New Build - Which CPU?

Hey guys I am going to be upgrading my PC in a few weeks and I have hit sort of a snag as usual and cant decide which CPU to use. I have a few in my price range however I would like to keep the cost down. I live in Australia so the prices might seem high to you lucky people living in the US. I mostly use my PC for gaming.
So what I am looking at is:

i5 8400 = $249
i5 8500 = $279
i5 8600 = $309

I am pairing the CPU up with a GTX 1080 and am not interested in overclocking my cpu. I have owen my i5 4690k with a corsair watercooler block for a few years and have not overclocked it once so I see no need for me to shell out the extra cash for the i5 8600K

I have seen benchmarks showing there is very little difference in gaming between these CPU but the benchmarks where a few months old and I am not certain whether new games coming out later this year would benefit from the slightly higher clock speeds.

I an afford any of these CPUs however would prefer to make the best price per perfomance buy I can so I can add extra money for my ram or motherboard.

I appreciate your input, also if there is another CPU I should consider I would be happy to hear about it, I know some of the Ryzen CPU's are quite good.
 

Agent Smith

Well-Known Member
The 8400 would be alright. I don't know what online store you plan on using, but check out a price for the i7 6700 or the AMD Ryzen 2600x.

I think when it comes to modern games your GPU is going to be your biggest issue and what you listed there should be good for a long time to come. Although, to future proof a little you might want to have a faster CPU.
 

OmniDyne

Active Member
check out a price for the i7 6700

The 6700 is slower than the 4690K.

The i5-8400 is only 10 percent faster than the 4690K. You'd only notice a slight improvement in a few games, because the 8400 has two more cores.

I would absolutely avoid the 8500 and 8600, especially at those premiums.

If the Ryzen 5 2600X is available for around the price of the i5-8400, that would be the best option.

However, it may not be worth upgrading from the 4690K just yet. Intel is rumored to release an update to the 8th gen processors by the end of this year (rumored to be 8 cores), and AMD will be releasing its Zen 2 architecture next year.

The 4690K would be fine paired with a GTX 1080. I would personally hold off on the processor upgrade.
 
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Darren

Moderator
Staff member
I'd wait to upgrade too. You're going to end up doing a whole platform upgrade, including motherboard and RAM. The upgrade from a 4690k won't be huge so I'd wait.
 
I was told my 4690k would bottleneck a GTX 1080 so should I just wait on the whole lot of just pick up my 1080 now while they are on sale and grab new cpu and mb in a few months?
 

Cisco001

Well-Known Member
OC your 4690K with GTX 1080 and see if you are happy with the performance before you actually change the platform
 

OmniDyne

Active Member
Are you just looking at 60 FPS? Or trying for 144 FPS?
What games do you play?

From what I can tell, the only time the 4690K is hit hard are in games that take advantage of multiple cores, like Battlefield 1 multiplayer. People have complained of frame spikes with the 4690K and the GTX 1080 in that title.

Two more things to consider:

NVIDIA will release its new graphics cards either towards the end of this year, or next year.

Also, DDR5 is scheduled to be released next year.

The decision ultimately depends on how high you want your frame rates, and how long you're willing to wait.
 
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I only play games at 1080 cause thats all my monitor can support and i dont plan on buying a new one anytime soon.
Also i play games like battlefield and assassins creed as well as a bit of fifa so I think a cpu upgrade would be the best bet.
 
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