Intel Core i5-12600K

Intel Core i5-12600K sets a new standard for budget gaming CPUs and beats both Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 by a wide margin.

Intel’s 12th-gen Core i5-12600K offers stunning performance over its AMD Ryzen rival—and offers consumers unheard-of value too.

Perhaps the Core i5 12600KF is my actual pick for the best CPU for gaming today as it's theoretically going to sit as the cheaper of the two. However, if you do decide to pick up either of the two, presumably whichever you can find for cheaper, you wouldn't be putting a foot wrong.

Numbers always speak for themselves; if you seek a notch more value for money and don't have a use for massive threading then the Core i5 12600K(F) probably will be the processor to get. It's strong and fierce, the single-threaded performance is downright excellent, the multi-threaded performance puts it in Ryzen 7 5800X and 11900K territory.

The i5-12600K actually undercuts the Ryzen 7 5800X in a big way and basically matches the Ryzen 5 5600X, with higher performance to boot. But platform costs are a problem. Right now, you can only pair these chips with Z690 motherboards, and those are not cheap (start around $170, and the decent ones are easily close to $300). DDR5 memory is at least 50% pricier than DDR4, but Intel covered this problem by ensuring backwards compatibility with DDR4. The Core i5-12600K is all the processor you'll ever need for a contemporary gaming PC build.