Best CPU for compiling and building code?
(No XEONS!!)
I have the I5-6500k

They all work dont they?

Why no xeons? :-)

@spl0 they are too expensive. Anyway some require special sockets.

Probably the fastest available (also the one having a price tag you are willing to pay)

My thinkpad has an i5-2520M - seems to do the job alright! :)

Have you checked what your bottleneck is? That should be fine unless you have super awesome I/O to keep up with.

Define budget

@tekhouse Any from the core series apart from the X ones. You know the 6950X for example.

@Pgdevpatryk Presumably the quickest one will just be the newest one with the higher clock speed and the higher price. So not sure what you're asking really....

@spl0 Well what do you have?

@Pgdevpatryk desktop box has got some old i7 in it...i7-4930K

thinkpad has got an i5 in it....

then a bunch of dev boxes with old xeon's...

not sure if there's a massive speed difference - they all finish compiling by the time I've made the tea!

I have an relative fast AMD FX-8350. Works, and speed's also good.

Just like with photography, the best CPU is the one you have with you.

Besides this nugget of useless truthfulness, more CPU is always the best CPU for compiling.
If you're asking for upgrading and faster compiling is your main target, you can probably pick up cheap decommissioned servers with multiple multi-core CPUs inside, and setup a distributed compiler across them all.

From a different perspective, some CPUs are better than some others. Unless you intend to write code that is kernel-strict or real-time specific, you have a really wide choice of any CPU in the market. And, actually, your CPU will last you a lifetime