The games you listed are mostly super easy to render, and if this is just for ‘competitive online shooters’, (the penchant for ultra high refresh rate), then a few things to consider:
Processor speed does not matter so much for gaming nowadays.
Let me qualify that- With consoles the lead platform targeted by games companies, and consoles having, by contrast to PCs, ancient processors of a very low speed nature- most PC processors are overkill for modern gaming.
The exceptions are open world games (that require the magic trifecta of high speed processor, massive RAM bandwidth (basically the only genre to show (slight) frames per second increases for increased RAM speed, AND a great graphics card).
Other than open world games, having way more processor speed than is needed, can come in handy if you plan to stream (although this can be offset in other ways that reduce the CPU overhead for streaming), or plan on running budget Solid state drives that don’t really give full performance without a decent CPU hit. (Some people playing open world games with processors that JUST cut it, have major drive loading issues as there is no CPU *headroom* left for crunching data to/fro the cheap solid state drive).
The times when CPU speed DOES matter is when we want to go massively high framerates and the video card is being held back by not enough processor speed.
The flipside to this is that an i3 processor (low tier/low speed) might give the same frames per second at 4K resolution as a nice i7 (upper tier/high speed) processor due to the bottleneck being the graphics card that simply cannot render more frames per second.
For super high framerates (at 1920x1080 or ‘low resolution’) the trifecta becomes ‘no bottlenecks’; need a great graphics card fed from a fast processor.
What is a fast processor for THOSE GAMES and 1920x1080?
Actually, older ones work really well!
Those games will need one thread at a really fast speed (it will prove the bottle neck), and a few more to keep the system running and the sound flowing etc.
As an example to offer some ‘real world numbers’, I had an i7 3770K processor.
It would happily clock up to 4.8Ghz (5Ghz if power consumption wasn’t an issue) on water cooling, and with its four cores + hyper threading, offered 8 threads at ‘very high speed’.
Battlefield (Hardline/BF1/Star Wars Battlefront etc) easily rendered north of 120 frames per second. Maybe not *easily*, and truth be told, I basically ran the processor at 4.6Ghz as that ensured ‘around 110 (lows) to 120 (averages) frames per second’ and kept the heat/power consumption down.
When I upgraded (sidegraded) to a 5820K, with 6 cores/12 threads (it had more parrallel processing capability, generally NOT supported in older games), its reduced core speeds that I ran it at (4.2Ghz) dropped my framerates to 90 Lows with averages around 20 frames per second less than my older ‘faster ‘per core’ clocked’ CPU.
Why so much technical mumbo jumbo?
(Teach a man to fish; bear with me!)
Just establishing that processor speed barely matters at 4K (video card becomes the bottleneck), and at low resolution, where the processor can become the bottleneck, faster per core clocks are generally favoured by older game titles (the ones mostly used in the pro level competitive shooter world).
Now don’t take the numbers I quoted and believe that you NEED 4.6Ghz.
(certainly it will help to have more speed, but with a limited budget, we should spend EVERY CENT very practically with the total system ‘balance’ in mind)..
Every generational improvement in processors bring slight/subtle performance per clock increases. Meaning a four core/four thread 4Ghz machine from four years ago wouldn’t be as quick as a 3.7Ghz machine today (with the same four core/four threads).
So 120 frames per second target huh?
Good aim- for a few reasons.
120hz monitors are more common and lower cost than 200hz monitors etc.
If cost considerations are a factor, giving up the slight ‘bleeding edge’ 24 frames per second difference that a 144hz monitor would require hugely reduces the cost to balance the video card and the processor to hit those targets.
Also; I have 120 hz top of the line gaming screens (when 120hz was the fastest they could do), and when I got a 75hz freesync screen I couldn’t believe how much better than ‘60hz’ it performed. -It was better than 15 extra frames per second that the math might suggest.
Freesync actually processes the info onto the screen faster. 75hz freesync feels like 100hz ‘brute force’ high speed monitors. I couldn’t believe it but have tested for many many hours, and can confirm a 75hz freesync is entry level enough for great online competitiveness.
G-sync actually has to hold a frame (buffer) and I cannot speak 75hz gsync is equal in terms of perceived speed, but it wont matter as an AMD video card SHOULD BE 100% your best consideration (Nvidia price to performance isn’t worth it in the long run, but I haven’t checked those older games framerate graphs and if they all magically favour nvidia, which might be true, as they are generally older version of direct X gaming titles, then doing what all your friends recommend (and the guy at the PC shop no doubt), who say ‘buy NVIDIA’, it isn’t worth making your tech team think you are an idiot or to put them ‘offside’ when building your project. Keep em happy and let the green team take your money, and again next year, and again the next year...)
My serious recommendation (I have to go, breakfast with family) is to consider hacking a PSVR onto your PC. Generally they are cheap as chips (I paid $112.50 Australian dollars for ‘brand new at Target’ clearance stock).
These PSVRs can be made to work with PC, offer 120hz, are OLED (impressive contrast and colour) and offer such a large screen, that, even forgo’ing 3D, running it as one large screen (2D) will equate to playing on a MASSIVE PROJECTOR or, like playing games on an IMAX theatre screen. (my childhood fantasy).
Headshots become easy peasy, my kill to death ratio in battlefield TRIPPLED (! x3 !)
They are a seriously great screen for competitive gaming, are relatively comfortable, offer private screen, but might prove uncomfortable over long periods of time.
For the $15 driver software requirement to make PSVR work with a PC (and 2x HDMI if you wish to keep things easy, although adaptors can get around that), they are a very good consideration, and who knows, there might already be one in the house, or certainly, second hand for budget prices....
Dont waste any of your budget on ‘super fast’ performance RAM (the cost to performance gain the expensive RAM chips offer is not good value)
You could get away with 2x4Gb chips (if trying to put more money into CPU/GPU) which would be my recommendation.. but obviously 16Gb is the happy comfort amount to seek. (Do not buy more, RAM can only help if it is needed, and more than 16Gb is NOT NEEDED especially when we are building a budget PC and not running a desktop design power house with virtual OSs and RAM DISKs)
I always recommend spend money on a nice power supply (do not buy based on output power, but more so ‘weight’), and a reliable motherboard.
They are the basis of your PC.
Personally I always try to find a full metal case. It is shielding. We don’t need to see inside, although ‘less shielding’ saves money and you shouldn’t need to give up 10% of your budget to case. (although I would, as the case and power supply often are keepers for ‘several builds’)
2c- hope these general guidelines help - i ran out of time .. reply and if you still are assembling, I would love to offer more advice. (and maybe a cheap gaming sound card;-)