Question New 'office' build, thinking out loud....12th and 13th gen options

[punkncat]

Thinking about replacement of one of the office machines, an i5 8400. It is beginning to be (more) buggy than it has been in the past. Probably something that a wipe and fresh install would cure, but the person using this machine is very resistant to doing anything to or with it. I figure if I just replace it and keep it operational that the new system can be tailored to their desire....assuming the older machine doesn't give up the ghost beforehand. Things like blinking screen in Word or Excel, File Explorer window going white/blank while scrolling, such as that. Probably something easy to fix...

Anywho, I am looking at a couple of options, sort of thinking out loud.

I am going with an inexpensive B7xx motherboard that still has VGA. A monitor upgrade is in the works for the future but may yet be 4-6 months out.

The 13100 has impressive performance and is available at a really nice price up at MicroCenter. Low power, included cooler, and impressive performance to price. Should be nice and quiet as well. With this option I would keep in place for a year or so and start looking for a nice 14th gen i5 to drop in place.

The 12400 makes a lot more sense for its performance, but the pricing on this one falls in a funny place right now. This one includes a cooler as well and has enough threads to get some grunt work done. As far as sheer performance it isn't really a long way from the 13100 for the price and right now is only $10 cheaper than.....

The 12600K. Complete overkill for the job being done. High power draw and likely to be notably noisier. Needs an aftermarket cooler. The pricing on this is quite attractive right now and also includes two free titles. One I know I won't play, but not familiar with the other. Can gift the Assassins Creed title.

The pricing comes down to ~ a $75 difference between the three for the selected mobo and the CPU in question. I will be going with DDR4 as (to be fair) I have a few sticks on hand already and it is so inexpensive. Surely won't cause issue for a work build. I have to make consideration for the cooler. The goal at end state will be a Widescreen monitor in the 34" range to replace the older monitors and neaten up the desk space.

 

[Bob.B]

Thinking about replacement of one of the office machines, an i5 8400. It is beginning to be (more) buggy than it has been in the past. Probably something that a wipe and fresh install would cure, but the person using this machine is very resistant to doing anything to or with it. I figure if I just replace it and keep it operational that the new system can be tailored to their desire....assuming the older machine doesn't give up the ghost beforehand. Things like blinking screen in Word or Excel, File Explorer window going white/blank while scrolling, such as that. Probably something easy to fix...

Anywho, I am looking at a couple of options, sort of thinking out loud.

I am going with an inexpensive B7xx motherboard that still has VGA. A monitor upgrade is in the works for the future but may yet be 4-6 months out.

The 13100 has impressive performance and is available at a really nice price up at MicroCenter. Low power, included cooler, and impressive performance to price. Should be nice and quiet as well. With this option I would keep in place for a year or so and start looking for a nice 14th gen i5 to drop in place.

The 12400 makes a lot more sense for its performance, but the pricing on this one falls in a funny place right now. This one includes a cooler as well and has enough threads to get some grunt work done. As far as sheer performance it isn't really a long way from the 13100 for the price and right now is only $10 cheaper than.....

The 12600K. Complete overkill for the job being done. High power draw and likely to be notably noisier. Needs an aftermarket cooler. The pricing on this is quite attractive right now and also includes two free titles. One I know I won't play, but not familiar with the other. Can gift the Assassins Creed title.

The pricing comes down to ~ a $75 difference between the three for the selected mobo and the CPU in question. I will be going with DDR4 as (to be fair) I have a few sticks on hand already and it is so inexpensive. Surely won't cause issue for a work build. I have to make consideration for the cooler. The goal at end state will be a Widescreen monitor in the 34" range to replace the older monitors and neaten up the desk space.

The 13100 is going to give quite a bump in perf.

Only you know how high up the perf ladder you want to go.

 

[punkncat]

The 13100 is going to give quite a bump in perf.

Only you know how high up the perf ladder you want to go.

Agreed. For the task at hand it is mostly having about 20-30 Chrome tabs open, a handful of pictures open, a few Office files open such as a Word doc or two and an Excel spreadsheet. Otherwise, the most heavy lifting this one sees is converting a jpeg or print output to pdf. I have been using a 10105 in a similar usage scenario aside from the number of open tabs/apps, but more picture conversion. Adobe doesn't seem to care much about multi threads but higher clock speeds. The throughput of that 13th gen i3 is quite impressive.

Micro Center has (2) of them open box right now for $103. They both state they are incomplete and figure they are missing the fan, which I don't have any available in the format needed. IF I get the open box and the motherboard I am considering I can walk out the door about $175 plus taxes.
If I go with the 12600K I am just going to pick it off Amazon because the $20 difference isn't worth the time or gas for the drive in spite of the motherboard discount.

I think the biggest factor is the consideration that if I replace it next year, I could have just saved about $25 by going with the 12600K if I ignore the additional fan...you know enabler level of justification.

 

[Lafong]

Passmark benchmark rank order, high to low; single thread: 12600K, 13100, 12400

12400 single thread score is 5 percent below 13100

12600K single thread score is 6 percent above 13100



Passmark benchmark rank order, high to low; multi-thread: 12600K, 12400, 13100

13100 is 23 percent below 12400

12600K is 43 percent above the 12400



13100 is the only one with only 4 cores; 12600K is the only one with Performance and Efficient cores.

I suppose you have to evaluate how much the software can make use of the multi-thread performance advantage of the i5s.

You say if you bought the i3-13100, you’d later drop in a 14th gen i5.

Would you then re-use the 13100 elsewhere or sell it? How much of an issue is that? Time/trouble/cost.

You would NOT replace 12400 or 12600K with 14th gen?

Off the top of my head, my inclination would be 13100 and quite possibly DON’T replace it. Caveats to that would be some indication that your proposed workload would benefit from the core advantage of i5s or if you absolutely insist on not living with the 13100 for several years…for whatever reason.

 

[Bob.B]

Agreed. For the task at hand it is mostly having about 20-30 Chrome tabs open, a handful of pictures open, a few Office files open such as a Word doc or two and an Excel spreadsheet. Otherwise, the most heavy lifting this one sees is converting a jpeg or print output to pdf. I have been using a 10105 in a similar usage scenario aside from the number of open tabs/apps, but more picture conversion. Adobe doesn't seem to care much about multi threads but higher clock speeds. The throughput of that 13th gen i3 is quite impressive.

Micro Center has (2) of them open box right now for $103. They both state they are incomplete and figure they are missing the fan, which I don't have any available in the format needed. IF I get the open box and the motherboard I am considering I can walk out the door about $175 plus taxes.
If I go with the 12600K I am just going to pick it off Amazon because the $20 difference isn't worth the time or gas for the drive in spite of the motherboard discount.

I think the biggest factor is the consideration that if I replace it next year, I could have just saved about $25 by going with the 12600K if I ignore the additional fan...you know enabler level of justification.

If the 8400 is doing the job now I would think the 13100 would give a nice bump.......your call.

 

[punkncat]

Off the top of my head, my inclination would be 13100 and quite possibly DON’T replace it. Caveats to that would be some indication that your proposed workload would benefit from the core advantage of i5s or if you absolutely insist on not living with the 13100 for several years…for whatever reason.

IMO, for the price and in spite of the fan issue, the 12600K is going to be the better choice than the 12400 just because of its power and presumably what will be a longer relevant lifespan....admittedly that last part is a bit less important in certain respects, but even if it weren't needed for work anymore, a few small changes would make it a powerhouse for the centerpiece of a gaming rig. More powerful than my own CPU at the moment, if minimally so.

The 13100 has a lot of positive aspect, particularly as it concerns power draw, cooling (noise), and heat. It makes a lot of sense to use. Just, knowing myself that in a couple of years as 14th gen goes on sale for 15-16 gen release I would very likely update/upgrade it then. Outside of a continued capacity as a work PC it likely would not be reused by me for another purpose. This would have a lot to do with where the state of 4C/8T performance is at that point a couple of years down the road from here. As for the systems that I personally use, I have a pretty good update path from here for a couple of years on a different platform upgrade for the main rig and hand me downs.

Funny to say that the 12600K is actually a more powerful CPU than what I currently use as my gaming and fun rig, but the balance of the system has it at a spot that works well for me.

 

[punkncat]

Just as a follow on. I opted to wait on the hardware update. As I was shopping on Sunday several of the items I was planning on purchasing alongside the CPU and motherboard went out of stock, bought right out from under me (so to speak) or price changed mid-stream. In particular the power supply I was set on and the motherboard I was looking at.

I ran the SFC commands and did a whole lot of cleaning out of the troubled PC. Found that the user had somehow migrated out of Chrome and over to Edge which is only supposed to be for personal use. Once again found myself in a position to be deleting a bunch of sensitive information from our work profiles and so forth and vice-versa with their personal account. Once I got everything back in the proper browser, cleared out the history/cookies/cache (and after SFC found and fixed some things) the PC seems to be running as well as it has been again.