[phyrrus9]

If you prefer Debian based distros, go with Kali, if you don't go with BlackArch, both come with a large assortment of tools that are taught to CEH learners, you can also find a few threads on here about setting up a lab/sandbox for all your testing needs.

Bah, fuck the mainstream skidly distros. Go with Arch linux (the official one, not this BlackArch BS). The point of Arch is you only get what you choose to put on it, and it's very developer friendly.

As for the PC, don't skimp out. If you're an Intel fanboy, that's fine (but a poor choice), but even so. Don't sell yourself short with a dual core. If you want a usable Intel dev machine, you NEED 8 cores. You also need more than 8GB of RAM. You can check out my giveaway if you're short on funds for RAM.

As for hard drives, ALWAYS go with Samsung. They don't make very good phones, refrigerators, or cylinder heads but they do make great storage. I use the 960 Pro NVMe SSDs in my builds.

For reference, this is my build.

Could an 8 core amd processor work? I know the cores aren't as "strong" but would it be better than anything I could get at the price

Whoever told you that is bullshit. A core is a core. I use an 8-core 5.1ghz machine with a samsung 960 pro NVMe hard disk and 32GB of overclocked memory for my dev machine, on 5 monitors (see image)