Hello everyone, First things first, I didn't miss a single episode of Tek Syndicate since I discovered you, absolutely love unframed opinions, lack of corporate marketing BS but most of all I like loosing Wendel's train of thought for like 99% of the time :)
Now to the point. My work requires me to run several apps at the same time, one virtual machine (for the sake of having win xp) and a few spreadsheets, nothing special and I was very pleased with the performance of my laptop i7 3632qm, for my needs it was just snappy enough. But then I got myself a small office and I was running very low on storage space and thus compromising security of data so I decided to switch the laptop with a spare desktop that I had (a8 3870k a top FM1 cpu) and after a month working with that machine made me go nuts. Right now I am considering 8320e or i5 4460 but top i3 are quite attractive as well, but its dual core so I don't want to shoot myself in foot either.
My goal is have a PC which waits for my commands instead of me waiting until it's finished opening frkn calculator. :)
Thank you in advace for your help and opinions.
Edit: Amd 8320e vs i5 4460 vs i3 4370 I have spare low end gpu for 8320e build tho. What do you use for your office needs?
I mostly install i3 cpus for small biz workstations and they perform fine. You could also swap that mobo cpu for less money than a new PC. I usually focus more of the budget on data redundancy than cpu power in small business environments especially if the budget is tight. An ssd might cure the whole problem as well they usually install really slow hard drives in premade store pcs this may be your main issue.
I do not want to spend more than I have to :) Just like any PC user I would like to have all my apps running in the background and still have enough power in situations when I need to open another big spreadsheet and it happens nearly instantly. Regarding GPU I did not stumbled upon any issues in that department, in case I'll go with amd I'll put 5450 or 6670 whichever is still working :>
I want to swap just motherboard and CPU, other components are performing adequately. SSD is already there, I would prefer i3 over 8320e simply because it is a newer thing (as long as it performs as a new thing of course:) but then my experience with i3 was really bad (everything is nice and sparkling until nothing is running) I never had a chance to try out 4th gen i3.
By the way, which motherboard would you recommend for Intel cpu?
PS AMD combo comes up to approx £160 with 8320e and very nice mobo with USB 3.1, I3 Combo with very poor spec. mobo £165 i5 £180 with low spec. mobo and I've just discovered FX 6300 and with this package I would have to pay £150
AMD CPUs might be good for your build, an i3 while having good single core performance struggles under multiple tasks. A 4 to 8 core FX CPU really might be your best bet, especially considering you are running VMs. Also, do not skimp the RAM, 16 GB minimum, more is better, but don't worry too much about the speed, 1600 should be good.
My personal rig was built to be part workstation and part gaming rig. While the single core performance of the FX-8320 is lacking, I find myself able to whoop complete ass with multi-tasking. Able to render things in CAD while photoshopping whatever I took pictures of earlier in the day (or considering my, earlier in the year), and maybe even accidentally leave Premiere Pro running in the background. And that's on just 16 GB of RAM.