Intel i5 3450 vs 3550 vs 3570k

They are all good but the 3570K is the only one that will overclock. If you will not overclock at all I would say the extra 0.2GHz on the 3550 is worth the money over the 3450. At the same time the 0.1 GHz increase up to the 3570K is not worth the extra money unless you plan to overclock in the future.

When your'e not OC'ing you should'nt be adding the i5 3570K in your list......the only upgrade in the 3570K is just its got the Intel HD 4000 and bit higher clock speed.....otherwise you should be fine with the 3550.....

core i5-3550 is the best choice for a non-over-clocking cpu being cheaper and offering you great performance. The core i5-3570K is going to be much more future proof though due to its over-clocking potential.

While you may not be planning on overclocking right now you may change your mind in the next year or two and find that you get some good extra value of the overclocking of the processor. I would say pay a small ammount now and get more life out of your computer in the long term.

Games are moslty GPU limited to begin with. And pc games nowadays are mostly ports from consoles. No, i do not see any danger that your cpu becomes a bottleneck in games of today...and tomorrow.

I would say the extra $15 is worth it for the i5-3550... depending on what yer doing.

Will you see the difference in performance of 200MHz in games and everyday life stuff? Not likely, unless you are benchmarking. Since I encode video I would certainly dish out the extra $15.

If he changes his mind about overclocking then he will also need to invest in cooling and thats going to cost alittle more. I personal choose the i5-3550 because i do not plan to overclock. Overclocking although does bring out the most in a system, it also voids warranty and makes the life of your components shorter unless you equip a cooling system.

Can we assume you are getting a discrete graphics card? If so, and you're not overclocking, there's no real reason to spend extra on the 3570k. That being the case, you can also get an h77 mobo instead of a z77, and save a few more dollars.

There won't be a huge difference between the different clock speeds. You could also check out the 3470, which is the same price as the 3450 at Newegg.

When the next gen CPU's come out, you can OC and match their performance or perform at least on par. It saves you a bit of money then upgrading to a new CPU.

you guys know there is a 3570 non k version which means it does not overclock and its $15 cheaper than the k version ($214.99 for non k $229.99 for k) and if you buy at newegg the price is $10 cheaper ($219.99 at newegg)

If you go with non-K, you can save ~$20 by going with a h77 motherboard or ~$30 by going with a B75 on top of the cash saved on the CPU itself.

Just about any i5 and most i3 can handle modern games fine as long as your expectations are in line with the CPU's capabilities and ajust details accordingly.

As far as best bang/buck goes, that depends on what sort of price you can get for each given CPU. At my local store, i5-3450 and i5-3470 were both priced at $182 so the only logical choice between the two is the 3470, same thing with 3550 vs 3570 both at $202. Between those four, the best bang/$ for me is the i5-3470.

The performance difference between 3450 and 3570 (10%) is not going to make or break anything (at least not for me) so I would not worry about it.