Hacker News Reader

I can recommend the i5 4460 which is about ~$180. It's a locked 4690k for about $60 less but honestly is able to play even the most demanding games on Ultra settings (Witcher 3 / GTA 5) if pared with a good GPU. I would advise picking up a Z97 Motherboard to go with it so if you do want to upgrade the processor in a few years you have a path to the higher end of the Haswell line.

View on HN

If you buy a locked i5, consider a H97 board instead. Z97 allows for overclocking, which you can't do with a locked CPU. Just match the features you want for a bit less. Most H97 boards will cover the Haswell line just fine, just no or limited overclocking.

Of course, if you find a Z97 that has what you want at a similar or lower price, then by all means go for it.

Z97 is useful because if you decide to upgrade to one of the higher end overclockable CPUs in the future you can. I found the difference in price can be really small or the same. I went with a Gigabyte Black board which is around ~$135 on Amazon and supports SLI. http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-GA-Z97X-UD3H-BK-Motherboard-I...

I think I said all that, more or less. Except for the SLI part, as that might be an issue with H97 that needs to be checked before purchase.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com