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Intel i5-10400F or i3-10100F?

xy16644

xy16644

xy16644

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Joined
10 May 2009
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221
I'm looking to buy a 10th Gen setup consisting of:

Motherboard: MSI MAG B460 TOMAHAWK
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4 2666 MHz C16
CPU: Intel i3-10100F or i5-10400F

I can't seem to make up my mind which CPU to get, do I go for the awesome value higher base clock speed of the 4 core i3 or do I go for the slower per core clock speed of the i5 but it has 6 cores? Also the i5 is almost double the price of the so theres that but both are still well priced.

Does it matter much that the i5 is rated at 2.9Ghz base (the i3 base speed is 3.6Ghz) but both CPUs can boost to 4.3Ghz?
 
not sure what kind of cpu use the vms would cause so im gonna have to leave this to someone else i think ha ha

for the rest i'd say ram and ssd are more important and the i3 would be fine
 
Roadrunner_668 said:
not sure what kind of cpu use the vms would cause so im gonna have to leave this to someone else i think ha ha

for the rest i'd say ram and ssd are more important and the i3 would be fine
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The RAM I'll be using is in the OP but I do have a Samsung 960 EVO NVMe drive I'll be using for the system/boot drive.

I'm struggling to decide between less cores/higher base clock speed vs. more cores/lower base clock speed. Confused....
 
Roadrunner_668 said:
yeah i cant help at this point i thought you would say gaming etc and then i might have had some offerings ha ha
Click to expand...

I decided to go for the i3 in the end as the price had been reduced due to damaged packaging where I bought it from so it was £60 (and in stock)! Half the price of the i5 roughly but maybe I will upgrade the i3 in the future if there are any good deals on i5/i7 CPUs or maybe Rocket Lake will have some good options...

Any comments on what motherboard to buy as I haven't ordered that yet? The MSI MAG B460 TOMAHAWK looks awesome and I don't need/want Wifi on a motherboard. I currently have an Asus but didn't like any of their B460 boards. Is MSI good? Never owned or used any of their products. Does the MSI MAG B460 TOMAHAWK support PCIe 4.0 with a Rocket Lake CPU?
 
Can't you get something cheaper? Even the Asus H410-A has a TPM header, perhaps the commercial version H410-C has a TPM? It seems silly to buy a £60 CPU and pair it with a £200 motherboard.
 
I3 is only 4c8t. Is that enough for your VM plus all your other usage.

2VM I would imagine you need 6c12t at least so you can assign 4 logical cores to each VM plus some resources for your host.
 
Tetras said:
Can't you get something cheaper? Even the Asus H410-A has a TPM header, perhaps the commercial version H410-C has a TPM? It seems silly to buy a £60 CPU and pair it with a £200 motherboard.
Click to expand...

I managed to get a TPM header for the MSI MAG B460 TOMAHAWK so will be purchasing this board.
 
pc-guy said:
I3 is only 4c8t. Is that enough for your VM plus all your other usage.

2VM I would imagine you need 6c12t at least so you can assign 4 logical cores to each VM plus some resources for your host.
Click to expand...

I generally only run one VM at a time all the time and the second VM is used briefly once per month. It runs fine on my ancient i7 3700 so am sure it will be fine with the 10th Gen i3! From what I have read the i3 10100f is the same as the 7th Gen i7 in terms of speed so I think it will be fine!
 
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