Processors: Buying Advice, Tips, and News

If gameplay on a budget is your main PC use, AMD's Ryzen 5 7600 is a reasonable and affordable CPU choice. With minimal cooling required, it will handle mainstream computing and gaming needs.

For PC gamers and budget-constrained creative types, Intel's "Alder Lake" Core i5-12600K punches well above its weight in gaming and content creation alike. Just know that the cost of adoption (memory, motherboard, cooler) may make waiting a bit to upgrade a better bet.

AMD's Ryzen 5 5500 offers decent performance for non-gaming tasks, but it trails slightly costlier AMD and Intel CPUs in our benchmarks, making it a second-tier pick.

Upgrading to any "Comet Lake" CPU (and its new platform) has its budget implications, but for a six-core chip with gaming chops, the Core i5-10400 is as good as it gets in Intel's 10th Generation stack.

The 16-core Ryzen 9 7950X delivers exceptional performance that blows previous AMD consumer chips out of the water and even outpaces Intel's top competing "Alder Lake" efforts.

Intel's "Raptor Lake" Core i9-13900K is the fastest CPU on the market, with leading performance and a higher core count than the competition.

With performance rivaling the Ryzen 7 5800X at a lower price, AMD's Ryzen 7 5700X is arguably the best value in the Ryzen 7 5000 series, but it can't quite stand up to Intel's new "Alder Lake" processors.

AMD's Ryzen 9 7900 has some of the best power efficiency and performance per watt among desktop CPUs. With its included cooler, it's a capable and low-power 12-core option, all for a similar price to the higher-end 7900X.

Intel's Core i5-13600K is pricier, power-hungrier, and hotter-running than its predecessor, but it's hard to argue with the raw performance this CPU gives you for the money, especially for PC gamers.

The Core i7-14700K is the best value of Intel's refreshed "Raptor Lake" CPUs, bringing marked improvements at no extra cost. It's an attractive upgrade for older LGA 1700 systems.