My old Dell laptop finally kicked the bucket yesterday—the hinge literally snapped off and I think the screen is totally toast—so now Im scrambling to build a basic desktop before my next big remote project starts this coming Monday. I dont have much to spend maybe like $450 total for the whole tower and I already have an old monitor I can use. Im stuck looking at the Intel side of things because my local microcenter has some decent deals but I cant decide between the Core i3-12100 or if I should just bite the bullet and spend more for the i5-12400.

The i3 is super cheap right now like under a hundred bucks but I worry its gonna feel slow in a year when I have fifty chrome tabs open and my zoom calls going at the same time. On the other hand the i5 is basically fifty or sixty dollars more and that really cuts into my budget for a decent power supply or actually getting 16gb of ram instead of 8. Is the extra cores on the i5 really worth it for just spreadsheets and general office stuff? I really dont want this thing to stutter when I'm sharing my screen during meetings. Im super nervous about picking the wrong one and having to deal with lag but I also really need to save every penny I can... which one is actually the better value for a tight budget?