Core i3-4130

From the point of view of a consumer that typically uses a PC for surfing the web, checking email, listening to music and watching videos, I consider that the Haswell i3 processors currently represent the best value for money. The i3-4130 has a performance profile that is just 7% below the top nine group leader average yet it only costs half as much. Power users that play intensive 3d games or run video editing, graphics design or CAD packages will benefit from more than two cores and will do well to look elsewhere but for regular users overall responsiveness will remain largely unchanged regardless of how much more is spent on the CPU. (My new value pick is the G3420 which supersedes my recommendation of the i3-4130.) ^{[Sep '13 CPUPro]}