Our pick as the best gaming CPU for most people is at its all-time low on Amazon right now. The online retailer is selling the Intel Core i5-12400 for $160. That’s a savings of $159.99.
We picked the Core i5-12400 because these Core i5 mid-range CPUs tend to hit the sweet spot for gaming between value and performance. That’s because most of the heavy lifting happens with the graphics card. If you have a CPU that’s good enough to support that work without holding it back, you’re golden. That doesn’t mean you can’t find higher performing processors from the same generation, but the gap usually isn’t big enough to justify the added expense–especially if you’re deal hunting.
The Core i5-12400 has six cores, twelve threads, and a boost to 4.4GHz. You won’t find any of those fancy efficiency cores here as you do with the more expensive and faster Alder Lake chips. Still, the performance is solid enough and you can always direct any savings you find here towards a better graphics card.
[Today’s deal: Intel “Alder Lake” Core i5-12400 for $160 at Amazon.]
Author: Ian Paul, Contributor
Ian is an independent writer based in Israel who has never met a tech subject he didn't like. He primarily covers Windows, PC and gaming hardware, video and music streaming services, social networks, and browsers. When he's not covering the news he's working on how-to tips for PC users, or tuning his eGPU setup.