Need a new CPU - whats the current price/performance king for 1440p gaming?

[andybird123]

I'm not in the UK, so there's not much of a 2nd hand scene where I am and my daughters PC has just died, even "old" stuff, if you can get it, is basically original MSRP and not cheap, no where has AMD 7 series in stock so I've got a choice between AMD 5xxx or Intel 12th gen, I will be overclocking... I've been back and forth between getting a 12400F to tide over until 136/700k would be available as it would drop in the same mobo, or just getting a 12600k/12700k. AMD 5700X and 5800X are also available for around the same prices respectively.

which would you get?

 

[andybird123]

I’d look at the glut of unsold prebuilt systems. One of those and a Intel Arc 770 card will probably be the bang for buck gaming king.

I'm not in the UK, it's literally the first sentence of my opening post, prebuilts here are all 12100's and trash tier mobos, already have hard drives, PSU etc so a prebuilt would be a massive waste of funds. Don't need a GPU either.
CPU is the only thing I'm not set on and it's a choice between 12600k or 12700k if the 12700 gets appreciably more in games.

 

[andybird123]

The tide over idea is also good btw, that i5 is a great chip..

Yeah, my only reticence is that there virtually no 2nd hand market here, so I'd basically end up paying £140 extra for a 13600k than if I just get the 12600k now.

 

[andybird123]

The big beige box firms sell everywhere. No market is left unserved.

Wrong - or even they did ship here, shipping for a complete PC would be north of £100 and then import duty would be 40% for PC goods, yeah that sounds like a bargain.

 

[andybird123]

Also at 1440p gaming you're starting to get GPU bottled necked and the difference in CPU's is much less.

Get that 12600K up to ~5.2Gjz and tune the RAM and your set.

Thanks for the actually helpful response

 

[andybird123]

The motherboard has failed, there is no 2nd hand market here I can't get another z170 board, I can get a B560M and 10600k but it's not cheaper than a B660 and 12600K, I already have ddr4 ram, PSU etc., So I am replacing the minimum amount of parts, domestically sourced parts don't have 40% tax, only personal imports so as I said can you please something off and ruin someone else's day

 

[andybird123]

Bit stalkery

By the way, the 12600k here works out about £70 cheaper than UK price as I acquired my local currency before the pound tanked

Another clue, there's an Intel factory about 10 miles from where I live

 

[andybird123]

For motherboard I'd look at the MSI Z690 Pro-A or Asus PRIME Z690-P D4, can't really go wrong with either and no need really to spend more for gaming.

I went for the Asus B660M-Plus as it was £80 cheaper than those z690 boards and had everything I need

12600k too

 

[andybird123]

12700F or 13700F.

You can't really overclock the K SKU series that much and it doesn't improve performance that much since Intel has stopped being stingy and giving us just 4 core 8 thread options.

Edit: I see you went for a 12600K.

I checked around the 12600k results and stock its 4.5ghz all core, overclocked it can go to 5.0-5.2 depending on cooling and luck
my 9700k is 4.6 stock and does 5.1 all core OC'd so that's around the same level or even slightly better of an OC

there's no F stock around near me any more and although the shop confirmed they have their 13th stock in already, its at full price so the 12600k still worked out the better cost/perf option I think

 

[andybird123]

Bios updates will support RL on B660 but the B660 is still dead the same as AM4

No DDR5, PCIE5 just the same. Yea you get 13th gen albeit we don’t know actually how well it will be supported but you don’t get any of the generational upgrades as you like to say.

There’s still a but here. If you go RL you can grab a new mobo and get the generational updates once they mature and hopefully cost goes down because those new mobos and ddr 5 gonna be expensive for awhile.

If the OP is gonna stick to alderlake then that’s not the case as you’d still have to update almost the whole system down the line….. which means AM4 Vs alderlake… I’d personally go AM4 and punch for the x3D

I actually found out the B660 doesn't support overclocking at the last minute, so have a Z690 board with DDR5 and PCIE5 - the cost of a DDR5 kit was only about £10 more than the DDR4 I would have gone with
I'm probably not going to get a 13th gen anyway for the foreseeable as the cost/performance isn't there I don't think - and I have 2 kids who get my hand me downs, so I tend not to upgrade CPU and just do a new build when one of us slips off the curve of the hardware we have supporting the games we want to play

there aren't any X3D's available here (I'm not in the UK as I said in the OP)