Our number one pick for best gaming CPU has a Black Friday discount right now, and its a scorcher of a chip
Intel Core i5 13600K | 14 cores, 24 threads | 6 P-cores + 8 E-cores | 5.1GHz | LGA 1700 | $329$270 at Amazon (save $59)
The Intel Core i5 13600K currently tops our recommendations for the best CPUs for gaming, and it's not hard to see why. Beyond its great gaming performance this is a multi-tasking marvel, and rivals the more expensive Core i9 12900K in both single-threaded and multi-threaded benchmarks. It's an all-round powerhouse, and although the 14th gen versions are now available, the performance is more or less identical. And since this one's cheaper, it makes sense to buy it, doesn't it?
Price check: Best Buy $299.99 | Newegg $270
The Intel Core i5 13600K is our current top pick for best gaming CPU, and it's on Black Friday discount at Amazon right now for $270. That's a super quick chip at a significantly cheaper price, and it's worth reminding ourselves why it's such a good shout for a top-end gaming PC.
The Core i5 13600K might technically be a mid-range chip, but its performance is absolutely mighty. In our Core i5 13600K review back in October of last year we found it matched the pace and even at some points out-performed the Core i9 12900K in gaming benchmarks, and even gets within a few frames of its successor, the 14600K.
That's margin of error stuff, and for my money it's definitely worth getting this chip at a discount over its refreshed model. Both CPUs use the Raptor Lake architecture, both feature 14 cores and 20 available threads, but this one's cheaper and it performs virtually the same. Bit of an easy decision that one, isn't it?
It's not just a great gaming CPU either. Its multi-threaded performance came within 12% of the Core i9 12900K, and it was a full 37% faster in Cinebench than the 12600K
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