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 it replaced. Its Blender rendering scores simply trounced the AMD 7700X, and it scored a full 242 points higher in the PCMark productivity benchmark than the Ryzen 9 7950X, which many regard to be the best productivity CPU AMD currently provides.
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It's not all roses, of course. It runs a little hot and power hungry, and we found that in a couple of games it was pipped to the post by its predecessor. However, overall there's very little here to hold you back if you really are looking for superb performance at a cheaper price than its successors.
In short, despite being over a year old the Core i5 13600K still reigns supreme at the top of our best list for good reason, and given that so many of it's competitors are still priced higher even on Black Friday it makes a fantastic deal at this price.
If you're looking to build on the LGA 1700 socket and want the best Intel gaming CPU for your money, look no further. It's very difficult to imagine going anywhere else.
