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2500k to 8400/8600k

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I've seen some benchmarks and the 8400 looks to be about as good as a 7700k. Would the 8400 pair with a 1070 nicely for a few years? Or would my brother be better off going for the 8600k? He's on a relatively tight budget so the saving would be helpful if there's not much to be gained in going for the 8600k. I can find the link which compares the 8400 to the 7700k amongst others if anyone is interested.
 
8400 OR 8600k should be suitable gaming cpus for the next couple of years, though, a lot of games I run can use eight threads and I have to wonder if 8700K is the way to go. of course if budget is not available... that's all she wrote.

Ryzen is also an option.
 
Better off going with Ryzen. Get a 1600 or stretch the funds to a 1700. I look at Intel and see a system built with obsolescence as that Z370 chipset isn't future proof. At least with AM4 you're good for another 3 years with Ryzen+ and 7nm CPU's.
 
We have a near similar system and since new games still runs fine, I would wait for at least the Ryzen refresh that comes out in February before upgrading.
 
Note that this does also depend on motherboard manufacturer's supporting future chips with bios updates (not all will, from experience).
I never really understood the benefits of that argument. Sure, you can upgrade for the next 2 years through AM4 if you want, but it's a very small minority of people that actually upgrade their CPU every 2 years or less whilst keeping the same motherboard. The vast majority keep their entire system the same for way longer than 2 years.


To answer the OP's question, various early benchmarks indicate that performance of the i5-8400 is very similar to the i7 7700k and i5 8600k in most games. That's a £100+ saving for not much performance loss. The Ryzen 5 1600 is also a good option, but it doesn't perform so well in games.

Is your brother purely intending to game or?
 
I've seen some benchmarks and the 8400 looks to be about as good as a 7700k. Would the 8400 pair with a 1070 nicely for a few years? Or would my brother be better off going for the 8600k? He's on a relatively tight budget so the saving would be helpful if there's not much to be gained in going for the 8600k. I can find the link which compares the 8400 to the 7700k amongst others if anyone is interested.

Maybe you could consider a 1600X and B350 board with good 3200Mhz ram (check the board spec)? Both clock the same at 4Ghz, the Ryzen scales much better with higher speed ram, B350 platform is cheap, and you aren't PCI-E lanes starved, has 12 threads and can use the board/ram for future CPU upgrades. Also with the GTX1070 doesn't matter which one you choose.
 
if its soley for gaming go with the new intel chips.they are faster.better.

The 8400 is 6/6 chip at maximum 4Ghz speed. How's better than a 1600X 6/12 at same price and clock? Is not. Except if someone uses 2133mhz ram, but that cripples the 8400 perf also.
 
im not trying to argue with you just telling you for gaming intel is faster.if you going to try and shift perimeters please don't its too late and intel are still the faster chip for gaming.go look at the benchmarks.even i3s beat ryzens for majority of games.never mind new i5s/8700s.
 
Not sure on the 8400 at the current price. £290 for the chip with the cheapest board. You can almost get a 1700 and b350 board for that.
 
Thanks for all the replies. He'll solely use it for games. I wouldn't say the 2500k is struggling but it is a bottleneck and the pc is powered by a 7 year old OCZ PSU which potentially could be turn into a bonfire any day. The benchmarks I saw had the 8400 comfortably beating ryzen which I was confused about due to similar clock speeds and more threads on ryzen. I'm not clued up as to why.

I could convince him to wait until the ryzen refresh but he'll keep the system as it is for roughly 5 years so is unlikely to benefit from any newer CPUs on the same board. I'd like to think something with 6 cores and a 1070 will run 1080p for that long even if it means dropping setting in the last 2/3 years.
 
if its soley for gaming go with the new intel chips.they are faster.better.
You forgot "more expensive" again. Not sure if it's worth shelling out more cash for a Coffee Lake CPU (assuming you can find one in the first place) with just a GTX 1070. It will make no difference, so it depends on what types of games he plays now, what resolution he plays at, what upgrades he sees himself getting over the lifetime of the motherboard, etc.

Agreed I've been building PCs since the 90s and I've never upgraded a cpu on the same mobo.
I have, twice. Upgraded a 700 MHz Athlon Thunderbird to a 1.2 GHz chip, and later upgraded my i7-920 for an X5650. Both fantastic bang-for-buck upgrades, especially when you consider now you really don't get much at all from upgrading motherboards unless there's a new DDR RAM generation.

Thanks for all the replies. He'll solely use it for games. I wouldn't say the 2500k is struggling but it is a bottleneck and the pc is powered by a 7 year old OCZ PSU which potentially could be turn into a bonfire any day. The benchmarks I saw had the 8400 comfortably beating ryzen which I was confused about due to similar clock speeds and more threads on ryzen. I'm not clued up as to why.
Why do you think his PSU will die? My 8 year old OCZ is still going strong! :D

The i5-8400 and R5 1600(X) will perform similarly in games, the former being slightly stronger and slightly more expensive but it depends if you actually need that extra power for your GPU. If you had a GTX 1080 Ti and were gaming at 1080p I'd say maybe you do. Otherwise, not really. The Ryzen chip has other advantages like coming with a decent cooler, being on a non-dead-end platform, and being better at highly threaded applications and heavy multitasking because it has SMT (i.e. 12 threads instead of 6).

My girlfriend is thinking of upgrading her i5-2500K and I would 100% go for an R5 1600(X) setup (or an R7 setup depending on how serious she is at wanting to stream). :p
 
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