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!

 

[Flayed]

I guess they are inexpensive enough that it doesn't matter. Those combo deals are excellent value.

 

[zenrunner92]

Are you against getting a Mac? You could get a base model Mini with the new M4PRO chip for $1400, then for an extra $250 get a 3rd party 2TB drive that you can install yourself, and be set. Ohh, and it's only 5"x5"x3"

Yeah, you could say I'm allergic to all things Apple esp. the fenced garden ecosystem.

 

[zenrunner92]

Both those Microcenter bundles seem like massive overkill for an office PC

Oh even my current 10 year old rig is massive overkill, but it's served me well...don't think I've ever had a BSOD, and it hangs/crashes like once a year or two. So that's all I'm hoping to replicate with this new setup, just running Win11 instead of 10 by MS fiat.

 

[zenrunner92]

But it is nice to have a quick pc.
To my mind, that comes from a SSD for the C drive, and a fast single thread processor.
The op's pc will not stop working when support ends. It will still be as good as it is today.
He will not get new windows features. Are there any must haves in W11?

But it is nice to have a quick pc.
To my mind, that comes from a SSD for the C drive, and a fast single thread processor.
The op's pc will not stop working when support ends. It will still be as good as it is today.
I will pay good money for something I will see and touch every day.

Yes, I have been using SSDs as C drives since the early/mid 00s. You couldn't pay me to ever go back to HDDs other than external storage.

I'd happily continue using Win10 indefinitely if I could...in fact I'd happily choke up $30 to get an additional year of MS support for it if it weren't for the likelihood of a looming trade war with China driving up prices that nudges me into buying a new rig now.

I bought a Win11 laptop last year, and the interface annoyed me enough that I paid for a 3rd party app to restore the Win10 taskbar/start-menu! Will probably do the same for this desktop rig.