Question Best price-to-performance build for a NON-gamer ?

[zenrunner92]

I have a ten year old 4th gen Intel i5-4430, Asus Z87 mobo, 32GB DDR3, 1TB Samsung SATA SSD, 3 monitors, running Win 10.

It's stable and fairly fast, since all I do is multi-task Office apps, Zoom, music streaming, and Brave browser with 40-80 tabs open (the main memory hog, despite my setting it to suspend unused tabs).

Am upgrading only because my hardware is incompatible with Win 11 and that evil Microsoft October deadline is looming, and I'm concerned that by then we'll be knee-deep in a trade war with China resulting in appalling inflation and supply chain disruptions, ergo it might be wiser to upgrade sooner rather than at the last moment?

So, am thinking of just switching out the mobo, memory, and CPU. (I have researched the workarounds but they all seem a bit precarious and MS seems to find ways to defeat them, so I'd rather not bother with playing whack-a-mole.)

Best Microcenter deals I've seen so far are:

• a) AMD Ryzen 5 7600X, ASUS B650M-A Prime AX II, G.Skill 16GB DDR5 6000

vs

• b) Intel Core i7-12700K, MSI Z790-P Pro WiFi DDR4, G.Skill Ripjaws V 16GB DDR4-3200

My questions:

1. Is the old "AMD better for gaming, Intel better for productivity" adage still true?
2. As a non-gamer, would I see any noticeable difference between DDR5 vs DDR4?
3. Which of the 2 systems above would have the lowest cooling and power needs? (I was hoping to continue using my 10 year old Antec VP-450 power supply.)

And the two bundles above are only $20 apart...is there any compelling reason to get one over the other?

If you have better suggestions, I'm all ears. Many thanks in advance!

 

[Lutfij]

Is the old "AMD better for gaming, Intel better for productivity" adage still true?
Nope, they are both the same for the sort of tasks you're going to put it through. To be blunt, DDR4 is a dead end platform, and Intel's 12th Gen platform is already 3 generations behind. With the AM5 platform, you can upgrade your platform in a few years time, should you choose.

Which of the 2 systems above would have the lowest cooling and power needs? (I was hoping to continue using my 10 year old Antec VP-450 power supply.)
Quite frankly, you should retire that PSU. So you shouldn't pair that PSU with either of the builds listed above.

What are you thinking of recycling from your current build? You will need an aftermarket cooler for the Intel bundle.

 

[zenrunner92]

Is the old "AMD better for gaming, Intel better for productivity" adage still true?
Nope, they are both the same for the sort of tasks you're going to put it through. To be blunt, DDR4 is a dead end platform, and Intel's 12th Gen platform is already 3 generations behind. With the AM5 platform, you can upgrade your platform in a few years time, should you choose.

Which of the 2 systems above would have the lowest cooling and power needs? (I was hoping to continue using my 10 year old Antec VP-450 power supply.)
Quite frankly, you should retire that PSU. So you shouldn't pair that PSU with either of the builds listed above.

What are you thinking of recycling from your current build? You will need an aftermarket cooler for the Intel bundle.

Well, I just want my next build to last 10 years, same as my current build. In other words, until MS comes up with Windows 12 and again coerces Win 11 users to upgrade as they are currently doing with Win 10 users.

The question is, for my primitive non-gaming needs, would I get any perceptible performance advantage with DDR5 over DDR4?

I was hoping to continue to use my current case with its extra fans and the current power supply, and of course the 3 monitors I'm currently running off of it.

Is 450 watts inadequate for either of the two proposed builds, or are you more concerned with the Antec being 10 years old resulting in an eventual breakdown that could damage the rest of the system?