Five things I always tell people before they buy a new gaming CPU

Each pc has a central processor or CPU, be it a tiny pill or a hulking workstation, however on the subject of desktop gaming PCs, oh boy is there a lot to select from. Regardless of there being solely two distributors in the entire market, you’ve got obtained a whole lot of various fashions vying in your consideration.

Flick thru the listings of any main retailer, and you will be confronted with three to 4 generations value of chips from AMD and Intel. You will get them with simply 4 or six cores, to as many as 24. And there is a bewildering variety of styles of the identical chip—you’ll find as much as 9 variants of AMD’s Ryzen 5 5000-series chips.

It is simple sufficient to search out out what the perfect gaming chips are (simply try our greatest CPU for gaming information for that) however what if you’d like one thing completely different? Because the go-to individual in my household and circle of mates on the subject of tech-related steering, I’ve been requested extra occasions than I rely about recommendation for getting a new CPU.

So before you cost off into the Black Friday gross sales to get your excellent processor, listed here are 5 things I always tell anybody before they splash the money on a cache-toting chip.

1. Do you want to keep your current motherboard?
2. Eight cores are more than enough for gaming, even six is fine
3. The best way to save money is to buy a last- or two-gen old CPU
4. You don’t actually need a big AIO liquid cooler, even with a high-end chip
5. Modern CPUs work best with super-fast RAM but it’s not a must-have

Written by…Written by…

Nick Evanson

{Hardware} author

Nick purchased his first CPU over 30 years in the past and he is been jamming processors into motherboards ever since. Whereas fashionable chips are superb at gaming, he does miss the outdated days of utilizing a pencil to unlock a processor for overclocking.

1. Motherboards

(Picture credit score: Future)

Do you wish to hold your present motherboard?

There are two approaches to choosing a new gaming CPU: (1) get one that may work within the motherboard you have already got or (2) get a new CPU, motherboard, and RAM package altogether. Slightly clearly, the second possibility goes to be a lot dearer than the primary one, but it surely significantly simplifies the method of selecting which new CPU to get.

That is as a result of each motherboard has a finite vary of processor fashions it could help. In some circumstances, it is a enormous quantity—for instance, the Asus ROG Strix B550-E helps each single desktop Ryzen 3000, 4000, and 5000-series chip (so long as it has the most recent BIOS put in). Almost 70 completely different CPUs in complete!

However the very newest processors from AMD and Intel use a completely different socket from these a few years in the past. For instance, in case your gaming PC has a Core i5 10600K inside it, the motherboard that homes it will not settle for a thirteenth or 14th Gen Core chip, nor the new Core Extremely fashions.

So in case your gaming PC is 5 or extra years outdated, you are in all probability higher off getting a complete new setup if you wish to get a present or last-gen CPU. That can imply changing the motherboard and RAM, and presumably even the CPU cooler. You will then have to reinstall Home windows (though you’ll be able to simply danger shoving the storage drives in as they are), which makes the entire thing a lot extra trouble than simply dropping in a new CPU.

For this reason it is the very first thing I ask anybody if they’re planning on getting a new CPU. In case you’re unsure what motherboard is in your gaming PC, then obtain CPUID and click on on the motherboard tab. It is utterly free to make use of and it will tell you all the pieces you might want to find out about your CPU, motherboard, and RAM.

Do you have to determine to maintain your motherboard, use CPUID to search out which mannequin it’s, after which search for the producer’s webpage for it. Head to the help part and you must see a listing of what CPUs you’ll set up.

2. Core rely

(Picture credit score: Future)

Eight cores are greater than sufficient for gaming, even six is ok

Whereas the most recent high-end CPUs are fairly costly, they’re a complete lot cheaper than something within the equal sector of graphics playing cards. So that you may be tempted to splash out and get your self an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X or an Intel Core i9 14900K.

The factor is, for gaming, the massive variety of cores they each provide are wasted. Content material creation instruments, like Blender for rendering or Handbrake for video encoding, will take as many cores as you’ll be able to throw at them however video games are primarily designed round six- or eight-core CPUs.

Partly as a result of a lot of them are developed for consoles, in addition to gaming PCs, and partly as a result of video games simply do not create dozens of demanding threads for the CPU to crunch by means of. A thread is principally a string of directions—e.g. add these numbers, put the reply right here, get this information, add the outcomes collectively—and recreation engines solely use 4 to 6 massive threads for all the pieces.

Some will use greater than this, however the further threads are usually very mild in nature, and the sport will not undergo if there aren’t sufficient cores obtainable to crunch them. What occurs is that the entire processor simply will get labored a bit more durable and, except you’ve a very outdated chip, it will cope simply superb.

So don’t fret about cores and as an alternative deal with things like what technology of mannequin the CPU is, its most clock velocity, and the way a lot cache it has. The easiest CPUs for gaming are all AMD 3D V-Cache fashions, with the celebs of the present being the Ryzen 7 5700X3D, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, and the new Ryzen 7 9800X3D. All three have eight cores, and you will by no means need for extra in gaming.

3. CPU technology

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One of the best ways to economize is to buy a last- or two-gen outdated CPU

On the purpose of AMD’s 3D V-Cache chips, the Ryzen 7 5700X3D makes use of the Zen 3 microarchitecture that first appeared 4 years in the past. On the time of writing, that individual CPU is $210 at Amazon but it surely’s been cheaper than that, and the value will in all probability drop additional nonetheless within the Black Friday gross sales. Cheaper nonetheless is the six-core, 12-thread Ryzen 5 5600X, simply $131 at Amazon, which additionally makes use of Zen 3.

No person would count on them to be on par with the very newest fashions and but each chips stack up effectively in opposition to AMD’s 9000-series and Intel’s 14th Gen and Core Extremely 200S on the subject of gaming efficiency.

Whereas the Ryzen 5 5600X is clearly the slowest of all of the CPUs proven above, it is not just like the figures are actually dangerous. And as for the 5700X3D, effectively that places the Core Extremely 5 245K ($319 at Amazon) to disgrace in each Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur’s Gate 3.

When you improve the sport’s decision to 1440p or increased, the CPU turns into far much less of a limiting issue within the efficiency—it is virtually all in regards to the GPU then (an RTX 4070 was used for the above figures).

So, for those who’re trying to save a bit of money when selecting a new CPU, do not dismiss older chips, as they’re nonetheless greater than adequate in right now’s video games. And within the case of the 5700X3D, it will in all probability be superb for at the least one other three or 4 years, before it turns into the principle restrict in how briskly your video games run.

If consoles work superb with 8-core CPUs utilizing a microarchitecture that is 5 years outdated, and clocked a lot slower than most desktop equivalents, your PC gaming expertise will likely be simply superb with one thing that is a couple of years outdated. Your pockets expertise will likely be even higher!

4. Cooling

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You do not really need a massive AIO liquid cooler, even with a high-end chip

CPUs require electrical power to work however all of it (to any measurable diploma, at the least) finally ends up being transferred into warmth. All fashionable processors have methods to forestall themselves from getting broken if their temperature will get too excessive however you continue to want a cooler to dissipate the warmth.

AMD’s processors and Intel’s new Core Extremely 200S chips do not generate a lot of warmth when utilized in video games. Even those who have a small mountain of cores do not—for instance, the 16-core Ryzen 9 9950X averages lower than 130 W of warmth in Baldur’s Gate 3. Nonetheless, Intel’s last-gen Core i9 14900K is a little extra critical, pumping out 177 W in the identical check.

So that you may suppose that you simply want a massive and costly all-in-one (AIO) liquid cooler to maintain temperatures in test. The reality of the matter is that you do not or on the very least, positively not with AMD CPUs. One thing just like the Thermalright Peerless Murderer 120 SE air cooler (simply $39 at Amazon) could have no issues cooling any Ryzen processor.

It’s going to deal with Core Extremely 200S chips simply superb too however with Intel thirteenth and 14th Gen Core i7 and Core i9 CPUs, you simply want to offer it a serving to hand within the type of decreasing the ability limits. Trendy CPUs have at the least two energy limits: one which acts as a baseline determine, often referred to as TPD (thermal design energy or simply PL1) and the opposite as a short-term restrict (aka PL2).

Intel’s Core i7 and i9 chips are designed to run with a TDP of 125 W or so, and 253 W for PL2, however motherboard distributors usually set each limits to 253 W. Most Intel motherboards will allow you to set PL1 and PL2 to a completely different worth within the BIOS.

Decreasing them will imply shedding a little little bit of efficiency however you are unlikely to note it a lot in video games. For instance, my Core i7 14700KF is always set to 175 W on each limits for regular use, although I change again to Intel’s values when testing. However in doing so, I have a cooler and quieter PC and air coolers have had no concern in coping with all of it.

5. RAM

(Picture credit score: Future)

Trendy CPUs work finest with super-fast RAM but it surely’s not a must-have

AMD and Intel design their processors to work with a explicit kind of RAM and they’re all rated to work 100% usually as much as a sure reminiscence velocity. For instance, Intel 14th Gen Core chips might be paired with both DDR4-3200 or DDR5-5600, whereas AMD’s Ryzen 9000-series it is simply DDR5-5600.

Nonetheless, you’ll be able to buy sooner RAM than this and I have an Intel 14th Gen i7 14700KF utilizing DDR5-6400, an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K with DDR5-7800, and a Ryzen 9 9950X running with DDR5-6000 in front of me as I write this. Technical speaking, this means the memory controller in each of these chips is overclocked.

The rest of the CPU is running normally, though, which is why they’re all fine with such speeds, but there are no guarantees that every combination of CPU and motherboard will cope with faster-than-normal RAM.

Speedier memory does equate to better performance, but the actual gains one experiences depend an awful lot on what game is being used to measure the impact. Some will show practically no difference between running at the vendor default speed (e.g. DDR5-5200) and an overclocked mode (often called EXPO mode with AMD chips and XMP mode with Intel). Others will show a marked improvement, even with just a minor overclock.

It also depends on what quality settings and resolution you game at—running something like Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K with path tracing enabled will show almost no change with faster RAM because it will be so GPU-limited.

Slower RAM is cheaper, but not massively so. A 32 GB kit of Corsair Vengeance DDR5-5200 is $97 at Amazon in the mean time, whereas the DDR5-6000 model is $120, solely $23 dearer. Nonetheless, for those who needed to avoid wasting as a lot as potential, to get a higher CPU for instance, then going with slower RAM is one option to do it (and the identical is true for those who’re taking a look at a processor that makes use of DDR4).

So do not suppose that you simply completely should get the quickest RAM cash can buy along with your new CPU. I often advocate DDR5-5600 and DDR4-3200 as one of the best steadiness between cash, efficiency, and compatibility—it simply comes all the way down to the CPU and motherboard configuration, so test with the seller for the latter to see what RAM the board is pleased with.