I5 2500k vs. Phenom II X6 for £500 - £60o custom pc

the i5-2500K would be better in all situations, than even the flagship 1100T, you can compare the two here: www.anandtech.com/bench

(anandtech isn't loading for me right now).

It is no contest in favor of the i5. See the reviews on bit-tech - http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2011/01/03/intel-... and go to gaming performance and power consumption. i5 beats the 1100T on EVERYTHING except Cinebench and wprime, and is directly related to the number of cores with only 4 cores vs 6. Plus less power consumption, even when overclocked (overclocked 1100t@4.2Ghz=369W, overclocked i5@4.9=221W!) And an overclocked i5 blows away an 1100t in every gaming or consumer use scenario.

If you are doing video work, get any Z68 series board that has Hydra so you can utilize the superior i5 video transcoding in addition to a separate gpu. If you get a P67 or lower board you will not be able to.

VTX ATI Radeon HD 6950 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card #45776 £ 154.16 £ 154.16
Samsung SH-S222AB/BEBE DVD Writer #44494 £ 12.03 £ 12.03
Antec 300 Three Hundred Gaming Midi Tower Case - Black #31087 £ 34.99 £ 34.99
500GB Western Digital Caviar Black WD5002AALX 3.5" SATA III Hard Drive #45432 £ 32.99 £ 32.99
8GB Mushkin Radioactive #997005 (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz 9-9-9-24 #44825 £ 36.98 £ 36.98
600W Corsair Builder Series 600CX V2 Power Supply #44572 £ 39.99 £ 39.99
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail #43216 £ 124.99 £ 124.99
Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3 Intel Z68 (REV B3) Socket 1155 DDR3 PCI-Express Motherboard #45463 £ 64.99 £ 64.99
Basket Total £ 501.12
Approx. Delivery £ 10.39
VAT £ 102.30
Total £613.81
Sorry how this pastes in its all from www.Aria.co.uk if you need to get it under £600 go with 4Gb RAM if you need to drop more get the i3 2100 instead of the i5 &/or get a 6870 instead of the 6950.

This topic has been moved from the section CPU & Components to section Systems by Mousemonkey