The Core i5 10400F is a surprisingly exciting option. This is a decent little overclocker, and while it won't affect gaming much, it'll help in other areas nicely. You don't need to, but if you do, you'll hit higher clocks for longer and also open up the wonderful world of overclocking, which could make it worthwhile. The Ryzen 5 5600X also bucks the Ryzen 5000 family's trend by shipping with a Wraith Stealth cooler, so you don't have to drop extra money on a third-party chiller. You could argue that gaming could go beyond the 12-threads we have here, but there's no evidence that is the case so far, and that's even though the next-gen consoles are rocking 8-cores and 16-threads.
However, this is only an issue with those more serious workloads, which is more than sufficient for more reasonable stuff. This does have half the core count of that top chip, rolling in as it does with six cores and 12 threads. Which is incredible when you think about it-top-tier performance from the most affordable Zen 3 CPU? We'll say yes to that every single day.
There's nothing between any of the Ryzen 5000 chips in games, which means you'll hit the same frame rates with this chip as you will our number one pick. When it comes to gaming, everything that's great about the 5900X rings true for this more affordable Zen 3 chip as well.
I3 PROCESSOR 4TH GENERATION PRICE FULL
Read our full Intel Core i5 11600K review. That will hopefully change, but even so, this is still one of the best cheap gaming CPUs around. Though that is of dubious benefit at the moment as our testing has not so far gone well with supported PCIe 4.0 SSDs. The Cypress Cove 14nm backport may have made it relatively power-hungry, but that doesn't stop it from being a great gaming CPU and one that delivers a lot of processor silicon for not a lot of cash.Īnd PCIe 4.0 support on Intel 500-series motherboards. It's also incredibly affordable too, with a price tag well underneath the Ryzen 5 5600X and performance figures that have it trading blows with AMD's otherwise excellent Zen 3 chip. Okay, with the 11900K being a frustrating chip, maybe it's not a total return to the old days, but the 11600K is still an outstanding six-core, 12-thread gaming processor. The top processor was always a decent halo product, but the i5 was where the price/performance metrics really sold a new generation. The Core i5 11600K is my favorite chip of the new Rocket Lake generation, which marks a nostalgic return to the old days of Intel CPU launches.