$150~$200 for a CPU for a Z97 board...anything out there?

[Jim Bancroft]

I picked up a Z97 board on discount recently and need a chip for it. Looking at the i7s, well... they seem a little steep.

Is there a decent i5 I can get in the range above? Watching the deals at Newegg and TD I'm not seeing much, but I'm not sure what works.

I also have an R9 270 card to go in the system. Not planning on heavy games, mostly a business PC with some software development.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

If you really want an i7 because of the 4 cores, 8 threads, your best bet is a Xeon E3-1231v3, which as far as I can tell is an i7 minus the integrated graphics and with ECC memory support. It's still over budget at $250 though, but better than $310 for the equivalent i7. This Xeon and an i7 clocked at similar clockrates (I think the i7 at the same stock clock has 100MHz higher turbo) seem to bench identically in gaming. Probably the same for encoding, but definitely check on that (I wasn't looking at video performance when I was considering that CPU, as I don't care about that).

http://ark.intel.com/products/80910/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-1231-v3-8M-Cache-3_40-GHz

But the i5-4590 is available for $200, or an i5-4460 for $190. A couple weeks ago I saw i5-4460's going for $175. Check pcpartpicker.com since they show prices from lots of merchants.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

If you live in a city with a Microcenter you could actually get the unlocked i5-4690k for $200.

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80646i54690k

 

[TheCorman]

I'm not sure where you are located, but if you are in the US and live close to a Microcenter - they have the i5 4590 for 159.99.

For just NewEgg and TD - you'd be fine with any of the under 200 Haswell based Core i5's like the 4460.

 

[Burpo]

Worth the $20 over budget, vs i5 for 4 core w/8 threads..

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Xeon-...sor-/261631892899?pt=CPUs&hash=item3cea79dda3

 

[SteveGrabowski]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...ZMkaAqgu8P8HAQ

The Xeon E3 1220v3 isn't hyperthreaded, though it does have 8MB of L3 cache vs the 6 MB you'd find in an i5. You have to go up to Xeon E3 1230v3 or Xeon E3 1231v3 for HT thoguh.

http://ark.intel.com/products/75052/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-1220-v3-8M-Cache-3_10-GHz

http://ark.intel.com/products/75054/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-1230-v3-8M-Cache-3_30-GHz
http://ark.intel.com/products/80910/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-1231-v3-8M-Cache-3_40-GHz

I wonder if the extra 2MB cache on the Xeon E3 1220v3 would make it a more capable gaming processor than the i5 4590 clocked 200 MHz higher for the same price.

 

[Jim Bancroft]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. Unfortunately the nearest Microcenter is several hundred miles away, sigh...

I've been doing a little research on i5 vs i7 and the in-between stuff within each line. Talk about head-spinning, I'm not sure which distinctions matter and which don't.