SSD or CPU upgrade?
 

Here's probably a dumb question. I'm tentatively building my computer with the Intel Core i3-3225 Ivy Bridge (see my build thread here). Am I better off spending the extra hundred on an SSD, or by upgrading to the Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge and using my old 500 GB HDD.

The machine will be for multitasking word, itunes, web, Photoshop, windows movie maker, and netflix/youtube. No gaming.

Thanks!

SSD FTW

For what you are using it for, the better cpu will provide little benefit. The exception is photoshop, so if you will be doing a lot of PS, it might be worth it, but I would say you should put the money into an SSD. Get at least a 120GB for your main os drive, then use the 500gb for everything else. 500 Might be a bit small, but you can easily upgrade that later

The ssd will provide the most noticeable improvement in performance. You will notice it right away if you've been using hard drives previously.

Great, sounds good! SSD it is. I don't do a whole lot of photoshop, just a little here and there.

Here's a related question that I asked in a different post, but didn't get a solid answer for:

Will a 128GB SSD be big enough to load a dual boot of Win7 and Mint?

Yes, but not much room left so I wouldn't recommend it.

What size would you say is sufficient?

Since you own a Z77 , you can also purchase an Intel 40 GB and use Intel RST to cache your OS drive with the Intel SSD, is DAM fast, I have 2 builds with RST and I can't see the difference with my others builds with pure SSD as OS

3 weeks ago I get one in special from Egg for only $ 60 with free shipping

This is a little outside my knowledge base. I'm actually not even sure what the RST is. Can you point me in the direction of a good tutorial for this?

Yes, depending on your applications installed. You said no games, so that eliminates some of the biggest installs. And even if you fill the SSD, you can always install your least used applications on your HDD.

Honestly, I'd rather skip caching and have 100% SSD speeds 24/7. I'd suggest OS's and apps on the SSD with extra apps and all downloads, media, data, etc. on your 500GB HDD. Just my opinion, of course.