)Most of the time? The best all-rounder that won’t overshoot the budget, AMD’s third-generation Ryzen 5 3600 gives you a good balance between gaming performance and productivity. I’ll most likely be once more to read much more, thanks for that info.The i5-9400 is the best gaming CPU for the money© 2020 PCGuide. And the 9700K balances better than most. That includes PCIe Gen4 support, which isn't necessary today but might become useful during the coming years. Let's jump into some of the considerations to keep in mind when shopping for a gaming chip, before diving into the families and our favorite recent picks.Only “K”-branded, more expensive chips can be overclocked (and even then, not by a lot without good cooling gear and expertise/patience)The most basic liquid-cooling setups can be relatively cheap, but most cheap ones aren’t much more effective than their similarly priced air counterparts, which means you’re opting for a more complicated installation for minimal gain. These coolers are rated to handle the CPU at its regular clocks; anything above that and you risk giving your PC heatstroke. That's safer, and much less hassle.Solid price-to-performance in the Core i7 familyZen 2 chips are top values for gamers without a ton to spendWhile more cores, higher clock speeds, and the latest chip architectures are all nice to have, picking the best processor specifically for gaming is about more than basic specs and speeds. The Ryzen 5 2600, another Zen+ part with 6 cores, is available for around $140, though the extra $40 is hard to sell given the $700 system price target.Crossing down into the $500 system market and we really have gone into APU territory. If we pair it with 8 GB of DDR4, a 512GB NVMe drive, and an RTX 2060, we’re at around $750, leaving $250 for a motherboard, case, and power supply.For this month’s guide, we’re flipping back to AMD’s 45 W Athlon 3000G. Here are the mainstream CPUs...Good for gamers who stream simultaneously on Twitch, or gamers who also use their PCs as heavy-duty creative workstationsThe same is true of Intel's enthusiast Core X-Series platform: These chips must have a video card paired with them. ©Future US, Inc. 11 West 42nd Street, 15th Floor,New York,NY 10036.Alan has spent far too much of his life in World of Warcraft and playing Magic the Gathering to be a normal human being, which is why he has retreated to the warm embrace of gaming hardware. Sign up to get the best content of the week, and great gaming deals, as picked by the editors.There was a problem. These top processors are perfect for gamers or anyone else looking for a solid desktop CPU. The only downside here is that street prices for AMD’s chips have been drifting up a bit, so July buyers are going to pay a bit more. This is a quad-core without hyperthreading, has a 3.6 GHz base frequency and a 4.2 GHz turbo frequency, and will provide some nice grunt for anyone who has a compatible motherboard already in hand.