Yeah. I was talking in USD. If you're talking Canadian Pesos, $90 for the i7 is not a bad deal. Just convert all the USD amounts in my first post to CAD, especially for the cost of the i5 if you decide to haggle for it. If you game, I think the i7 may be a better option for you. That goes double if you're able to snag a 960, which can make much better use out of a faster CPU than a 550 ti.
Canadian Pesos? lol. Canadian Dollars, Pesos is Mexican currency. I also don't think it is worth paying a premium for the i7, especially when he plans to buy a new PC later on. Hyperthreading can even lead to slightly worse performance in some games. With AMD finally getting their game on and releasing CPUs that are close to comparable performance to Intel, prices will most likely drop in the mid and low range. (They already did to some extent) That money difference can easily net him a difference in tiers in CPU or GPU for a gaming rig. I can't see that 10% difference in CPU being enough for anything.
Pesos was a joke. I'd agree with you about the premium if it was either a large sum of money separating the two CPUs or if OP was only using the processor to tide him over for a month or two. OP said it could be up to two years before he gets a new system. At that point, you might as well splurge a bit. An i5 2400 is about $65 CAD. That's about $20-25 CAD cheaper than the i7 he's talking about. OP is going to be sitting on the processor for a year or two, so talking about processor prices one or two generations from now is nothing but speculation. I don't think spending an extra $25 CAD on a CPU that you're going to use for up to two years is that horrible. The i7 will be a bit faster for most tasks, but the difference won't be night and day. Whether that difference is worth the extra cost is up to the OP.
A 10% increase in single core a 20% increase increase in multicore for 50-100% more in price isn't worth it imo. Especially since the CPU matters so little in gaming. Your talking about 1-2 fps maybe(most times 0 fps). I can sometimes understand a jump to a newer generation CPU because there are factors outside of just higher clock rates (new features) Overall though that money is better spent in the GPU in the future. They have a much better $ per perf ratio for gaming (he said he plans to buy a new computer anyways) And I guarantee CPU prices will drop in the mid to low end, they already have and will continue to as long as there is real competition. (Just like CPU prices went up when AMD messed up last time around). Even intel themselves admitted CPU prices will drop in their earnings call to investors.
It's a 40% increase in price, but if you amortize the amount out over 2 years, it comes to $1/month if he gets the i7. OP said his friend might loan him a 960, which would likely see him CPU limited in most games, therefore, the i7 would likely see a 5-10% increase in performance in that case. This generation, CPU prices are about the same as last generation, minus the K SKUs, which are $10-15 more expensive than the last. The 8th generation CPUs debuted after AMD released Ryzen, so at best, AMD has stopped Intel from increasing prices, but I don't see a price drop, at least in their MSRP. They might do more promotions or something, though, to offset that. As I said before, speculating on future CPU prices isn't constructive, at least as it relates to this thread. The difference in performance between the 2400 and the 2600 won't be night and day, but the absolute difference in price is fairly low, so the decision should be left up to OP as to whether a small, but potentially noticeable, bump in performance is worth the extra cost.
I got the I7-2600, now i just need a cooler for it, as i'm still using stock for my pentium g630 and there's no way i'm going to be using that stock cooler for a i7-2600. On a side note, I upgrade to 12GB of ram, 1x4GB and 1x8GB.
For budget builds, I usually recommend a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo. It works with just about every CPU, although you may need to buy separate mounting hardware for a couple dollars (I think the 212 Evo comes with mounting for socket LGA 1155, but I'm not 100% sure). It also has reasonable performance per dollar if you aren't overclocking. Before you buy a new cooler, you might want to try the Pentium stock cooler to see how it does at load with the i7, just in case.
a pentium is 65W TDP(least mine is), while the i7-2600 is 95W TDP so i'd imagine i would have really quite high idle temps and it would throttle or shut down with any significant load.
I'm not familiar with the 2000-series Pentium stock coolers. Some Intel stock coolers, over the generations, have been fairly capable or have been reused between different tiers of CPUs. Not sure if that's the case with your cooler. All the same, it doesn't hurt to take 5 minutes to test the temps, fan speeds, and noise levels. Best case, you save $30 CAD on a new CPU cooler. Worst case, you have to spend $30.
If you're a office worker or businessman I recommend you to use INTEL but if you're gamers like me i recommend you to use AMD