that seem to be the best ones to use like the 6500 are a little more than i really would like to spend! Plus the DDR4 ram is that bit dearer to buy, what all eats away at my budget. Starting to fell a little .
Its seem today there is far to many choices when it come to component these days! If it helps i plan to get a RX480, to go with what ever i choose.

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Don't both with AMD until Zen comes out. Currently AMD are just pretty worthless compared to Intel as the AMD cpus are about 3-4 years old now.
If you're getting the RX480 then you want a cpu that won't bottleneck it and the entry i5 should be fine. If it's a bit pricey you could get an i3 and then upgrade in a years time.

if there's any chance of stretching the budget go for the £500 upcoming black Friday deal with a 6700K, decent Z170 board, AIO cooler, memory and two games. Probably a lot more than what you want to spend but if you want to play upcoming games at 1440 this bundle (with a suitable graphics card) will see you good for a few years yet

Been spending sometime this morning looking at buying a 2nd hand graphic card, seen a few gtx970 and r9 380 going for around 125-175. This would free up the money for a i5 6500 and this would give me a good foundation to build apon, to up grade the GPU in a year or so time.

I bought a h81 mobo for £50, coupled it with an i5 4570 for £90 off an auction site and was lucky to find 16gb of ram for £23 on another forum.

A very cheap way to build a pc, was actually my htpc so I added a 1060 from overclockers to make a very capable 1080p machine. I also won a psu from an iverclockers competition so all in all a very capable budget machine.

Caracus2k said:

if there's any chance of stretching the budget go for the £500 upcoming black Friday deal with a 6700K, decent Z170 board, AIO cooler, memory and two games. Probably a lot more than what you want to spend but if you want to play upcoming games at 1440 this bundle (with a suitable graphics card) will see you good for a few years yet

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Nice idea, but that would push me beyond my budget as i need OS, monitor, mouse and keyboard as well. Thats what i get for having laptops and consoles for years now.

inflames said:

Been spending sometime this morning looking at buying a 2nd hand graphic card, seen a few gtx970 and r9 380 going for around 125-175. This would free up the money for a i5 6500 and this would give me a good foundation to build apon, to up grade the GPU in a year or so time.

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If you are planning on going 1440p in the future, the 970 just doesn't cut it. The 970 is a 1080p card, it is a good card but not good enough for 1440p. For CPU avoid AMD, they are miles behind and you will get much better for the money with Intel.

I can't believe some of the prices people are willing to pay for previous gen CPU's specially 2nd hand ones. Been monitoring the prices of I5's on a auction site as well as certain graphics cards. Skylake 6400 and 6500 no considerable saving with them and the Haswell 4690 and 4570 still going for a good chunk of change. I don't want to sound like a tight b*stard but it has shocked me. Might just go for an I3 and upgrade later, as thats within my budget.
My brother in law has now thrown a spanner in the work after i decided to go for a Intel build, he has offered me his old FX8350, as he just brought a FX9590. He hasn't said a price yet, i know its been well looked after but has been considerably overclocked and well used.
Ill be having a good look on christmas day and boxing day now to see if there is any decent deals going on. Hopefully by then he will had given me a price or i will have found a deal for a CPU i would like.

inflames said:

I can't believe some of the prices people are willing to pay for previous gen CPU's specially 2nd hand ones.

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2nd hand CPU prices are a reflection of two factors

1) CPU's rarely fail like say GPU's so if you buy second hand and the chip works its unlikely to fail 6 months or so down the line.


2) Since Intel Sandy Bridge CPU'S advances in ipc and clock speeds (especially overclocked speeds) has been rather lacklustre to the extent that people with give year old 2600k's see little reason to upgrade to a contemporary skylake. On the other hand upgrading from a five year old GPU to one of a similar price (new) today would yield a massive performance increase.

A 3rd minor point is that the falling £-$ rate has meant that a lot of CPU's have become a lot more expensive 5820k's fell as low as £275 in the UK at one point. Used 5820k's are selling on the mm for £230+ relecting that the cpu now costs a lot more with the replacement 6800k which offers no compelling upgrade in performance selling for around £400