AMD vs Intel -- Power user office class build

[glasswave]

I have always been an Intel guy. I had a bad experience with AMD and an epox motherboard in the late 90's and learned my lesson about trying to save a few bucks.

Nonetheless, my brother lost his machine due to landlord monkeying with wiring and he needs a new build. Current machine was a pre-2008 i5 and he lost both his PS and mobo at minimum.

His uses are Office 2013 mostly word and excel, but also some access and power point. Some photo editing in PhotoShop. Some GIS and some stats with SPSSX. It will also be a media center playing mp3's, flacs and 1080p h264 movies as well as some streaming. He wants run 3 monitors and an HDTV.

He has a good clone builder in MT that will build whatever I spec to them. I was considering an AMD chip for their value and resistance to spectere and meltdown.

Was considering: AMD Ryzen 5 1660x for its value and power. Advice?

mobo that can expand to 64GB but will only install 16GB to start.

It will have a mid range discreet graphics card.

I am wondering a a nice m2 card will make a noticeable difference from a SATA 6Gb SSD.

Any advice is appreciated.

 

[photonboy]

1) the only demanding program appears to be Photoshop which is more about SINGLE CORE performance and probably never scales beyond two cores anyway.

2) 3x monitors is fairly simple but make sure the monitors and card outputs match up (such as 2xDP + 1xDVI)

3) 16GB is more than adequate for your tasks right now unless I missed something.

4) not sure what "clone builder" means

5) Spectre/Meltdown is arguably not a big issue. You can't get infected once Windows is patched and any performance drop is insignificant for modern desktops (may be some SERVER drops due to extreme load).

GAMERS NEXUS and others have delved into this now that the crazy hype has died down a bit.

6) AM4 is a good solution mainly because the socket will be around for a while but unless you intend to upgrade to an 8-core, 3rd-gen CPU later (for minimal benefit unless you find a need for 16 CPU threads) I'd stick with Intel for the higher core performance.

7) An i3-8350K build is a good choice (four core CPU without hyperthreading which can hit 5GHz so very high perf-per-core and again AFAIK every application you listed can't use more than four cores).

I'll give an example build.

 

[photonboy]

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/CLz3Ft

That's basically the CORE system I'd go for. I don't have an HDD (for backup Image, extra storage), graphics card (prices high right now and Intel iGPU may be fine for now) etc.

Case is more of a holder too.

PSU has an "ECO MODE" to disable fan below 50% to reduce noise.

Anyway, some important buying points:
1) CPU mainly perf-per-core
2) NOISE-> CPU cooler and case fans (and motherboard fan software... I like Asus)
3) Motherboard quality matters

4) DDR4 amount needed? (8GB is fine for most people... my dad uses Photoshop and it needs very little)


SSD I chose 2.5" since the M.2 version is same specs but less swappable to other PC's, and the faster M.2 drives are pointless for the applications you use.

SUMMARY:
So basically find out your needs/wants and focus on that.

 

[madmatt30]

I honestly can't see any reasoning at all for an 8350k & an expensive aftermarket cooler!

An 8400 with 16gb ram costs less money.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i5-8400 2.8GHz 6-Core Processor ($178.90 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: ASRock - Z370 Pro4 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($121.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Team - Vulcan 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2800 Memory ($157.50 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($99.89 @ OutletPC)
Case: Fractal Design - Core 2300 ATX Mid Tower Case ($49.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - FOCUS Gold 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($44.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Pioneer - BDR-209DBK Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer ($58.89 @ OutletPC)
Total: $712.14
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-03-21 04:59 EDT-0400

 

[photonboy]

I honestly can't see any reasoning at all for an 8350k & an expensive aftermarket cooler!

An 8400 with 16gb ram costs less money.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i5-8400 2.8GHz 6-Core Processor ($178.90 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: ASRock - Z370 Pro4 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($121.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Team - Vulcan 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2800 Memory ($157.50 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($99.89 @ OutletPC)
Case: Fractal Design - Core 2300 ATX Mid Tower Case ($49.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - FOCUS Gold 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($44.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Pioneer - BDR-209DBK Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer ($58.89 @ OutletPC)
Total: $712.14
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-03-21 04:59 EDT-0400

Can't think of a reason?
I literally explained that he doesn't appear to use programs that would utilize six cores and that Photoshop is more about the performance per CORE.

The i3-8350K can clock to about 5GHz and the i5-8400 hit at best can hit 4GHz under load. That's a 25% or higher potential performance difference.

Obviously for that you need a better CPU cooler than stock. I still wouldn't use the stock cooler with the i5-8400 though as I'd rather spend a little more just to reduce the CPU fan noise.

I also said he should look closer at his EXACT requirements, mainly things like DDR4 capacity (need more than 8GB?) and CPU core amount (again x4 faster cores is better than x6 slower cores for almost everybody).

By my calculations even if you had 100% CPU utilization for both CPU's you'd only get about a 14% gain on the i5-8400. You need more than 87% load on the i5-8400 before the extra cores trump the higher perf for the i3-8350K (based on 5GHz for the i3-8350K vs 3.8GHz full load with the i5-8400).

Thus (6x38)/(4x50) = 1.14

Conversely you might get up to 50/38 = 32% gain on the i3-8350K for demanding CPU tasks that need less than four cores.

So long story short is the i5-8400 mainly saves due to the CPU cooler but it's damn hard to find tasks where it's better than the i3-8350K.