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Honestly, if the Core i5-12600K wasn’t unlocked for overclocking, and didn’t have extra E-cores for handling background processes, it could well be the Core i5-12400F that comes out on top. There’s a serious argument for putting the Intel Core i5-12400F in the top spot of this list in my gaming tests it was either on par with the Core i5-12600K or slightly faster, despite having fewer cores and a markedly lower price. The best value CPU for gaming Intel Core i5-12400F specs: Read more in our Intel Core i5-12600K review All in all, it’s the best all-round CPU we’ve tested yet. Like all 12th Gen Alder Lake chips, it also ups the number of available PCIe 4.0 lanes compared to Rocket Lake. It supports DDR5 RAM as well as DDR4, and will be compatible with PCIe 5.0 hardware once it becomes available. On top of superior performance, the Core i5-12600K also offers better futureproofing than the Ryzen 5 5600X.

#Better procssor series

Temperatures also run low enough for the Core i5-12600K to pair well with a basic air cooler, so your only other installation concern will be getting an Intel 600 series motherboard. Granted, this doesn’t translate into drastically better gaming performance, but there’s still an improvement to the extent that this chip outpaced the Ryzen 5 5600X in our games benchmarks. The addition of E-cores up the total core count without muscling in too much on the thermal and power requirements of the main P-cores as a result, the Core i5-12600K gets a major single-core performance boost compared to previous generations, and an even bigger enhancement to its multicore potential. While it's pricier than the Core i5-11600K (and its biggest rival, the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X below), it’s worth it, thanks in no small part to the new hybrid architecture. If Intel’s 11th Gen Rocket Lake range was simply a stopgap, the Intel Core i5-12600K is what many will have been waiting for.

Recommended motherboard chipsets: Z690 / H670 / B660 / H610.

Max clock speed: 4.9GHz (P-cores), 3.6GHz (E-cores).

Base clock speed: 3.7GHz (P-cores), 2.8GHz (E-cores).

The best Intel CPU for gaming, and the best CPU for gaming overall Intel Core i5-12600K specs:

Intel Core i9-12900K - the best high-end CPU for gaming.

AMD Ryzen 3 3300X - the best budget CPU for gaming.

AMD Ryzen 5 5600X - the best AMD CPU for gaming.

Intel Core i5-12600F - the best value CPU for gaming.

Intel Core i5-12600K- the best Intel GPU for gaming, and the best CPU for gaming overall.

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You can also check out our handy guides to matching a new CPU with a compatible motherboard, how to install a CPU for the first time and whether air cooling or liquid cooling will better suit your PC build.

Hopefully AMD can cook up something similarly impactful for Ryzen 7000 as well.įor now, you can find our picks of the best gaming CPUs below, all based on in-house testing. Their hybrid architecture can dedicate the fastest cores to gaming duties while offloading background tasks to smaller, more efficient cores – a clever tactic that’s seen Alder Lake chips smash through our benchmarks. Intel’s current 12th Gen chips, the Alder Lake range, do a particularly fine job of finding such a balance. This remains a case of balancing core counts with clock speeds: faster cores will let your PC crunch numbers quickly enough to boost frames per second, and while having loads of cores has typically been better for workstations than gaming rigs, modern games are better optimised to take advantage of multiple cores at once.

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Naturally, among all the talk of DDR5 compatibility, hybrid architectures and PCIe 5.0 possibilities, a gaming CPU ultimately needs to run games well and unlock the full potential of the best graphics cards. Watch on YouTube Looking for more RPS recommended hardware?