Out of the Loop - Best Budget CPU?

[~>Dg<~]

the 2700 has been £120 for a few weeks. has gone up a little now. but not by much. get a 6 now you say then upgrade to a 8 at a later date. or...just get a 8 now. for a few quid more its just options which any isnt that bad right now and prices are great for many good cpus.

 

[Jayster]

You can't buy the R7 2700 for £120 with a free game though, the cheapest you can get it is £134 with the game offer, and that game is now fetching £10 or £12 if you are lucky. The R5 3600 is ~£145-155, so £25-35 more after hoping you sell the game code for at least £10.

I'd say the best bang for buck are the 1600 AF (£85), the R7 2700(£134), and the R5 3600(£155), and each have merits where the others don't.

At £350 to spend on a CPU RAM and Mobo as per the OP's requirements for mainly games, the R5 3600's IPC gain is going to best the rest, but given the use of the GTX 1060 3GB we can only be talking 1080p.

R5 1600 AF with 16GB DDR4 3200 and a mid-level board (£60ish) that takes you to ~£200, use the remaining budget to get a new GPU, and sell the GTX 1060 3GB for £70-90. The £150 left + GTX money, £230ish total you can get a GTX 1660 Super, or for £15 more you can grab the RTX 5600 XT. That will be way better than any of the combinations above, and you'll be able to drop in a better 8-core 4xxx series CPU in a couple of years if you need to.

Sounds like its between a 1600 AF (if I can even find one, wonder if ocuk have any intentions to stock) and the 3600 then really.

I don't see the point in sacrificing the IPC improvements from the 3600 to gain two more cores for quite similar money.

 

[Tee Hee Johnson]

If I were on a tight budget at this moment, a 2700X would be my main line of thought.

For under £150, often under £130, it is amazing value.

 

[pp111]

I don't think the 9400F would offer enough of an improvement over the 3570K. Although I suspect games would be smoother on the 9400F, the CPU itself is just not powerful enough to justify the cost. If you were going down the route of upgrading to a modern board with new RAM then I would suggest the 9100F until you can afford a better CPU to drop in later. To me there seemed very little difference in real terms between the 9100 and the 9400 when games playing. The 9100 is stupid cheap and faster than a stock 3570K. Then later you could get a 9600 or something which would show you a much better return for your money.