i7 8700k / i7 7700k w/ 1060

DynamectiveNiko

Reputable
Mar 17, 2017
11
0
4,510
Long story short, I spent some money on a 1060 6gb about 5 months ago. Recently I decided I was going to upgrade my PC with my budget being closer to the low 1000s.

I am guessing I'll have all the money ready and order the parts in February-April 2018.

Since my old CPU is quite aged, an i7-870 at that, I wanted a new CPU that will hold me well for the next 5 years, being future proof as possible.

I am debating whether to get an i7 7700k or the newest i7 8700k. I don't plan on, or rather, would not like to upgrade my GPU for at least maybe another half year or so, since I just spent money recently on the 1060. So eventually, I will upgrade.

I just wanted to know if there could be any problems with this decision, or what could improve.
 
Solution
I prefer AIO Liquid myself but a solid air cooler will have no problems with an 8700k.

Z370 is significantly more expensive than Z270 so that is going to factor. As far as gaming performance for the money, every site I have seen says the 8400 is the best bang for your buck.

However, if you are in the boat I am in, you play a wide variety of games, some very well optimized, some not so much.

I have a processor that runs BF1 to perfection, and any well optimized game will have no issue with my processor, but at the same time, I have to Overclock the pants off it to run simpler games like WoW and Starcraft II at 100fps.

So since I have overclocked to 4.7GHz on my 6700k and I have absolutely no problems running well optimized games, the...

hneuwirth

Prominent
Nov 10, 2017
4
0
510
From your post your budget is a key issue. The 8700k is almost $150 more than the 7700k. It also demands a liquid cooling solution, which means a modern mid-tower case, and a z370 board which is an expensive proposition.

The performance gains, unless you are using highly threaded cpu intensive applications, are marginal between gen 7 and 8.

Most bang for the buck, imho, is to spend more on high performance storage (optane if you can afford it. Otherwise fast ssd) and more memory (again, don’t bother with the ultra-high speed memory as the performance gains are very marginal.
 
It doesnt demand a liquid cooling as the AIO coolers dont do any better then a quality air cooler.

The Z370 boards are def alittle more expensive but not an insane amount by any means.

Best bang for the buck right now for the high end is probably a 8600k with a Z370 board.

Skip optane, its poorly ultilized, either just get a SSD for gaming of m.2 if you are going to be working with large files in a production enviroment.
 

EpIckFa1LJoN

Admirable
I prefer AIO Liquid myself but a solid air cooler will have no problems with an 8700k.

Z370 is significantly more expensive than Z270 so that is going to factor. As far as gaming performance for the money, every site I have seen says the 8400 is the best bang for your buck.

However, if you are in the boat I am in, you play a wide variety of games, some very well optimized, some not so much.

I have a processor that runs BF1 to perfection, and any well optimized game will have no issue with my processor, but at the same time, I have to Overclock the pants off it to run simpler games like WoW and Starcraft II at 100fps.

So since I have overclocked to 4.7GHz on my 6700k and I have absolutely no problems running well optimized games, the literal only option for me is the 8700k or 7700k since I can overclock the 7700k to about 5.0GHz, or the 8700K since it will turbo up to 4.7Ghz on a single core (like WoW and SCII are pretty bound to) or I can OC it to 5.0 as well on my liquid cooler.

So in short if you play a wide variety of games you'll be pretty limited with something like an 8400, since it cannot overclock and it only goes to 4.0GHz

So if its about the money I would get the 7700k as it will be pretty close to the 8700k in gaming performance.
Otherwise I would get the 8700k. The 7700k still beats the 8600k in gaming performance.
For gaming, clock speed is more important than the number of cores assuming you have enough to get the job done in the first place. That's why the 7700k (4core/8thread @4.5GHz Turbo) even beats out the 1800x (8core/16thread @4.0GHz Turbo) in most games.

The 8700k beats the 7700k because it has both more cores and a faster turbo speed, granted it's not by much, because the 8700k only turbo boosts all cores to 4.3GHz, but any games that mostly use one core it will be faster, any games that use two cores alone it should be the same, any games that only use 4 cores it will be slightly slower, and any games that use all cores/threads it will again be faster.
 
Solution