Is a i3-2100 good enough for me?

[Kipperfer]

My old brain is in serious need of some advice on the best choice to upate my hardware. I'm well behind the curve on most of this stuff.

Over the years I have used a succession of Abit m/boards with AMD CPUs. I built my current PC nearly 4 and half years ago – Abit KN9s, Athlon 64 x2 4400+, Seasonic SS- 430GB PSU, Antec SLK3800B-UK case. The hard drives are recent: 1TB Samsung F3 and WD6400AAKS. Cooling is by Arctic Freezer 64 (PWM) and Antec Tricool 120mm case fans. The PC is quiet not silent.

It's a multi-boot system with Windows 7, various flavours of Linux and a number of test virtual machines. As the PC is in use up to 10 hours a day, every day, I need a reliable system with the lowest power draw that can do what I want. I'd say my use on average splits about 75/25 between light use and heavier loads. But this could shift toward heavier loads, particularly if I get serious about Gentoo, FreeBSD, or FreeNAS again.

Light use includes web, email,.Office apps, multimedia audio and video and some photo editing.

Heavy use includes running virtual machines (no more than two concurrently), some transcoding tasks, Linux package management and compilation

Heavy loads in my context are the things that stress my existing system. I do not game.

If just a change of m/board, CPU and RAM will suffice, then is a i3-2100 a better match to my needs then say a Phenom II X4 960T? For example, these combos are about the same price in the UK and within my £250 budget.

CPU: i3-2105
M/Board: Asrock H61M/U3S3
RAM: 8GB Corsair Vengeance 1600

CPU: Phenom II x4 960T
M/Board: Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H
RAM: 8GB Corsair Vengeance 1600

Or do I really need to think about an i5 CPU and double budget?

Something like this, perhaps:

CPU: i5-2500K
M/Board: MSI GA-Z68a-GD65
RAM: 8GB Corsair Vengeance 1600

[HFat]

With the info you've provided, opinions are useless.
If you don't know what your requirements, picking parts is a crapshoot.
You'll probably get baseless opinions anyway. I recommend you ignore them.

The only useful things I can tell you is that Intel's current CPU are superior to AMD's and that a 2100 would be ridiculously faster than what you have. There's more difference between a 2100 and what you have than between what you have and an old dual-core Atom.

Just in case you didn't know (I'm not recommending anything), there are cheaper CPUs based similar to the 2100 which lack a few features you might not need and which are a bit less powerful.

edit: for "the lowest power draw", you'll probably want to change your PSU. Intel or MSI boards are preferred but I suspect using a pico with a good brick (or equivalent) would make more difference.

[Klusu]

You can not go wrong with 2105. It is probably more than you need. Your 1600 RAM will run at 1333. You don't need 1600.

[Arbutus]

Or do I really need to think about an i5 CPU

365 pounds over 5 years at 10 hours per day is 2 pence per hour

[Arbutus]

282 pounds inc. VAT at http://www.aria.co.uk

MSI Z68A-G43-G3 Intel Z68
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz
GB Corsair XMS3 (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit - CMX8GX3M2A1333C9

[HammerSandwich]

If a 2100 is enough, then the 2500K would hold you for years. It's a shame that Intel doesn't offer a $100 K-model dual...

How much RAM does the current system have? If <4GB, I'd probably do a 2120 with 8-16GB & consider an Ivy Bridge in 12-18 months. Look for an SSD deal in January, but a 4GB RAMdisk for internet cache & temp files could do you wonders in the meantime.

[Kipperfer]

Well, some ideas to mull over. As it is, other issues have cropped up and so this will have to be put off until after Xmas.

[Scrooge]

If a 2100 is enough, then the 2500K would hold you for years. It's a shame that Intel doesn't offer a $100 K-model dual...

With virtualization on the list of things to do, I'd stay away from the K models anyway. They lack the new VT toys. Personally, I'd see if I could afford the cheapest i5 (aside from the -2390T) to get a quad core, if I wanted to do virtualization.

[Mr Spocko]

Good enough means quite a lot to different people!
Yes the i3-2100 is pretty good..but be aware despite the "AMD suck" attitude on forums..if you are doing video work then the i3-2100 isn't an ideal choice.
Even a x4 Athlon II would have an advantage for that type of work

Now I'm not suggesting you get AMD but it's not a bad cost effective build for video and photo work. I'd be more tempted to go that route as you can nab a decent deal on these things. I just built an Athlon II x4 3GHz for someone on a budget for photo and video work and it's far from slow either and pretty easy on the wallet. PhII wise might be a safe bet for or stretch it to an i-5 processor if you can