Best gaming CPU 2024

The gaming CPU crown firmly sits with the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D thanks to its 3D V-Cache technology. This perky processor punches well above its weight, costing just $449 / £439, and handily competes with more expensive flagship options.

The 96MB of L3 cache inside the 7800X3D does wonders to boost the floor and ceiling of frame rates, ensuring that you’re getting all the pixel-pushing juice out of your graphics card. Its effects are most keenly felt at resolutions like 1080p, making it an ideal choice for competitive gamers.

It will concede ground where clock speeds are king, but these instances are few and far between in our experience. Plus, the AM5 motherboard you pick up to seat the 7800X3D will serve you well for a drop-in upgrade, futureproofing your build.

Read our AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D review.

If you’re looking to build a gaming PC on a very tight budget, the Intel Core i5 12400F is a bargain CPU. The price is amazing for the gaming performance on offer. Unlike newer budget CPUs, such as the Core i3 13100, the Core i5 12400F has six P-Cores under its heat spreader, rather than just four, giving it plenty of raw horsepower in games.

Don’t be fooled by the ‘12’ in this CPU’s model number either – the Alder Lake architecture used by this chip is very similar to the Raptor Lake architecture used in Intel’s latest 14th gen CPUs, and we’ve found it more than capable when it comes to gaming. Unlike AMD’s AM5 CPUs, you can run the Core i5 12400F with your old DDR4 memory if you have some in an existing system, and it will happily run an old motherboard with a B660 chipset.

With its TDP of just 65W, this CPU also doesn’t need a massive AIO cooler to keep it in check – a decent air cooler will do the job fine. There are a few catches. One is that this ‘F’ model has no integrated GPU, but that’s not an issue if you buy a separate graphics card for gaming. It also doesn’t have any of Intel’s E-Cores, which provide a boost in multi-threaded work, but these are largely irrelevant when it comes to performance in most games.

The peak clock speed of just 4.4GHz could also be higher, and this isn’t a K-series CPU either, so you can’t officially overclock it with the multiplier but you can’t have everything at this price. This is the best option if you want a decent gaming CPU for the cheapest price possible.

Read our Intel Core i5 12400F review

If you want to get a decent gaming CPU on a tight budget, but also want a bit of a boost in multi-threaded work such as video encoding and rendering, the Core i5 13400F is a solid candidate. It features six of Intel’s latest Raptor Lake P-Cores and a 4.6GHz boost clock, making it a capable processor for gaming, but it also has an added bonus over the 12400F.

Unlike its predecessor, the 13400F also has four of Intel’s low-power E-Cores under its heat spreader, giving you a total of ten cores, which gives it a boost in multi-threaded software. It’s an ideal choice for anyone who does more than just game with their system but doesn’t have a huge amount of money to spend.

Like the 12400F, this chip doesn’t have a K in its model name, which means it can’t officially be overclocked by changing the multiplier, and the F means it doesn’t have an integrated GPU either. However, the latter enables you to save some money if you’re buying a dedicated graphics card anyway.

You won’t need an enormously powerful AIO cooler to keep this CPU in check either, and if you buy the retail version you’ll even get an adequate Intel stock air cooler included in the box.

Read our Intel Core i5 13400F review.

When we tested the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X, we found that the Zen 4 processor packs a potent performance punch that’s strong enough to run with the most powerful GPUs of today. This makes it a prime candidate for just about any build you could think of, regardless of size or power.

Despite sitting at the lower end of the Ryzen 7000 series stack, the 7600X handily outperforms previous generation flagships when it comes to gaming. Better still, you’re not missing out on many frames at all by opting for it versus its more expensive siblings.

It’s worth bearing in mind, however, that you’ll want to pair the 7600X with suitably strong cooling as it doesn’t come with a stock cooler. Don’t forget that you’ll need a new motherboard too, as well as some sticks of DDR5 RAM.

Read our AMD Ryzen 5 7600X review.

For those needing a single chip that can handle CPU and GPU duties, perhaps for building a small system, or if you’re just on a tight budget, look no further than the Ryzen 5 8600G. With six Zen 4 cores and a Radeon 760M integrated GPU, it’s a perky performer as a processor and stand-in graphics card.

The 8600G shines brightest in less demanding games, but it’s still capable of playing the likes of Cyberpunk 2077 at 30fps if you’re comfortable with playing at 1080p using low settings. It’s compatible with FidelityFX Super Resolution too, which can help boost frame rates further through upscaling and frame generation.

You’ll need to pair the 8600G with DDR5 RAM clocked at 6,000MHz or above to get the most performance out of its integrated graphics. While this does add to the total cost of putting together a system, you can use the same RAM if you upgrade your CPU in the future.

If you plan to pair the 8600G with a dedicated graphics card, it only supports a limited number of PCIe 4.0 lanes. This is less of a problem with current generation pixel pushers (Radeon RX 7000 and GeForce RTX 40 series), but it will limit the bandwidth of future graphics cards that use the PCIe 5.0 interface.

Read our AMD Ryzen 5 8600G review.

The 13700K is something of a champion for streamers and creatives alike, offering an all-in-one solution that doesn’t carry an overly premium price tag. Featuring 16 cores and 24 threads, the chip is more than capable of handling real-time 120fps encoding using the ‘x264 Slower’ preset.

This is especially useful if you have a Radeon graphics card but it can act as a great replacement for ‘NVENC’ on GeForce GPUs, should the need arise. The chip can keep up with top-tier pixel pushers too, maintaining solid maximum, average, and minimum frames per second.

It’s plenty useful for exporting and editing VODs too, boasting fast export times and rendering capabilities in Adobe suite applications such as Premiere Pro and After Effects.

Read our Intel Core i7 13700K review.

Sitting at the top of Intel’s gaming CPU stack is the Core i9 14900K, one of the few chips out there capable of hitting 6.00GHz clock speeds.

It packs the usual makeup of 24 cores and 32 threads that have defined every Core i9 for the past three generations. The only other LGA 1700 processor capable of competing is the Core i9 13900KS, but the 14900K is essentially identical to the more expensive CPU.

The Core i9 14900K is best suited for systems that serve both as a gaming rig and workstation, as its strengths are best realized in multi-core workloads. Just make sure you have a capable power supply and cooler to hand, as it’ll guzzle electricity like nobody’s business.

Read our Intel Core i9 14900K review.

You’ll find the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X at the top of Team Red’s latest processor series. In this chip lies the very best that Zen 4 has to offer, with the flagship hiding some surprising tricks up its sleeve.

While this chip doesn’t boast a higher core or thread count compared to previous generation offerings, they are clocked much higher. This not only translates into higher frames per second but also greatly improves performance in just about every application that can make use of multiple CPU cores.

Its greatest trick, however, is its ‘Eco Mode’, which can force the processor to draw a maximum of 65W. Even with such low power consumption, it can still trade blows with top-tier processors. Naturally, you’ll get the most out of the chip while running at its standard 170W TDP, but it makes the prospect of a small form factor build featuring the 7950X more possibility than a dream.

Read our AMD Ryzen 9 7950X review.