Intel Core i5 2500K

Probably one of the best investments in the past decade. I had a 2500K for 6 years and only sold it since I moved and didn't carry the old desktop with me. Performance-wise it was still going strong and left nothing to be desired. Definitely faster than the 2015 Macbook Pro I had been using since then - which is also not that bad as an everyday PC.

Like some of the other commenters, I also enjoy having both a desktop and a laptop. The laptop is of course nice to have to work on the go and in the living room/on trips, but sometimes for more intensive work and graphics (and games), you still can't beat a desktop. Also, building a desktop is an enjoyable process, and can last you a long time, especially with upgrades. I have my 2500K build from 6 years ago, and it still runs everything including games perfectly (updated video card from a 560ti to a 1080 gtx). Especially with the price of mid-level components being reasonable these days, I'd highly recommend a desktop in addition to your Thinkpad.

AFAIR Steamroller was a big 'correction' of the Shared resource issues in the arch (I can't remember if other revisions had other improvements). AMD was also having to deal with the fact GloFo split off and was relying more on general 'bulk' lithography, which kneecapped them for some time especially due to yield issues on the FX series and overall cost of that deal. Intel also very quickly after, released Sandy Bridge and aggressively scaled it up and down; the 2500K was so cheap yet powerful I know of at least one setup that ran for a decade an only got replaced because they needed to upgrade to windows 11 for compliance-esque reasons. My own 2500K I replaced in 2017-2018-ish, only because either the motherboard took an unfortunate dive and it was easier to replace both at once. FWIW, I did do a cheapie FX build in 2015ish for my then-girlfriend as a DVR and light gaming/emulation 'under the TV box', and it did the job well for the price, but it definitely wasn't anything amazing. It was a tough time for AMD for sure. I think the 'split' between the Cat cores (Bobcat/Jaguar) also hurt them from a resource standpoint, although one could argue that it also kept them alive to recover (i.e. Jaguar in XBox One and PS4 being a volume contract part) [0]. They did a lot of moves that caused short term pain (that glofo spinnoff helped pay off the ATI Acquisition AFAIR) but helped them become the company that is still surviving today. [0] - One odd side note, I still find it odd th…