I would comment on this whole post but I'm far too tired to do that right now haha.DelusionalSyko wrote:The 2500k/2400 is an amazing proc. But at this time, sadly, it's outdated and has been replaced. So getting the most recent architecture is always gooddeathham wrote:Thank you, didnt really know that and now you saved me a couple hundred dollars!
If you wanted to, you can swap it out for an AMD build and save even more money. Most people are insanely against AMD building for gaming, but I'm still a huge fan of AMD and I'm interested in building one for gaming. HOWEVER amd is budget. They are no where near the performance speed of Intel's chips. You can compare a quad-core processor vs an intel quad-core at the same speed, and the Intel will demolish it and stomp it into the dirt. But if you're on a strict budget, it's something to look into.
Also, I've noticed a lot of pre-built desktops with pretty descent hardware for good prices. Building PC's these days seems to be slightly more expensive rather than buying it from a company. Check out some HP builds and Asus builds to see if you can find a good deal. I just recently saw a build with an i7 proc 8gb of ram for about $700 - $800. And it also comes with a warranty
Graphics is just as important as processor. I would rather have an insanely fast processor and a crappy GPU. A lot of games these days, as well as a lot of graphically enhanced programs (Flash player) is CPU accelerated. So if you can get an i7 proc, I would HIGHLY recommend that over the i5. Most of the i7's support hyperthreading, and none of the i5s support it.
Anyways, I just wanted to comment on your last segment about the i7. If this guy is building it purely for gaming, go for an i5. The performance increase on actual speed per core in minimal from the i5 to the i7 on stock speeds. While the i5 does only have four cores with no hyper-threading, and while the i7 has eight effective cores with hyper-threading, this will serve miniscule or even non-existent performance increase in most, or even any game. If you're doing video editing or the like, the more cores the merrier! Get those guys to work, because those programs can use every core they can get their hands on. But for gaming purpose, most games will utilize a maximum of four cores, if even that. Many games still don't even take advantage of four cores, and none to my knowledge take advantage of eight. It's just simply not how games are optimized right now. So save yourself some money, buy a good i5, like a 3570k if you plan to OC, and get your game on!
Edit: Apologies Delusional, I didn't read your post very thoroughly, and I just kind of assumed what you wrote for some reason :/. I guess I was too tired that night, and apparently had wanted to type a lot haha.