High Spec i3 or Low Spec i5?

[Daston]

Hey guys,

I am building my wife a micro ITX PC for part of her christmas present.

She will use it for mainly office use with the odd games like Sims 3, Sims 4 and probably the new Everquest when it comes out next year. I am planning on installing windows 8 as she will find it easier to navigate the tiles than the normal desktop.

I am trying to work out if its worth getting an i5 over an i3.

Her current rig is running a Q6600 with 4gb of RAM so I am not sure how much quicker an i3 would be going from 4 to 2 cores.

So far the hardware I have sorted is as follows;

Bitfenix Prodigy Caseking Ed
Asus Z77 Micro ITX (her brother is getting this for her)
4gb Corsair RAM (will get a second stick at a later date)
Asus 650GTX
600W PSU

Any advise would be great.

 

[JonSmith]

Get the low end i5, the cheapest i5 still turbos to a higher clock than the fastest i3 anyway.

The i5 CPUs also support "limited unlock", so you can increase the clock by 4 bins above the max turbo. This generally means up to a 400mhz OC on a non-k chip.

 

[Randell]

if you're looking to future games such a Sims 4 and the Everquest, definitely get an i5

 

[Ragnahex]

if you cab stretch to the i5 go that way i did similar for my htpc just incase

 

[ALXAndy]

Edit, apologies didn't see the ITX thing !

 

[wazza300]

whatever you do you will cripple performance running single channel/one stick of memory,best buy two sticks/dual channel straight off imo

 

[kaku]

Have you already got the mentioned hardware on hand?

At that price point an FX6300 might be worth a look if you've not bought anything yet.

 

[ALXAndy]

Have you already got the mentioned hardware on hand?

At that price point an FX6300 might be worth a look if you've not bought anything yet.

No ITX for AMD only MATX and they pretty much stop at the 6300. None have enough power stages to run a 83x0 properly. Shame really, but them's the breaks I guess.

 

[Daston]

Thanks guys, Will pick up an i5

With the RAM would I be better off getting 2x 2gb and then swap that out later on then?

 

[ALXAndy]

Have you looked at the AMD APUs? You get a really nice graphics solution with that.

I think you'd have issues running Sims 4 on a Igpu. There are some really nice ITX boards out that will take the AMD APUs too.

As for 4gb ram? I would get 8gb tbh.

 

[Make]

Invest in an SSD and 8gb memory for running Sims games if you use any "additional" downloaded content.

My girlfriend's laptop (2012 model) has over 10 gigabytes of additional downloaded stuff, and it takes the game over 20 minutes to start on a HDD. Also uses up all the 3gb RAM.

Same stuff on my PC (sig), Takes around 30sec and a few gigs of ram.

You'll run into unexpected trouble in these weird games. I don't play em myself but

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

If The Sims 4 needs a Core i5 as a minimum I see it failing badly.

 

[shadow_boxer]

Grab an i5 if you can. AMD's apu migjt be another option but I wouldn't expect much in terms of gaming performance. Low to mid settings at best even with an A10-6800K. At least with an i5 you have considerable better cpu performance and an upgrade up when desired. My A10-5700 struggles with fifa 13 on medium settings at 720p.

 

[ALXAndy]

If The Sims 4 needs a Core i5 as a minimum I see it failing badly.

It's not the CPU I was concerned about, more the GPU.

 

[Daston]

Thanks guys.

I will be ramping it up to 16gb after Christmas but trying to keep it as cheap as possible for now lol.

A SSD is also on the cards, is 128gb enough for winows 8? I have a 2tb drive in there with all her games so would just be for the os.

Cheers

D