New desktop for home office

Mobeer

Recently had to shop around for a machine like OP wants and found Dell Outlet to have the best value. Went for an OptiPlex 3070 Mini Tower, as already linked to CoastingHatbox, using the 10% discount for a new customer:
https://www.dell.com/learn/uk/en/ukdfh1/campaigns/first-time-customer-dell-outlet-uk

Would have needed to upgrade from 8 to 16 GB of RAM for Photoshop but given Dell use 1 * 8 GB stick that would have been easy to do after delivery.

Burnsie1983

Hi all
Thank you for all your input 
I am very much a Photoshop hobbyist, so would not be building a PC just for Photoshop. It is literally just so the computer doesn't struggle when remote teaching (memory of running at 95% and it was very poor quality sound and vision).

The only thing that confuses me is the the generation of processors. A lot of computers may say they have an i5 processor.... However I believe we are on the 20th generation of this. Yet most don't say this. Any ideas how I spot a newer processor? I don't have a clue what gen my i5 is in my surface

debitcardmayhem

Simples https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/processors/processor-numbers.html

eg i510350G1 is 10th gen

CoastingHatbox

Celeron, Pentium, Core are the brands. Forget about Celeron and Pentium for the time being.
i3, i5, i7, i9 is the 'brand modifier' running from entry level to high end. The i5 is a good mid range choice.

So in the following two examples:

• i5-750
• i5-4570
• i5-10310

The first is first generation (3 digit code after the brand)

The second is fourth generation (4 digit code after the brand, first digit is the generation number)

The third is is 10th generation (5 digit code after the brand, first two digits are the generation number)

The final three digits are the SKU number, which are pretty useless for comparison purposes. You need to look up the specifics of the CPU. https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark.html is a good resource for that.

You can also look them up on https://www.cpubenchmark.net/ which will give you a loose indication of one CPUs performance relative to another.

Sometimes the CPU numbers have suffixes:

• C – Desktop processor based on the LGA 1150 package with high performance graphics
• H – High performance graphics
• K – Unlocked
• M – Mobile
• Q – Quad-core
• R – Desktop processor based on BGA1364 (mobile) package with high performance graphics
• S – Performance-optimized lifestyle
• T – Power-optimized lifestyle
• U – Ultra-low power
• X – Extreme edition
• Y – Extremely low power

Intel CPUs have improved with each generation, so you want the highest generation number. Very roughly speaking, a 10th generation i5 has over twice the performance of a 3rd or 4th generation i5 ... but the comparison isn't really linear and other factors get in the way.