cpu for NON-gaming

[jdsha]

Hi,

So I had a little debate, and would love to hear your opinion.
What do you think will be best for this pc: no gaming (nothing, not even minesweeper), no overclocking probably, mostly office and heavy web research, and occasional movie (1080 and up). Also it would have so support dual monitor without a graphics card.

budget: around 120 usd, but the lower the better.

 

[Miky5983]

An i3 4150 (3.5 GHz 4 threads, 54watts) would be good for your needs, or an FX 8320E (3.2 GHz, 8 threads, 95watts)

EDIT: Ooops, didn't see the dual monitor support and without a graphics card. The i3 has reasonable built in graphics, it should be enough for browsing, watching videos/movies.

 

[tsuneo6]

AMD A10-7700K

this should do the trick.

 

[delaro]

FX 8320E does not have a igpu

A8-7650K $95
A8 7600 $84

i3-4160 $103

The APU's offer a much better Graphics option.

The I3 is a little faster in common use but you really wont notice the difference unless your gaming which you are not. I've built around both and both will do what you want.

 

[Odd135]

A xeon processor plus a graphics card sounds perfect for this case, but I can certainly say that if you're not getting discrete graphics, your computer is going to run incredibly slow; I have a laptop with an i5 processor and 6 gb of memory, and it really struggled when I hooked up a second monitior (at 1440x900, no thermal throttling).

 

[jdsha]

thanks to all of you.
will I notice any graphical difference between the two in dual monitor?

 

[delaro]

thanks to all of you.
will I notice any graphical difference between the two in dual monitor?

This is what my oldest son has.

A10 7700K @4.7 ghz " Picked up used for $90"
2400 mhz DDR3 16GB
250 GB Samsung SSD
1 TB hard Drive
No GPU yet
2X1080P displays

He is always watching something full screen on one and either doing homework "MS Office" or Blender or Multi Tab Web Surfing on the other. Only when Blender is running does he ever see stuttering on the Video and that is usually on larger projects.

If your meaning two separate screens doing two separate things @ 1080P and below you wont notice any quality difference it's not that taxing even on a igpu. If your meaning using two monitors as one large display then that can be taxing on integrated igpu's.

 

[jdsha]

I don't understand.
watching movies will probably be on one screen only. I will be using both screens when researching (one on lots of chrome tabs, the other on MS and such).
will both the i3 and the a8 7300 be up for it?

 

[LookItsRain]

I suggest an A8-7600 based system over any i3 in a non-gaming case.

 

[Miky5983]

I don't understand.
watching movies will probably be on one screen only. I will be using both screens when researching (one on lots of chrome tabs, the other on MS and such).
will both the i3 and the a8 7300 be up for it?

They are both good CPUs but the i3 has a better upgrade path (4th gen i5 or i7) while the FM2+ platform is pretty much dead.

 

[LookItsRain]

I don't understand.
watching movies will probably be on one screen only. I will be using both screens when researching (one on lots of chrome tabs, the other on MS and such).
will both the i3 and the a8 7300 be up for it?

They are both good CPUs but the i3 has a better upgrade path (4th gen i5 or i7) while the FM2+ platform is pretty much dead.

Upgrade path is rather irrelevent in this usage case. I still have a 2005 pentium d system that can browse the internet and play movies.