I'm currently running a lot of emulators and have a ton of tabs open as well so my computer has been slowing down. My CPU usage was around 50% while my physical memory was getting close to 100% so I added 16 GB Ram and that was easy plug and play and helped that. That allowed me to add more emulators but now my CPU usage bounces all the way up to 95% or so.

Here is my build currently

Intel Core i7-4770K Haswell 3.5GHz LGA 1150 84W De
SAMSUNG 840 EVO MZ-7TE250KW 2.5" TLC Internal Soli
Crucial Ballistix Sport 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR
EVGA 02G-P4-2651-KR GeForce GTX 650 2GB 128-Bit GD
NZXT Phantom 410 Series CA-PH410-R1 Red Steel / Pl
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit - OEM(recently upgraded to Windows 7 Pro)
ASRock B85M Pro4 LGA 1150 Intel B85 HDMI SATA 6Gb/
Western Digital WD10EZEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache S - OEM
Microsoft Wireless Comfort Desktop 5000 CSD-00001 $59.99
ASUS Black 12X BD-ROM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-ROM SATA - OEM CORSAIR CXM series CX430M 430W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS

If anyone could recommend a faster processor that actually works with my other components, I'd appreciate it.

What are you doing with the emulators? Do you have to run them locally or can you run them in AWS or something?

I play poker through them, I don't know anything about AWS

Try cpu-z to see if your i7-4770k is using turbo boost to bring it up from a near-idle state to a usable, faster one. Turn off your emulators temporarily, don't open tabs, and see what the clock speed is in cpu-z in idle.

I have the same processor. If you turn off the speed gating/turbo boost and let it run at full capacity (3.5 ghz or 3.9 ghz all the time) then it runs pretty much anything I can throw at it.

You'll probably have to change some motherboard settings. I don't mess with the multiplier or voltage. I don't overclock. I keep hyperthreading on. If the settings are right, it should be at 3900'ish or 3500'ish MHz constantly, instead of bouncing up from a very low speed to a higher one if you stress it.

eta: also your samsung 840 evo is notorious for blowing up, losing old data, and performing poorly if you don't upgrade the firmware.

Also, you already have the fastest Haswell LGA 1150 processor, so you'd either have to do a complete rebuild, or do a BIOS update and buy a Devil's Canyon (Haswell Refresh) processor.

The problem is that its such a minor difference compared to what you have already, that a new processor wouldn't help, so try the speed gating check thing described above.

I'm not entirely sure how it would work for poker either. In theory, you are renting a faster computer in the cloud and then running a remote session to log into the machine. Probably not worth the hassle...

What do you mean when you say emulators? Virtual machines?

Either way, I have a very similar build and an inch for new hardware, but cannot justify it. You re going to need a new mobo and memory sticks because newer mobos use DDR4 instead of DDR3 and they are as expensive as hell.

multiple instances of LDPlayer

You're looking at a new system build to get a significantly faster proc. Next gen Intel is supposed to be around the corner with an 8 core top end proc in the socket 11xx line. If its worth the spend, you can also look at their HEDT parts (socket 20xx) for basically all the cores you care to pay for.
Ryzen 7 2700X and possibly ThreadRipper parts are worth a look on the AMD side, but you'll want to try to confirm how your emulation/virtualization works/performs on AMD before going too far down that path.

This article talks about renting virtual gaming machines, it's pricey but not ridiculously so. https://www.polygon.com/2018/1/4/168...blade-ces-2018

Run cpu-z at idle, take a screenshot.

Disable Intel SpeedStep in BIOS (don't disable Turbo Boost, I misspoke)

Run cpu-z at idle now, and take another screenshot. See if there's a difference.