Hello there! I’m posting this on the lemmy.ca instance cause I guess most people here would be used to dealing with CAD.
So my situation is the following. I have an i7 3700 with a P8Z77-V that I use for 1200p gaming, mostly Paradox games. I wanna start playing Hogwarts Legacy and I definitely feel I need to beef this up.
Last year I bought an AS-IS i7 8700 on eBay for $125, which I only got to test this week. I bought an ASUS B365M V5 and 32GB 3200MHz DDR4 for $165CAD. Lo and behold, the i7 8700 is broken af and I can only get to Windows by disabling every single CPU feature and using only 1 core.
So I’ve sunk $165 on the LGA1151 platform. I have a chance to get an 8700k for $200, or an 8700 for $150 (and a bit of travel). Any suggestions? Thanks!
In addition to what people said, if you’re in a major metropolitan are (GTA, GVA, Montreal), look on Kijiji/FB Marketplace for local deals. Chances of a broken CPU sold locally are significantly lower. Most of my current machines were sourced this way.