Fire up your rig with the best CPU for gaming. More cores, more clocks, more of everything that matters.
The best CPU for gaming that'll be lucky enough to grace the inside of your beloved gaming PC will be a, um, gamechanger. Yeah, the graphics card may get all the glory, but your CPU is the brains of the operation and the only reason you're PC can do anything outside of gaming.
Intel releasing the Rocket Lake chips means that we've got CPUs of varying quality like the Core i5 11600K as the best value for its performance while being heavily disappointed with the flagship Core i9 11900K's overall performance. Though, our hands-down favorite CPU at the moment is the Ryzen 9 5900X, along with a lot of AMD's current Zen 3 chips.
You'll notice as you scroll down the list of CPUs that they all have something in common. You can't find any. Much how GPUs are near impossible to find, CPUs are also hot items retailers can't seem to keep on the shelves. Chances are, if you see a CPU on sale, it's literally gone in seconds. Now, we know it's frustrating; give it time since these shortages can't last forever, right?
There is some good news on that front. AMD has been looking to expand its manufacturing with the new B2 stepping chips, but it's too soon to tell how it will affect the market.
Usually, when you're building a new from scratch, one of the first things you need to figure is whether you're going to make an Intel or AMD system. Whichever you choose, here are a couple of things you should know. The new Ryzen 5000 chips still use the AM4 socket and are compatible with X570, B550, and A520 motherboards (oh, and B450 and X470 motherboards).
Intel's Comet Lake chips use the LGA 1200 socket, and Rocket Lake has introduced new 500-series boards. Unless you're desperate for the awkward PCIe 4.0 solution the new Intel chips offer, go with either a Z490 or cheaper B460 motherboard at this point for Intel. Thankfully, our picks for the best gaming motherboard are compatible with the CPUs on this list.
The best CPU for gaming
AMD's Zen architecture has improved with each generation, but the fact that AMD managed to knock out a 19 percent IPC improvement with Zen 3 is nothing short of staggering. The key takeaway for us as gamers is that this improvement means that AMD can now stand toe to toe with Intel when it comes to gaming. Honestly, there's so little between these two now that anyone claiming otherwise is delusional.
Whatever resolution you are gaming at, this processor can handle it and keep your graphics card of choice fed with many juicy frames. The fact that this is a 12-core, 24-thread monster means that it can cope with anything else you throw at it as well. So if you have dreams of 3D rendering, video editing, or any other serious tasks, you'll know that you have the raw grunt to handle it. The fact that it won't hold you back when gaming makes it even sweeter.
The only real downside is the pricing and the dropping of the Wraith cooler—don't forget to factor in when you buy. You do get what you pay for, though, and this is a phenomenal chip for gaming and anything else you might want to do.
If you're in the market for real power, you could step up to the Ryzen 9 5950X, which gives you 16 cores and 32 threads. However, it costs $250 more, and for gaming purposes and even most content creation chores, the 5900X is more than sufficient.
Read the full AMD Ryzen 9 5900X review.
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. The top processor was always a decent halo product, but the i5 was where the price/performance metrics really sold a new generation. 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.
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. The Cypress Cove 14nm backport may have made it rather 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.
And PCIe 4.0 support on Intel 500-series motherboards. Though that is of dubious benefit at the moment as our testing has not so far gone well with supported PCIe 4.0 SSDs. That will hopefully change, but even so, this is still one of the best cheap gaming CPUs around.
When it comes to gaming, everything that's great about the 5900X rings true for this more affordable Zen 3 chip as well. 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. 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.
This does have half the core count of that top chip, rolling in as it does with 6 cores and 12 threads. This is only an issue with those more serious workloads, though, which is more than sufficient for more reasonable stuff. 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.
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 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. This is a decent little overclocker, and while it won't affect gaming much, it'll help in other areas nicely.
Read the full AMD Ryzen 5 5600X review.
If the Intel Core i7 doesn't exist in a world, this would be an incredible chip and would have made it into our top three recommendations, no sweat. It's great for gaming, producing the same figures that can be seen for the 5900X and 5600X. Still, it also appears to hit the sweet spot in configuration terms, with its eight cores and 16 threads surely seeing it right for the future, seeing as that is what the Xbox Series X and Playstation 5 are rocking.
Unfortunately for AMD, Intel does exist, and the blue company's Core i7 10700K matches this in plenty of the more important metrics but has this chip beat in one major way—value for money. This is faster in serious tasks, and if that's what you've got an eye on, then buy this and don't give it a second thought. But if you're mainly looking at gaming, Intel does pretty much the same but costs less. And that's hard for AMD to get away from.
Competition aside, this is still Zen 3 strutting its stuff, and it does that impressively well. Throw in the support for PCIe 4.0 as well, and this is a forward-looking chip that will last you for years.
Read the full AMD Ryzen 5 5800X review.
Intel's top Comet Lake gaming chip, the Core i9 10900K, lost a lot of what made it special with the release of Zen 3. When the 10900K was unveiled, it came with the reassurance that it was the world's fastest gaming processor, but that's not a claim it can really hold on to anymore, with plenty of games handing wins to AMD's Ryzen 5900X. It's still a cracking gaming chip, don't get us wrong, but it traded on being the very best, and once that went, it lost a lot of its shine.
What hasn't overshadowed it is Intel's latest release. The Rocket Lake i9 11900K is almost as powerful overall, but it's more expensive and still misses out on the multi-threaded side.
The 10900K is still overkilled for most cases, apart from possibly at the very high-end and for serious workloads; AMD chips make more sense, but there's still a bizarre charm to this CPU. You probably don't need it, but if you build a machine around it, you know it won't be this chip that's holding you back.
The Core i9 10900K is the first time Intel has squeezed 10 processing cores into its mainstream lineup. Given it's capable of hitting 5.3GHz (however briefly), it definitely represents an impressive outing for the 14nm technology Intel has been tied to for so long. Gaming still benefits from high clock speeds, which still delivers; it doesn't make a lot of sense given the competition.
You'll need to invest in a Z490 motherboard to go along with this chip and some serious cooling (a decent PSU wouldn't go amiss either). Don't be fooled by that reasonable 95W TDP, as it'll push way beyond that, especially if you're thinking of exploring its overclocking chops.
Read the full Intel Core i9 10900K review.
The Core i5 10400F is a surprisingly exciting option. It's slightly faster than the previous-gen Core i5 9400, but that F-suffix means it ditches the Intel integrated graphics completely. That's not a problem for gamers unless you want to use QuickSync, although Nvidia's NVENC is arguably better anyway. Overall, it's an excellent budget-friendly choice that doesn't cost much more than a Core i3 part.
There are other compromises, like the locked multiplier—no overclocking here. But you can save money and grab an H470 motherboard. At least you get a cooler in the box, something we'd like to see as an option with every CPU. Most boards will happily run the 10400F at 3.9GHz, so don't worry about the low base clock.
While the i5 10400F may not be as fast as other CPUs in multithreaded tests, in our gaming suite, it's tied with AMD's last-gen 3900X. Future games may start to push beyond its 6-core capabilities, but probably not before you're ready for an upgrade. Right now, the i5 10400F is plenty fast and extremely affordable.
This may be last-gen hardware now, but there's still a strong case to be made for AMD's Zen 2 CPUs, with their solid performance and efficiency. The Ryzen 5 3600 is slightly behind the 3900X for gaming and other tasks, but the emphasis is on the word 'slightly' for a reason—it's typically a 5 percent difference or less. Plus, for a midrange CPU, we seriously doubt anyone is planning on pairing it with an RTX 3080. A better choice would be a midrange GPU like the AMD RX 5700 or the previous generation RX 590. Either way, the 3600 won't hold you back.
You still get a 6-core, 12-thread processor, and outside of games, the 3600 is faster than Intel's 10400F. But then, the Ryzen 5 3600 also costs more. AMD's Zen 2 architecture has other benefits, like PCIe Gen4. AMD's CPUs have also had far fewer issues with side-channel attacks like Meltdown, Spectre, Foreshadow, and MDS, giving you some peace of mind as far as security goes.
You can also look at the Ryzen 5 3600X as a small step up in performance for $40 more, but the vanilla 3600 can overclock a bit better thanks to a lower starting point, effectively matching its more expensive sibling. Again, fast memory with tight timings helps performance with Ryzen CPUs.
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