Performance At Every Price: The Best Gaming CPU For Your Budget

Buying a gaming PC unlocks the door for some of the greatest games of all time, but it can be pretty pricey. Whether you're buying a pre-built or building your own rig, a lot of different choices and considerations come into play. The two components that have the biggest impact on your PC gaming experience are the processor and the graphics card. How to make sense of the processor, also known as the CPU, and choose the best one for your needs? We'll break it down for you and give you some top-notch recommendations to power up your gaming PC for the years to come.

When shopping for a gaming CPU, you'll want to look at its core and thread counts as well as per-core frequency. However, for pure gaming purposes, you really don't need a beast with 20 cores, as the clock speed is much more important. This is why you can get away with buying a fairly budget CPU and still see good performance in CPU-bound games, as long as the chip itself is pretty snappy.

Speaking of budget CPUs, if there's one thing to steer clear of, it's pairing a powerful processor with weak RAM, graphics, or storage. The same goes for the other way around. It's better to balance your entire build, as your PC is only as strong as its weakest components.

Lastly, let's dispel a common myth — it doesn't matter if you choose AMD or Intel. Years ago, Intel was the go-to option for gaming, but these days, AMD processors are some of the undisputed gaming heroes. Here are five CPUs from both manufacturers that you should consider for your next gaming PC.

Intel's Core i3-12100F belongs to the 12th Generation of Intel processors, and while it's really cheap (usually around $90 on Amazon), it's solid enough to support gaming. You won't get the best performance ever, but with a CPU like this, your entire build can be just a few hundred dollars and still fly through esports titles and other less-demanding games.

While the Core i3-12100F is an Alder Lake processor, it doesn't use the same hybrid core architecture as its more expensive siblings. This is fine for a lower-end PC, though. You're getting four performance cores that can be boosted up to 4.3GHz, making it one of the fastest options at this price point. However, for productivity tasks and multi-tasking while gaming, you'll probably want to up the budget and aim for something with six or more cores instead.

Oh, and don't forget, this CPU doesn't have built-in graphics, so you'll need to buy a discrete GPU or pick the i3-12100 instead if you want onboard graphics. However, that will make any serious gaming a lot more difficult.

Opening up the budget gets you more choices, and one of the cheapest CPUs in the $200 to $400 bracket is the Intel Core i5-13400. Priced at roughly $200 on Amazon, this CPU ups the core counts significantly compared to the Core i3-12100F we talked about above. It also comes with integrated graphics, although, again, it's always better to buy a discrete GPU if your budget can stretch to it. We have some handy guides for both AMD and Nvidia graphics cards if you're in the market.

With that said, let's get back to the 13th Generation Core i5-13400, equipped with six performance (P) cores and four efficiency (E) cores. Aside from the huge increase in core counts, you're also getting a boost in clock speed, reaching up to 4.6GHz. Despite the impressive frequency, the Core i5-13400 is still fairly power-conservative, keeping its TDP at a reasonable 65 watts. That, in turn, translates to less cooling required and less money spent on a high-end power supply.

We recommend using this CPU in budget gaming builds that also double as productivity machines. It's reasonably solid and cheap, making it a well-rounded option at this price range.

Moving on to AMD brings us to the last-gen gaming champ: the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D. This is AMD's first consumer processor to utilize the 3D V-Cache technology, which adds an extra layer of L3 cache on top of the CPU cores.

Priced at $220 on Amazon these days, this chip is still a favorite among gamers despite belonging to the previous generation. It sports eight cores and 16 threads, a clock speed of up to 4.7GHz when boosted, and a whopping 96MB of combined cache. We don't recommend it for work or content creation (including streaming), but it's an outstanding processor for pure gaming purposes. Various reviews and benchmarks pin it above much more expensive chips, such as the Ryzen 9 7900 or the Intel Core i9-12900K. It's almost on par with the Intel Core i9-13900K, a CPU that costs over $600.

There's one downside to buying last-gen AMD, though — this chip uses the AM4 socket, which AMD has now moved on from. This means you'll need to buy a matching AM4 motherboard and won't have an upgrade path further down the line.

If you prefer Intel, this is as high as you should go for pure gaming purposes. Sure, there are better Intel processors than the Core i5-13600K, but the performance gains are negligible when you compare them to the amount of money you'd have to spend extra. The i5-13600K costs $315.95 on Amazon. If you're aiming for the sweet spot between solid productivity and gaming, this is it.

This CPU is often said to be a little bit slower than the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, but the extra cores make it a better-rounded pick. The Core i5-13600K sports a total of 14 cores (six P-cores and eight E-cores) and 20 threads, as well as 24MB of combined cache. It can be boosted to run up to 5.1GHz. It's a powerful chip that will breeze through all kinds of AAA games — you shouldn't suffer from any CPU bottlenecks.

Of course, if your budget is unlimited, you can bump up to the Core i7-13700K ($380 on Amazon) or even the Core i9-13900K ($430 on Amazon), provided you're an Intel fan. However, it's usually really not worth the money. If you're a streamer, though, you might want to buy one of the aforementioned (pricier) chips.

This is it — the gaming champion of this generation. AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D is a successor to the 5800X3D, and it has all the same top qualities that made the last-gen CPU such a hit among gamers. Most reviewers call it the fastest gaming processor right now, and although there is one that's marginally better, the increase in price means that you're better off just settling for this one.

The Ryzen 7 7800X3D costs $399 on Amazon and hence fits neatly in midrange to high-end builds. It's an 8-core, 16-thread CPU with a maximum turbo frequency of up to 5.0GHz. There's also a total of 104MB of cache, 96MB of which is L3 cache. The lower core count is not ideal for productivity, but it's good enough for most uses, so you won't be hindered by it unless you're into AI or content creation.

If you want to balance things out and have an unlimited budget, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D is slightly faster in some (but not all) titles and comes with more cores. However, at $665 or more on Amazon, we don't recommend buying it unless you really don't mind the expense.