I5-4670k At 4.2 Ghz Or 4.6 Ghz

Is the i7 2600 still good for gaming in 2017?

Contrary to popular belief, it is not a bad core. You should be happy that you are getting an 14 core processor, unlike other versions of Intel Cores such as the I5 or I3 lines of their products. Paired with a nice graphics card from either Nvidia or maybe Radeon, you could play the newest games at high setting, with good fps. Just remember this rule my friend told me,GPU over CPU. Invest in a better graphics card, you don’t need an insane processor.

Can an Intel Core i7 2600k 3.40GHz handle a GTX 1070?

Most likely yes. There’s rather few programs and/or games which use a CPU to such an extent that it bugs out the graphics. So it can most definitely “handle” one of those. It could even handle a 1080ti for that matter, or even RTX 2080ti. With the 1070 it wouldn’t even break a sweat.What might happen is that the graphics isn’t performing at peak since it’s waiting on the CPU, e.g. instead of getting 250FPS at 1080p you may have 140FPS instead - does that mean the CPU cannot handle the GPU? Yet again, software specific - one game may do this and another may not. It all depends on how reliant the software is on CPU calculations in order to send something to the GPU to display - some do next to nothing and others may be near exclusively CPU bound. Anywhere in between is also possible.Another issue is that any specific game would likely state some minimum CPU as a requirement. It’s not a cut-in-stone situation, though I would suggest you try to stick with the recommended stuff. It’s not as if something like an i5–4690K is at all faster than the i7-2700K, though some recommended CPUs may state stuff like a i5–4400 or better (better not necessarily meaning newer).Let’s take the absolute top of the range i7 you can get, a 9700K. Compare it to that 2700K (I threw the i9–9900K in just for fun as well): CPU Comparison Intel i7-9700K vs Intel i9-9900K vs Intel i7-2700KNotice something? On multi threading performance it’s about half what the 9700 can do. But what’s much more worrying is single thread performance, that’s only increased 39% over the 7 to 6 years since that CPU came out.Now, no-one would even suggest asking about the top of the range i7 being too little to handle a lowly GTX 1070. Is that 50% speed of multi processing enough to throw off usability? Or for single threaded (as nearly everything is) is the 72% performance on that old CPU just not good enough? The game should be really borderline if such is the case - i.e. even that i7–9700K is on the very edge of playing the game decently, even just a little hiccup (like a background process updating) and your game is done for.Really, one shouldn’t bother worrying too much about these things. If the hardware is adequate for the software you’re running and giving you a smooth enough experience, you’re going to be hard pressed to see much benefit by upgrading.

What i7 1150 CPUs will not bottleneck the GTX 1080?

None of the FCLGA1150-socket i7's will bottleneck a GTX 1080. All Z97 (and updated Z87) MoBo's have PCIe 3.0 lanes and even the slowest i7 for that socket (i7-4765T — 2.0GHz/3.0GHz turbo) features the same (5 GT/s DMI 2) bus speed as the i7-4790K (4.0GHz/4.4GHz turbo). All of that generation's i7's have hyperthreading, so unless the game you're running is so CPU-intensive that it ties up all 8 threads of 3GHz or better processing power — which is extremely unlikely — you'll be fine.That being said...There is less than a $50 retail difference between the cheapest of the socket 1150 i7's and the flagship 4790K. (In fact, if you live near a MicroCenter, you can get the latter for $289, making if only $30 more than an i7-4765T). So I'd probably just bite the bullet and get yourself that 4GHz unlocked* jewel-of-a-value and be done with it!*(Note: It’s not a super overclocker, but you’ll get 4.6GHz out of it with a good cooler, no prob).