I need some help deciding which processor to pick

every processor will create heat, lots of it. the key is moving it away quickly and efficiently.. i use the stock intel cooler on my i7 and it hovers around 38°C at idle and when under duress will see temps near 70°C

as for the i7 creating more heat than the i5, it probably isint that much more. they are both 95W processors so the same amount of power is being used (as far as i know... im no hardware engineer, just a mechanical engineer )

building my own pc was always something i was interested in. i knew i wanted a desktop because i had a laptop through college and it would always overheat, and in general wasnt powerful enough to run my programs.

now a days however with how far technology has come in the last 5~8 years laptops are able to keep up way better. my brother has an asus laptop with the i5M series processor in it and it was quite nice from what i was able to see. back when i got my laptop they were experimenting with desktop processors in laptops.. which caused all kinds of problems. my laptop got so hot that it melted the solder connection between the AC power plug and caused it to stop working... ouch. even today tho laptops will always be hotter than a properly setup desktop because there is way less space to move the air and the components are much closer together. i dont think you have to worry about it melting sodler but its why i eventually decided to go with a custom built desktop instead of a laptop

if you have any other questions ill be glad to share what i know

If you can afford the quad buy it, if you looking to save a little to spend on something else like a SSD then get the i5.

xXFL4WL3Ss said:

So the worst i7 is better than the best i5?? How about like going on the internet, which one is going to load the sites faster? and isn't the quad processor better for multitasking only? like that's the only improvment over the dual?

For the internet both CPUs are fine because you are much more driven by the number of internet hops and their speed when you access a website and the speed of your DSL when you upload/download something.

Given your profile, I would go for the i5. But if you plan a reasonable amount of video editing, the i7 would be faster - for that task.