I would go with an A8-7600 if I were in your position. Used them for a couple of builds recently. Great value.
You might as well go with Skylake while you're at it.
Also, if you're looking at 10yo service life, you're not going to be overclocking those systems and making sure they're gonna be stable. Fun times for them if after a few years they're gonna start having problems.
Looking at UK pricing, G3258 starts at 52.8£.
Skylake Pentium G4400 starts at roughly the same price or a bit below (actually dabs have them for 47£) depending where you're looking. (btw, Skinflint.co.uk is great)
Motherboards are almost the same price.
Memory wise, Skylake supports both DDR3L and DDR4. Prices are pretty much the same nowadays, also cheapest of the cheap boards tend to be DDR3L but if you want DDR4 then those are available as well.
Considering this is for small business WS computers, VT-d support of H110 might be an interesting point (H81 doesn't have it, neither does the G3258). Who the heck knows if they want to do something that would need it in the future.
Better energy efficiency, newer chipset features and so on. Almost the same price. Why not go with newer hardware.
@1920_1080p_1280_720p A8-7600 starts at ~64£. A6-7400K would be comparable in price. I'll take two fast cores for office/web use anyday week year century over these slow APU's.
Anandtech hasn't reviewed the G4400 yet but look for the G3420 in there, it's close to the G4400 in performance..
Sysmark is sysmark but eh, it's a decent comparison tool. That's the office productivity section.
http://anandtech.com/bench/CPU/1030
WebXPRT browser benchmark uses HTML5 and Javascript workloads
http://anandtech.com/bench/CPU/1046
Edit
For example here's what I'd look at.
CPU
http://geizhals.eu/intel-pentium-g4400-bx80662g4400-a1329945.html?hloc=uk
(don't mind the 40£ Amazon price, it has gone up since then and hasn't been updated yet..)Motherboard (mATX?) Features and connections wise these are identical.
DDR3 http://geizhals.eu/asrock-h110m-dvs-d3-90-mxgz80-a0uayz-a1318334.html?hloc=uk
DDR4 http://geizhals.eu/msi-h110m-pro-vd-7996-007r-a1332202.html?hloc=uk
1x PS/2, 4x USB 2.0, 2x USB 3.0, DVI + VGA for possible multi monitor setup, Realtek Gbit, ALC887 audio.Pick your poison. I'll look at 2x4GB kits.
DDR3L http://geizhals.eu/?cat=ramddr3&xf=2396_1.35V~5830_UDIMM1~1454_4096~5828_DDR3~5831_DIMM~253_8192#xf_top
DDR4 http://geizhals.eu/?cat=ramddr3&xf=5830_UDIMM1~1454_4096~5828_DDR4~5831_DIMM~253_8192#xf_topFrom dabs.com w/ free UK delivery G4400 + DDR4 board + 2x4GB DDR4 would be 488.82£ incl. VAT. That's four of each of course.
Not going to list the SSD/PSU/Case or peripherals of course. You know those.
Also, geizhals.eu is the european version of skinflint.co.uk or geizhals.de
I personally prefer to use the .eu version but the filters and whatnot are the same so feel free to browse the .uk site.
Although that chip is a quad core, it costs £20 more and the most demanding thing these computers will do is office and a few Flash based educational games. How long have you yard them? Could you argue the point of them being worth the increased investment?
Well the rig that I made with one recently that is getting the most use is a photoshop machine (as well as lots multitasking). The people using it couldn't be happier. Great performance for them. But the increased graphics performance is good for acceleration as well as being able to have more intense UI (seeing as how these are for the long run, the OS will likely get more graphics intensive), and things are constantly moving towards better utilization of multiple cores. I mean, honestly, any modern computer would be able to handle simple office tasks no problem, but I am betting that an APU would be better for the long haul. When are you planning on building these things?
It is most likely to be between 6 months and a year, and probably closer to the year side. They are currently using either their own laptops or whatever they can get their hands on, but they know that won't be the best thing down the line, for one thing there can be no chance of data loss, hence the NAS for one. But also by them all using the same hardware and software means it is much easier to fix a problem and if there is hardware failure, repairs are easier too.
I see you point with graphics being needed for the long haul, however the they have previously been happy using the xp machines I mentioned above, with the same software for years. So the machines don't need to cope with modernisation too much I don't think. They just need to still be working fully after at least 5 of not 10 years
Eddie, I'll recommend you look at the Anandtech links I posted.
There's no point in picking a, for example that more expensive A8-7600 when it doesn't offer anything for your use case. While it has slower, less efficient cores.
If instead of office + web, you'd have light video encoding + rendering, THEN he would have a point.
http://anandtech.com/bench/product/1270?vs=1256
(^Handbrake and Cinebench numbers)
But even then, in multi threaded applications the more expensive A8-7600 is only somewhat faster.
Cinebench multi threaded is 12% faster than G3420.
Handbrake LQ film is faster on the Pentium, 4K video is 10% faster on A8-7600.
A8-7600 starts at roughly 64-65£. The Pentiums I've talked about hover around 50£.
100/50*65=30% more investment. Makes sense right?
I don't wanna diss on AMD but it is what it is.
Office and web stuff does not benefit from having four slower cores compared to two faster cores.
And if you drop down in price to "two" module APU, it gets raped by the Pentiums.
Also regarding that OS could get more graphically intensive. Pfft, it's not that intensive.
We at school have our "own" A6-3500's we work on (do anything, test stuff you know).
The A8-7600 iGPU has at least twice as more raw compute grunt compared to the iGPU of the A6-3500.
Running Windows 10 on it and doing stuff, using Excel and Word for documenting stuff barely touches the iGPU.
Given the time frame, I would suggest that you hold off on making a decision. AM4 is rumored to release within that time frame and Intel might have something as well. Like I said though, there isn't a modern computer today that can't handle today's office tasks, you just have to think about the future and all that. Hopefully, Zen will be out by the time that you build these.
Graphics eventaully become an issue for some applications of MS Excel and other ones. But that is only when you have massive documents that you are working with. I have not seen many of those.
I'd also recommend APUs for this application, just due to their ability to run video and other stuff better. Invest in a cheap but decent APU and skip the whole G3258 thing. A G3258 is only really worth it if you have the time and effort to put into overclocking and what not. It's a good chip without the OC, but kind of pointless at the same time. It also has a terrible iGPU which might affect what your company does in the long run (some MS Office apps use Direct-X because they are doing some magic).
Don't worry, I wasn't planning on buying anything yet, but I just wanted to keep an eye on the tech that I would use I'd I did build it now, then I can compare the price and performs with those closer to the time, make sure I get the best bang for the buck.
And I'm inclined to agree with @lagittaja single core performance is more important. And as I said before there isn't really a way to justify the extra money.
Although as a side note, funnily enough by far the most expensive part is windows, adds about a 1/3 to the entire price. I just hope Microsoft introduces the same sales packages and discount services they did with win 7
Yeah, AM4 / Zen 14nm CPU's is this year (Q4) but unfortunately the Zen 14nm APU's are gonna be next year.
This year (1H/16) we'll get Bristol Ridge APU's for the AM4 socket and they'll be manufactured on the 28nm process.
And they're using the Excavator cores just like the Carrizo APU's are.
So no huge improvement to the APU lineup's IPC. Which is a bit disappointing.
Next year will be the Raven Ridge, APU's using the Zen cores and manufactured on 14nm FinFET.
That is what I'm looking forward to along with the Zen CPU's hopefully this year.
http://wccftech.com/amd-confirms-future-zen-processors-apus-am4-socket/
I perhaps over sold the power required. These machines will be pretty basic. The only reason I came around to the AE is because it was about £5 more expensive than the other I was looking at and gave a lot more power for the money.
For what they are going I could probably give them Intel compute sticks. And I did actually think about it for a while. But then I decided increased storage was more important, plus I think a px that looked like their memory stick would confuse the hell out of them.