Workstation PC for College

[Computernaut]

Budget (including currency): Around $1,300 CAD

Country: Canada

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Virtualization, basic coding, (and some gaming).

Other details:

I find myself in need of a PC upgrade for my college program as one of the courses in particular will be quite virtualization-heavy. I don't have too many specific parts in mind yet, but I do have some guidelines. First and foremost I need an 8-core (or 10-core) CPU (I'm fine with either Intel or AMD) and at least 32 GB of RAM (64 GB if possible). I'm not too concerned about things like the case (I can find something basic) and I already have a GPU, so we don't need to worry about that. I've been out of the PC building space for a while so I'm not totally in tune with what the best options are these days, but I had a few things I was considering: For CPU I think the Ryzen 7 5800X could be a good option or maybe the i7-11700 (that's what is in the lab computers at my college). A 2+ TB SSD is also a must, and I'd love to try NVMe if that's in the budget. For the sake of size, I'd prefer a mATX motherboard, but ATX is fine too.

Using this build I found on PCPartPicker as a jumping off point, I created my own build to go off of. It's not perfect (and a bit over ym budget), and the BIOS issue does have me a little worried, but I think it could be a good start for you lovely folks. Pretty much anything in there can be switched out if it would help. In particular I think the CPU cooler and PSU are overkill, but I may be wrong. I've also heard that the vendor "Vuugo" isn't great.

[ExalyThor]

Both intel and amd plan to release their next gen cpus next month. I know hearing "don't buy now" has become tiresome but it's the best advice I can give. If anything the previous generation products will fall in price and you will be able to afford higher tier products with the same budget. If you really need something today then the i7 12700f might be the best cpu in it's price class unless pricing has changed dramatically in the last 2 months. Check pricing.

[Computernaut]

40 minutes ago, ExalyThor said:

Both intel and amd plan to release their next gen cpus next month. I know hearing "don't buy now" has become tiresome but it's the best advice I can give. If anything the previous generation products will fall in price and you will be able to afford higher tier products with the same budget. If you really need something today then the i7 12700f might be the best cpu in it's price class unless pricing has changed dramatically in the last 2 months. Check pricing.

Yes, I know the timing is really bad. If I could wait I definitely would, but with the term already started, I need this stuff as quickly as possible. I'll give a 12700F build a try though, thanks. The 12700F is the same price when motherboard is factored in (more or less). I really like that the i7 has more cores, but I'm not sure how the power/efficiency core mix will work with virtualization.

[Jeppes]

I doubt the pricing will drop much. 7600X is already priced against 12700f.