The end of the road for the Core i5?
Well, there you have it, folks. Is this the end of the road for Intel’s Core i5 series processor? Probably not. Legacies are always difficult to quash, and just as AMD’s Ryzen has one hell of a stigma to overcome in the mind of the average PC enthusiast, so does the concept of the Core i5 not being the king of gaming.
Take a glance at the internet, and you’ll see dozens of commentators purporting that the Core i5 is the way to go, and that even going up to the Core i7 isn’t worth the cash, because you only gain 10% performance in games. The reality, on the other hand, is very different. Across the board, from one of Intel’s lowest-priced chips all the way up to its mainstream rendering powerhouse, there’s absolutely no difference in-game. It seems those IPC improvements have been making a difference to the ecosystem after all — just not in the way we might think.
Building this particular system was actually considerably frustrating — mostly due to the cooler being so incredibly annoying to install. The backplate, coupled with the fans scraping the front of the chassis, and the pipes being far too resistant to movement, really gave us pause for thought as to whether this was the right cooler for us. We even had to unplug and reinstall the PWM pump fan header at first, because it refused to pump water around the system, forcing our Intel Core i7, that we tested first, to install Windows 10 on to the SSD at 99–100°C, at a paltry 200MHz. Although it was certainly impressive to witness, it was also excruciatingly frustrating.
Cooler problems aside, it turned out to be a pretty clean-looking build. Keeping all the storage around the back of the motherboard tray actually makes a world of difference. And although the PSU cover is only a 75% case fit, it does leave plenty of room for radiators and cooling up front, and it grows on you after a while.
Is there anything we would change? Well, if this were genuinely a build for purchase, not designed for that wide range of processor testing, we would probably drop the 1TB SSD in favour of an HDD, potentially go down to a B250 motherboard to save a bit of cash, use a lower specced PSU and potentially even 8GB of DDR4, depending on budget constraints. That would bring this particular build's price down considerably, perhaps even close to halve it.