I am currently planning to build my first PC. Last week I asked on the forums about Graphic Cards. Now I have hit another snag. CPUs. I am planning to use a 1060 6GB graphics card and I am trying to keep the build somewhat affordable. So my question is if you guys have any recommendations for CPUs that pair well with a 1060 6GB.

From the searching I have done it seems like a lot of people recommend the i5 generation/series(?). Does that seem like a good fit? And if so what i5 model do you guys think would fit the best?

Again sorry if this was confusing. I am a complete novice when it comes to this and thank you in advance!

At this point one of AMDs new processors are going to be your best bang for the buck I believe, but it’s been a bit since I looked at the particular models. Figure out your price range and take a look at the models AMD has on offer and see which fits best for you.

The i5 is your most solid bet. The K variant lets you overclock, the non-k does not, you should probably get an aftermarket cooler and some thermal paste - don't forget the paste - with either variant.

My i5 is great, better than any amd cpu i ever had(no clue about the newer ones). I have a 6600k and it overclocked easily without anything but changing a modifier, and even at stock speed it runs games great. Now if you are doing more than gaming, looking at the newer amd cpu's may be a good idea for you since they are really good at multi-threading.

The AMD Ryzen 5 1600 has been benching pretty well from what I've noticed. Sure, you could get an i5 or wait for Coffee Lake's hexa-core i5's, but you might as well save a few pennies with AMD if you're just playing games.

i am currently shopping for a cpu for my next build myself. right now- in terms of bang for your buck, pretty much everyone under the sun is recommending the ryzen 5 1600- as it's the more forward-facing of the architectures (more cores).

in pure gaming applications, the i5s will outperform the ryzen chips- but this is partially due to the games being designed to utilize less cores. many anticipate that this sort of development will gradually give way to the kind that utilizes more cores- in which case the ryzen chips will begin to shine (like they already do for production such as video, photo editing, etc).

however, intel is due to announce it's 'coffee lake' chips very soon...as in, sometime in october. so the general advice right now is- hold out until october for when the scene is likely to change (intel will be releasing chips with more cores...which might affect prices, or recommendations).

if you're hot to trot- you can't go wrong with a kaby lake intel i5- that's where the market share is, so games will always work well. but if you want to squeeze every dollar, i'd say sit tight for a few weeks and see where the consensus is on the new chips.

I used a 1600X Ryzen building my latest PC and it's great. It's also pretty overclockable too so far. The Ryzen chips are really good and it's nice to see AMD finally basically catch up to Intel again.

Also, Battlegrounds makes use of the multicore and it helps a lot in case you're gonna go Murder Islanding.

my i7 6700k has handled everything Ive thrown at it with ease!

• Intel i5 6700k if you are just gaming
• Intel i7 770k if you are gaming and doing light multitasking
• AMD Ryzen 5 1600x if you gaming and want to save a few bucks
• AMD Ryzen 7 1700x if you are gaming, streaming at the same time, heavy multitasking
• The Ryzen chips are pretty good but still have a few quirks to work out and motherboard and memory comparability is still a bit limited as of late 2017-early 2018 , but it's pretty solid otherwise and those minor issues should be fixed with new BIOS updates and patches over time along with more motherboard partners embracing AMD in the future. If you don't mind a few quirks here or there AMD is pretty killer right now for the price. If you need something that will just work and allow you to build whatever you want, Intel is still the place to go. Pick your poison. Both are great, it's like the early 2000s all over again!
• Overclocking on these chips is stupid easy and you get a pretty awesome performance boost so its totally worth it to invest in a good air cooler like a Cryorig H7 or Noctura D14, or an AIO liquid cooler like the NZXT Kraken or Corsair H100i. In a nutshell air coolers are going to be quieter and cheaper, but will be limited by you case size and RAM height, while AIO coolers are little louder and cost more but look clean when installed and usually come with RGB lighting. Performance wise its about the same between a high end air cooler and a high end AIO. Again, pick your poison.

All of that being said, Computex is in January and there is bound to be new stuff there along with new GPU refreshes (probably), so if it were me I'd hold out another 4 months-ish and see what happens. BUT if you need a system now you should still be okay. Any new hardware is going to have a pretty small performance upgrade so it won't be that big of a deal if you decide to build a rig before the end of the year.

Oh, Due to memory shortage and supply/demand with all the crypto currency mining, GPU, SSD, and RAM prices are kinda high right now. Waiting until prices go down again might not be a bad idea if you want to save a few hundred bucks.

I would go Ryzen at this point. But the 7600k is also a great choice.

Just popping in to ask: do games benefit from multithreading much yet?

Another vote for AMD Ryzen 5 1600, the bang for buck cpu right now.

Some do, some don't. Just depends on how the game was built. That being said, any modern processor (say within the last 5 years or so) should be able to handle just about anything gaming wise. The only time that really comes in to play is when you are streaming or recording video as you play, or in games that are CPU-bound that have a lot of moving parts behind the scenes like say a Civ game or a deep RPG.

Totally agree even the 1500x would be more then good enough for games plus it has a higher total boost core clock. the other plus for ryzen cpu's is if you ever want to overclock all ryzen cpu's are unlocked you have to pay more for a intel k version to get a unlocked cpu.

If you can wait a little longer, Coffee Lake is right around the corner. October 5th. Even if you don't want to go Intel, I'd wait.

There's going to be a K variant of the i3, but with coffeelake, i3's are now 4 physical cores, it matches the current i5's and the K means it'll be multiplier unlocked for overclocking.

New i5's will have 6 cores, no hyper threading. i7's will have 6 cores, hyperthreading.

Regardless of where the i5 is going to land price wise, I'm sure AMD's ready to take a few bucks off Ryzen.

Thanks for all the help duders! I am probably going to go with the i5, but I am still looking at the Ryzen a bit. If there are new announcements right around the corner I will probably wait a couple of weeks to see how things shake out. I am not building the PC right away either way. Thanks again for the all the help. It`s really appreciated.

welp, here's the coffee lake specs.

you won't save any money going for those new ones (sorta duh), but i know for my part i'll be waiting till mid-october to see what these look like once they've been through a few benchmarks. i want to see how hey perform relative to their precursors, as well as how pricing shakes out across intel and AMD.

Also, (is this allowed?) head over to reddit.com/r/buildapc to get a better idea of what people are building. I've got a Ryzen 5 1600 and it works great.

I personally have an i7-6700k and it has servered me well. If I were to get one today it would be the i7-7700k. You don't really need the K version if you aren't going to overclock. If money is a factor, an i5 should serve you well, although I don't have any personal recommendations. And as always, PC Part Picker is your friend.