Which CPU

Hey guys I'm upgrading my cpu and motherboard this week and I'm stuck between 2 builds. I have a 400 Aus dollar limit and am considering either the i5 3570k or the i7 3770. The i5 is only 227 leaving me with enough room to buy a decent motherboard were as the i7 is 295 leaving me with only a small budget for motherboard. If I get the i7 I could still get something like the MSI Z77A-G41 wich looks like it has some nice features but is it worth me cheating out on the mb to get the i7.

I use my PC for a lot of gaming but also web design which means multi tasking and also graphic design and photoshop. Rest of my PC is in my sig.

Also if there is an AMD equivalent for under 400 I would love to hear it.
 
I'd recommend you buy an i5 3570K and a decent motherboard so that you can overclock well rather than buying a 3770 or 3770K and a mediocre board and not being able to overclock as far. You need aftermarket cooling for overclocking though. Does aftermarket cooling fall into your budget?

Photoshop runs fine for me on my 2500K (which is an i5 and overclocked to a moderate 4.3GHz), so I think it'd work fine on a 3570K too.
 
Hey guys I'm upgrading my cpu and motherboard this week and I'm stuck between 2 builds. I have a 400 Aus dollar limit and am considering either the i5 3570k or the i7 3770. The i5 is only 227 leaving me with enough room to buy a decent motherboard were as the i7 is 295 leaving me with only a small budget for motherboard. If I get the i7 I could still get something like the MSI Z77A-G41 wich looks like it has some nice features but is it worth me cheating out on the mb to get the i7.

I use my PC for a lot of gaming but also web design which means multi tasking and also graphic design and photoshop. Rest of my PC is in my sig.

Also if there is an AMD equivalent for under 400 I would love to hear it.

There you go. It's the i5 3570k then.

If it was just for web design, multitasking,graphic design, and photoshop, then I would diffidently recommend the i7 over the i5, but it's not. Also, with a $400 limit for Mobo/CPU, it has to be an i5. You need to consider an after market HSF, something like 212 evo, if you plan on any OC'ing.

i5 3570k
Gigabyte z77
Cooler Master 212 EVO
 
Yep I agree with the above. Board wise, the Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H or UD5H would be great, get whichever you can afford but make sure you also leave money to spare for aftermarket cooling.
 
Cheers guys I was leaning towards the i5 but since I don't really do any overclocking I didn't know if I would get more benefit from the stock i7
 
If you're going to be spending more time gaming and less time on your designing then just get the 3570K. You don't have to overclock it immediately, or at all even.

If you're going to be doing more designing then gaming then get the 3770K. Again, you don't have to overclock immediately.
 
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