Best CPUs of 2020 So Far (Gaming, Workstation, Overclocking, Budget, & Disappointment)
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Date: 2020-05-28
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Comments and reviews: 9
John
I'm unsure why folks are comparing the 10600k to the 3600 in reviews. This is not a fair comparison, as there is no reason to buy a locked motherboard for this processor. I can't find the 10600k in stock anywhere right now, so we'll be very generous and give it the 262 thousand unit book price. Add 50 for about the cheapest cooler that you can get away with, and another 200 for the cheapest z490 motherboard that is worth buying, for a minimum total of 512 for a 10600k setup. I don't know why reviewers are comparing this to the 170 3600 for which you can get a reasonable mother board for 120 and has a perfectly acceptable cooler for a total of 290. Why not compare the 10600K to it's actual competing CPUs. While one could pick up a 3900x and a modest b450 for about the same 512, lets say you want a little nicer motherboard and call the true competitor the 3800x. These run around 330, with a perfectly usable cooler in the box, leaving 182 for a mother board which will get a nice B450 or an entry level x570. While it still won't win in gaming FPS, the 3800x will beat the snot out of a 10600k in everything else. On the other hand, if you don't actually need that much production horsepower, you can spend more than 200 less and get a 3600 and get maybe 5 to 10% less FPS in games and still beat the 10600k in production. I'd say for any actual FPS snobs or folks that want to get the most out of their CPU, they are going to dump more than 50 on their cooler for the 10600k and more than 200 on a z490 making the 3900x seem even more enticing as it's competitor as it will run just fine on a 130 B450 board with the cooler that comes in the box. I still have to agree with GN that the 10600k is the best current option if gaming is all you do, but only if budget is not taken in to account and you have a 2080 or 2080ti and a 240Hz monitor paired up with it. anything less and you will see no difference compared to a 3600 never mind the 3800x you can get for less money out the door. Even then, I think most gaming FPS snobs will get more enjoyment out of rendering a video in half the time, once every 3 months than out of an extra 10 FPS.
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I'm unsure why folks are comparing the 10600k to the 3600 in reviews. This is not a fair comparison, as there is no reason to buy a locked motherboard for this processor. I can't find the 10600k in stock anywhere right now, so we'll be very generous and give it the 262 thousand unit book price. Add 50 for about the cheapest cooler that you can get away with, and another 200 for the cheapest z490 motherboard that is worth buying, for a minimum total of 512 for a 10600k setup. I don't know why reviewers are comparing this to the 170 3600 for which you can get a reasonable mother board for 120 and has a perfectly acceptable cooler for a total of 290. Why not compare the 10600K to it's actual competing CPUs. While one could pick up a 3900x and a modest b450 for about the same 512, lets say you want a little nicer motherboard and call the true competitor the 3800x. These run around 330, with a perfectly usable cooler in the box, leaving 182 for a mother board which will get a nice B450 or an entry level x570. While it still won't win in gaming FPS, the 3800x will beat the snot out of a 10600k in everything else. On the other hand, if you don't actually need that much production horsepower, you can spend more than 200 less and get a 3600 and get maybe 5 to 10% less FPS in games and still beat the 10600k in production. I'd say for any actual FPS snobs or folks that want to get the most out of their CPU, they are going to dump more than 50 on their cooler for the 10600k and more than 200 on a z490 making the 3900x seem even more enticing as it's competitor as it will run just fine on a 130 B450 board with the cooler that comes in the box. I still have to agree with GN that the 10600k is the best current option if gaming is all you do, but only if budget is not taken in to account and you have a 2080 or 2080ti and a 240Hz monitor paired up with it. anything less and you will see no difference compared to a 3600 never mind the 3800x you can get for less money out the door. Even then, I think most gaming FPS snobs will get more enjoyment out of rendering a video in half the time, once every 3 months than out of an extra 10 FPS.
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magottyk
You're basing the 10600K's best gaming CPU on results obtained with a 2080ti 1080p, a GPU and resolution that people looking for the value gaming option very likely won't be using and owners of that GPU won't be looking at i5's. 1080p gamers looking at a mid range CPU would probably be running up to 2060 super or 5700 while 1440p value gamers would be a tier or two ahead at most. The 10600K must have a Z490 board and a cooler adding to the cost of entry. Given that while the 10600K can get close to a 10900K, the fact is that 6 cores vs 10 makes the 10900K the obvious match for the 2080ti on Z490 as the additional 250 cost or the additional 150 to the 10700K for 8 cores only represents 10-15% additional system build cost factoring for the 2080ti. Therefore the bulk of 10600K consumers are squarely in the mid range and that changes the equation severely. With a 2060 super, the difference between the 10600K and 3600 is negligible, but it's the 3600x that it should be compared to given the stock differences between it and the 3600 are significant enough, an overclocked 3600 will still be slower than a 3600X in games due to the higher boost clock of the 3600X. A 3600X and B450 motherboard will come in 100 cheaper than the 10600K and Z490, which is the difference between a 2060 super and 2070 super, or a 5600XT and 5700XT. Given that for the same money you can have a 10600K and 2060 super or a 3600X and 2070 super, I don't see how the 10600K wins the best gaming CPU given the platform requirements additional costs as well as the CPU price resulting in system build options it deducts from a builds budget. Is this a pity win for intel?
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You're basing the 10600K's best gaming CPU on results obtained with a 2080ti 1080p, a GPU and resolution that people looking for the value gaming option very likely won't be using and owners of that GPU won't be looking at i5's. 1080p gamers looking at a mid range CPU would probably be running up to 2060 super or 5700 while 1440p value gamers would be a tier or two ahead at most. The 10600K must have a Z490 board and a cooler adding to the cost of entry. Given that while the 10600K can get close to a 10900K, the fact is that 6 cores vs 10 makes the 10900K the obvious match for the 2080ti on Z490 as the additional 250 cost or the additional 150 to the 10700K for 8 cores only represents 10-15% additional system build cost factoring for the 2080ti. Therefore the bulk of 10600K consumers are squarely in the mid range and that changes the equation severely. With a 2060 super, the difference between the 10600K and 3600 is negligible, but it's the 3600x that it should be compared to given the stock differences between it and the 3600 are significant enough, an overclocked 3600 will still be slower than a 3600X in games due to the higher boost clock of the 3600X. A 3600X and B450 motherboard will come in 100 cheaper than the 10600K and Z490, which is the difference between a 2060 super and 2070 super, or a 5600XT and 5700XT. Given that for the same money you can have a 10600K and 2060 super or a 3600X and 2070 super, I don't see how the 10600K wins the best gaming CPU given the platform requirements additional costs as well as the CPU price resulting in system build options it deducts from a builds budget. Is this a pity win for intel?
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Ashlay
I just don't understand why you would recommend the 10600K as the best overal gaming CPU , or the 3300X as the best budget gaming CPU. I Vehemently disagree on both points. Firstly, the 10600K is around 60-70% more expensive than the Ryzen 5 3600 for literally single-digit advantage in average FPS. There is clearly some form of concern for value here, since you didn't recommend the i9 10900K as the best gaming CPU, which itself is single-digit % faster than the 10600K in many titles. Secondly, the 3300X is not a good investment. There are benches from your own results showing even the 1600AF getting better minimums - and the 3600 is barely 30 USD more expensive in any case. It's just not a good investment for anyone looking to keep their CPUs longer than a year. Unfortunately, I have come to believe that most reviewers (including you Steve, with the greatest of respect for your work, though), don't actually play games. You spend all your time testing them and benching them, in specific areas, that may favour one CPU or other other (less or more demanding scenes for example), and won't fully realise that you can't objectively tell the difference between a Ryzen 5 3600 and an i5 10600K in essentially any game, in any scene, but you will notice having spent twice the price factoring in cooling and motherboards. W1zzard from TPU falls into the same trap from what I see. You have to spend more time playing games in order to actually recommend hardware to game on & what is worth paying extra for. And the i5 is absolutely not worth it in any objective manner.
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I just don't understand why you would recommend the 10600K as the best overal gaming CPU , or the 3300X as the best budget gaming CPU. I Vehemently disagree on both points. Firstly, the 10600K is around 60-70% more expensive than the Ryzen 5 3600 for literally single-digit advantage in average FPS. There is clearly some form of concern for value here, since you didn't recommend the i9 10900K as the best gaming CPU, which itself is single-digit % faster than the 10600K in many titles. Secondly, the 3300X is not a good investment. There are benches from your own results showing even the 1600AF getting better minimums - and the 3600 is barely 30 USD more expensive in any case. It's just not a good investment for anyone looking to keep their CPUs longer than a year. Unfortunately, I have come to believe that most reviewers (including you Steve, with the greatest of respect for your work, though), don't actually play games. You spend all your time testing them and benching them, in specific areas, that may favour one CPU or other other (less or more demanding scenes for example), and won't fully realise that you can't objectively tell the difference between a Ryzen 5 3600 and an i5 10600K in essentially any game, in any scene, but you will notice having spent twice the price factoring in cooling and motherboards. W1zzard from TPU falls into the same trap from what I see. You have to spend more time playing games in order to actually recommend hardware to game on & what is worth paying extra for. And the i5 is absolutely not worth it in any objective manner.
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Toms
I'mma let you into a secret...even if you have a 3300x with an rtx2060 it'll perform the same at 1440p at an rtx2080Ti at 2160p (given both gpus are used and who buys a gpu to not use it?) You got about 2.25x resolution increase and 2.26x moreshaders (yes Im aware of the rop difference). cpuX+gpuY does not mean a bottleneck (or no bottleneck). It totally depends on the game engins ability to use multiple threads evenly and how capable the cpu is, if the game engine can use 8 cores and you have a 9700k and you get 50% usage evenly at 60fps then you can probably get 120fps at 100% usage, if you have a gtx1050 that'll probably be the limit first, but if you have an rtx2080Ti and you're running 720p low settings....then yeah all 8 threads will be pinned at 100% and getting a bottleneck, Meanwhile someone with a 7600k quad core running that same gpu at 2080Ti at 5120x2880p ultra will be perfectly fine, They cpu will have all 4 cores pinned at 100% running the game just to get 60fps because the cpu doesnt have enough horsepower to do more...but the gpu will probably be at 100% also, infact depending on how graphically intense the game is the gpu might be at 100% only getting 40fps and the cpu is sat there now at 66% usage. Yeah it's a wall of text, I've written several page files enough time about the subject and about how it actually works in depth with various examples but it doesn't seem to matter. Just know anyone saying cpuX+gpuY will bottleneck with no information on resolution, settings, game (and engine) is an idiot, There are many factors.
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I'mma let you into a secret...even if you have a 3300x with an rtx2060 it'll perform the same at 1440p at an rtx2080Ti at 2160p (given both gpus are used and who buys a gpu to not use it?) You got about 2.25x resolution increase and 2.26x moreshaders (yes Im aware of the rop difference). cpuX+gpuY does not mean a bottleneck (or no bottleneck). It totally depends on the game engins ability to use multiple threads evenly and how capable the cpu is, if the game engine can use 8 cores and you have a 9700k and you get 50% usage evenly at 60fps then you can probably get 120fps at 100% usage, if you have a gtx1050 that'll probably be the limit first, but if you have an rtx2080Ti and you're running 720p low settings....then yeah all 8 threads will be pinned at 100% and getting a bottleneck, Meanwhile someone with a 7600k quad core running that same gpu at 2080Ti at 5120x2880p ultra will be perfectly fine, They cpu will have all 4 cores pinned at 100% running the game just to get 60fps because the cpu doesnt have enough horsepower to do more...but the gpu will probably be at 100% also, infact depending on how graphically intense the game is the gpu might be at 100% only getting 40fps and the cpu is sat there now at 66% usage. Yeah it's a wall of text, I've written several page files enough time about the subject and about how it actually works in depth with various examples but it doesn't seem to matter. Just know anyone saying cpuX+gpuY will bottleneck with no information on resolution, settings, game (and engine) is an idiot, There are many factors.
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KingHalbatorix
I really dislike that you compared the 10600 with the 3600 for gaming, the two cpus are NOT in the same price bracket, not _at all._ the 3800x would have been the correct comparison, and consider the fact that the 3900x is closer in cost to the 10600 than the 3600. The 3900x, currently discounted (which likely is permanent), only costs 419. It's barely under 40 more than the 10600k, which makes it a far better comparison than the 100 delta between 3600 and 10600. I don't care that the model numbers are meant to mirror one another, and neither should you; I don't care that intel wants the i5 to be competing against the r5, and neither should you; price bracket is what matters, and it unquestionably shows the 3900x or 3800x being the 10600k's competitor. Edit for extra clarity: I'm not trying to imply the 10600k is a bad part, badly priced, or even bad for gaming. Like Steve said, it easily matches a stock 10900k when overclocked, and it still obviously beats the 3900x in gaming. The video does oversell the 10600k for non-gaming workloads, bot only by a small amount and only because the comparison was against the 3600 instead of the 3800; with a proper price point comparison it would obviously be unsuited for productivity. The problem I have with this video is that the 3600 is way better than the comparison makes it seem, because of how cheap it is. It's a budget part, it stands closer to the 10400 in pricing, and it decimates everything in its real price bracket for both gaming and productivity.
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I really dislike that you compared the 10600 with the 3600 for gaming, the two cpus are NOT in the same price bracket, not _at all._ the 3800x would have been the correct comparison, and consider the fact that the 3900x is closer in cost to the 10600 than the 3600. The 3900x, currently discounted (which likely is permanent), only costs 419. It's barely under 40 more than the 10600k, which makes it a far better comparison than the 100 delta between 3600 and 10600. I don't care that the model numbers are meant to mirror one another, and neither should you; I don't care that intel wants the i5 to be competing against the r5, and neither should you; price bracket is what matters, and it unquestionably shows the 3900x or 3800x being the 10600k's competitor. Edit for extra clarity: I'm not trying to imply the 10600k is a bad part, badly priced, or even bad for gaming. Like Steve said, it easily matches a stock 10900k when overclocked, and it still obviously beats the 3900x in gaming. The video does oversell the 10600k for non-gaming workloads, bot only by a small amount and only because the comparison was against the 3600 instead of the 3800; with a proper price point comparison it would obviously be unsuited for productivity. The problem I have with this video is that the 3600 is way better than the comparison makes it seem, because of how cheap it is. It's a budget part, it stands closer to the 10400 in pricing, and it decimates everything in its real price bracket for both gaming and productivity.
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Ryan
After 15 years with Intel, our new desktop now all gone with Amd r5 3600 for our small business office, 10 of it, to be exact. We have 2 units of r3950x. All was custom built by our client. We are looking if we really needed another high end workstation with threadripper in it. The costs to build such system is not too expensive compared with intel. This our first business investment decision to go with Amd in 2019 And it is beginning to show positive impact, less time proccessing, more jobs can be done quickly, we are taking more orders than before and believe or not our electrical bill has gone down by 10% with productivity gone up almost 30%. And on personal level, I was so satisfied with amd r5 3600 and r9 3950x that we have it in our home too. The only thing is intel in our home now is my wife mac book and my dell laptop. Cheers to Amd for winning our .
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After 15 years with Intel, our new desktop now all gone with Amd r5 3600 for our small business office, 10 of it, to be exact. We have 2 units of r3950x. All was custom built by our client. We are looking if we really needed another high end workstation with threadripper in it. The costs to build such system is not too expensive compared with intel. This our first business investment decision to go with Amd in 2019 And it is beginning to show positive impact, less time proccessing, more jobs can be done quickly, we are taking more orders than before and believe or not our electrical bill has gone down by 10% with productivity gone up almost 30%. And on personal level, I was so satisfied with amd r5 3600 and r9 3950x that we have it in our home too. The only thing is intel in our home now is my wife mac book and my dell laptop. Cheers to Amd for winning our .
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Regal
For the 10700K, is there an argument for it being more future proof than the 10600K? New consoles have 8 cores, which means new games will (potentially?) finally be designed to utilise all 8 cores instead of single core performance being the winning factor. If you were planning a build to last 4-5 years, is the 10700K is potentially the better option? On the above logic I m also thinking thermals would be better if all cores are working, while the 10600K may have to work harder due to having less cores. Not saying the 10700K is a price friendly buy still, but interested in thoughts around this as it s rarely mentioned.
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For the 10700K, is there an argument for it being more future proof than the 10600K? New consoles have 8 cores, which means new games will (potentially?) finally be designed to utilise all 8 cores instead of single core performance being the winning factor. If you were planning a build to last 4-5 years, is the 10700K is potentially the better option? On the above logic I m also thinking thermals would be better if all cores are working, while the 10600K may have to work harder due to having less cores. Not saying the 10700K is a price friendly buy still, but interested in thoughts around this as it s rarely mentioned.
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BrotherJoe
can you do best mobo for the 10600k that would be able to OC the cache etc best budget mobo etc There to many to choose from you recommend the best CPU but you dont list a good mobo that would work with said CPU its all sweet we go out and buy the cpu but then there 101 different mobos some that break the bank some and some that dont.. what if we want to OC the chip.. could be cool if you listed a bunch of mobos that would work with high end OCs to mid end OCs etc and overall mobo's that would work well together could you make a video about Mobos combos that would work well together etc ?
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can you do best mobo for the 10600k that would be able to OC the cache etc best budget mobo etc There to many to choose from you recommend the best CPU but you dont list a good mobo that would work with said CPU its all sweet we go out and buy the cpu but then there 101 different mobos some that break the bank some and some that dont.. what if we want to OC the chip.. could be cool if you listed a bunch of mobos that would work with high end OCs to mid end OCs etc and overall mobo's that would work well together could you make a video about Mobos combos that would work well together etc ?
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Manjushri
It is worth mentioning the cheapest Z490 board is 160 while the cheapest AM4 boards are quite a bit less while maintaining quality, and with no OCing on the B/H series stuff it makes things like tha 10600k less applicable to certain price tiers. I'd love to get one or some Intel chip, but that one is a bit much and the 10400 isnt enough lol. I already have a 3600 but would have fun with a mostly-pure-gaming focused chip since I do love 144hz gaming (currently have a 5700xt for 1080p144hz lol) Great vids guys!
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It is worth mentioning the cheapest Z490 board is 160 while the cheapest AM4 boards are quite a bit less while maintaining quality, and with no OCing on the B/H series stuff it makes things like tha 10600k less applicable to certain price tiers. I'd love to get one or some Intel chip, but that one is a bit much and the 10400 isnt enough lol. I already have a 3600 but would have fun with a mostly-pure-gaming focused chip since I do love 144hz gaming (currently have a 5700xt for 1080p144hz lol) Great vids guys!
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