When shopping for computer components, it’s often tempting to buy the latest, fastest hardware you can afford—but there’s a line of diminishing returns that’s too easy to cross. That’s double-true here in 2021, with shortages of CPUs and GPUs up and down the market—especially at the top—making the PC DIY and upgrade world fraught with pinches and aches.
For most folks short of PC overclockers, demanding media editors, and hardcore gamers, though, it’s just not necessary to insist on such high-end components. Budget desktop CPUs (which we'll define in this article as any late-model processor that costs less than $200) can provide plenty of processing muscle for a wide range of tasks. Though you can find perfectly valid reasons, at times, to shell out for a high-end desktop CPU, one of these more affordable options can help you push extra funds into the other PC parts on your shopping list—or back into your wallet.
The biggest deciding factors in picking the right desktop CPU revolve around what you plan to use it for, and how often. You don’t need a high-octane AMD Ryzen 7 or Intel Core i7 to browse the web or write text documents. As long as you limit yourself to a few tabs in a browser and a productivity program or two at a time, you can do both of these things well enough on nothing more than a pedestrian Athlon or Pentium processor. You can even run games with one of these very low-end chips in conjunction with a graphics card, though you will likely be limited to playing older titles, with graphics settings turned down to keep clear of the limits of the CPU.
And this is just what to expect with desktop CPUs at the very bottom of today’s market. A slightly better budget CPU will do all of these things with more spark, and you can find some of AMD’s Ryzen 5 and Intel’s Core i5 chips, both robust classes of CPU, under the $200 price line. We’ll talk more about what to expect with each set of processors in this price range a little further on in this article. Before doing that though, let’s go over a little general shopping advice that you should keep in mind while shopping for a cheap CPU.
The Budget CPU Basics
Modern-day processors comprise several portions on the actual chip die, the most important of which are the CPU cores. These are the components that drive performance for most applications, and their performance is determined by their underlying architecture, as well as the speed at which they are rated to operate.
At the simplest level, a computer schedules work that needs to be done on its CPU cores in a single-file line. Having additional cores, in essence, opens up additional lines and allows for more work to be pushed through at the same time. Following from that, you can think of clock speed as the speed at which that line of instructions moves through the processor. The faster it goes, the faster the work is completed. The more cores in operation at a time, the better, if the software is written to leverage them. The more cores that are operating at full tilt at one time means the more heat released and power consumed; that can sometimes be a limiting factor on performance.
A lot of other aspects of a processor can affect its performance: various types of cache, the underlying architecture, and much else. It’s not necessary to know about all of these, but there is one that you should be aware of: Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT). This feature is better known as Hyper-Threading on Intel processors.
SMT enables a single CPU core to open two lines for work to queue up, rather than requiring two discrete cores to do the same. The processor isn’t able to work on tasks from both lines at the same time, but if the processor gets stuck waiting on more data to load for one task, it enables the core to work on a different task while that data is loaded. A CPU core working with SMT isn’t on par with two actual, physical cores, but it still performs a great deal better in most tasks than an equivalent CPU core without SMT support.
It’s beyond the scope of this article to go over all of the relevant CPU architectures that underpin budget chips, but you can check out our Best CPUs of 2021 guide, as well as our individual CPU reviews, for more information on this topic. To make comparing budget processors easier, however, you should know how to tell newer processors from older ones. Both AMD and Intel use numbers to identify their processors.
For AMD desktop CPUs, the first digit in the model number indicates the processor's generation, with the following digits indicating the CPU’s relative performance level in that generation. For example: AMD’s Ryzen 5 3400G is part of the third generation of AMD Ryzen processors. Its overall performance is lower than that of the Ryzen 5 3500, though, which is why it has a lower number. The Ryzen 5 3500, in turn, is slower than the Ryzen 5 3600. You shouldn’t rely solely on this number for information, but it can help you to distinguish older processors from newer ones and to compare processors within the same product line in a jiffy.
The numbering scheme for Intel desktop processors works in much the same way. The main difference is that Intel has more than 10 generations of its mainstream Core processors. (The latest generation, dubbed “Rocket Lake,” is generation 11; "Comet Lake," the preceding line, is 10th Generation and contains the newest low-end CPUs.) As a result, Intel CPUs now use a five-digit product ID number (example: Intel Core i3-10100), and on these processors, the first two digits indicate the generation.
Inside of a single generation, processors can be compared directly against one other quite easily. The one that operates at the highest clock speed and with the most cores generally performs the best, though that calculus can depend on the task at hand. (For example, some programs benefit from having the fastest possible speeds available on just one or two cores.) You can also roughly compare processors from multiple generations, as well as compare AMD and Intel processors against each other, by looking at their number of cores and clock speed. It should be noted, however, that this will only give you a relative approximation at best, and you should look at reviews for more accurate and nuanced comparisons across chip families or between AMD and Intel.
Why Buy a Budget CPU?
A first thought about that question. Even if you think you would benefit from a higher-end CPU, or if you would just like one but don’t want to shell out the money, going with a low-end CPU temporarily may be a sensible option. Like all things tech, CPUs become more affordable as they age. A CPU that costs $350 today may cost $200 or less in a year or two.
Building off this idea, you could buy a lower-end chip like a Core i3 for around $100 now and gain a reasonably snappy modern system. Then, when that configuration starts to feel a little sluggish in a few years, you might be able to upgrade to a Core i7 that would work with the platform for a more reasonable price. (More about platforms and motherboards in a bit.)
A second consideration: chip cooling. In the budget class for CPUs, you won’t need to pay for an aftermarket cooler for your processor. AMD’s and Intel’s stock coolers that come in the box with their budget chips are designed to keep those CPUs from overheating under normal operating conditions.
Third-party coolers, meanwhile, are meant for people who want to overclock, or who want a quieter fan for their CPU. There isn’t much performance benefit to buying one if you aren’t overclocking, and even if you did want to overclock, in most cases you would be better off putting the money you would spend on that aftermarket cooler instead into buying a faster CPU to begin with.
Now, let’s discuss the various processor families that are worth considering under $200. For simplicity and ease of reading, we’ve opted to separate these CPUs into three broad groups by price:
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Less than $90
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From $90 to $150
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From $150 to $200
A special concern in 2021: Note that we are talking about list prices or MSRPs here, as proposed by AMD and Intel at the launch times of their processors. CPU prices have been super-volatile for the last six to eight months, and availability for many chips, including budget CPUs, has been spotty. So know that the shopping realities for some of these chips have been changing by the day, and the prices you see from some resellers may well exceed MSRP at the moment. Because of that volatility, we have had to stick to list prices in our discussion below, not current street prices, as today’s comparisons could be rendered wholly irrelevant tomorrow.
Ultra-Low-Budget Options (MSRPs Below $90)
For the ultra-low-budget market segment for desktop CPUs, we are putting a $90 ceiling on picks. But you have a surprising number of options. For one thing, in this price range you might benefit from checking out older, used options. You also have Celeron and Pentium processors from Intel, and Athlon processors from AMD. Among these CPUs, it’s arguable which is best, between AMD’s Athlon chips and Intel’s Pentiums. Let's dig in.
AMD Athlon
All of AMD’s current Athlon processors available to end users, as of May 2021, employ the same core and internal architecture. They are based on a cut-down “Raven Ridge” core with just two CPU cores active. AMD incorporates SMT technology on these processors, which enables each core to handle two threads simultaneously. The most affordable of these processors is the Athlon 200GE. It is clocked at 3.2GHz and costs (in theory) just $39.99, if you can find one at that list price. That makes it one of the least-expensive current CPUs on the market.
The best consumer-oriented Athlon at the moment, to our eyes, is the Athlon 3000G, which has a higher 3.5GHz clock speed and lists for $59.99. The Athlon 3000G is the only one of AMD’s current line of Athlon processors to support overclocking, too. AMD has a few higher-end Athlon CPUs, but these are currently available to OEMs only, meant to build into low-cost retail systems.
A figurative silver lining on these Athlon processors is their built-in graphics processor, which has 192 execution units (EUs). It performs better than the competing integrated graphics processor (IGP) silicon found on Intel’s budget CPUs, the venerable HD Graphics 610 and HD Graphics 630 solutions. It should be noted, however, that these processors are already a few years old, and they aren’t supported by AMD’s newest 500-Series of motherboard chipsets. You will need to buy an older motherboard based on either the AMD 300-Series or 400-Series chipsets to use one of these Athlons.
Intel Celeron and Pentium
Intel takes a different approach to AMD in the low-end processor market. Where AMD has multiple Athlon chips that are essentially identical, except for their clock speed and price, Intel uses several different architectures, clock speeds, IGPs, and other features to differentiate its Celeron and Pentium processors.
Celerons are on the bottom rung of the desktop-chip ladder for Intel, and all of these chips have just two CPU cores, but they lack Hyper-Threading technology. Depending on the clock speed, these chips can occasionally outperform competing Athlon chips in single-threaded workloads. When multiple cores are used, though, an equivalent Athlon typically performs better, thanks to its use of SMT technology.
Intel has also opted to equip its modern Celeron processors with its HD Graphics 610 IGP. The HD Graphics 610 IGP works fine for basic display and non-gaming tasks, but in games it falls well short of all other competing IGP options.
The MSRP on these chips is set between $42 and $52, but in general they are hard to recommend for anything beyond the most strapped budgets. It’s not that there's anything wrong with current Celerons, or that they don’t work well enough when, say, web browsing. But AMD’s Athlon chips simply offer better performance under most circumstances, assuming you can find them for the same or near money.
Intel’s Pentium processors offer better performance than Celeron in almost every scenario, too, and they are more competitive with AMD’s Athlon. The main difference between Intel’s Celeron and Pentium processors is that the Pentium chips have Hyper-Threading enabled, and this greatly boosts their multitasking and multi-threaded performance. They don’t win outright when tested against AMD’s Athlons, but the two trade blows with each other.
Note that recent Pentium chips are dubbed the “Pentium Gold” family. (Intel did introduce a few Pentium Silver chips in 2017, but these are meant for laptops. Laptop CPUs are a whole other world; see our guide to those.) Also note that most Pentium Gold chips, apart from a couple of very recent entries, do not support Turbo Boost, or dynamic acceleration of the base clock, as most higher-end CPUs do. That is one of the big differences with the lowest-end desktop processors. In the case of Intel's chips, Turbo Boost is incorporated in earnest only at the Core i3 level and above.
Some Pentiums utilize the Intel HD Graphics 610 IGP, whereas others have the faster HD Graphics 630 IGP. Models with the HD Graphics 630 perform significantly better than the HD 610, and the HD 630 makes the CPU a more viable option for running older games. Even with this improvement, however, the Athlons remain well ahead of the competition in game tests using the IGP.
Overall, if you are buying a budget processor for less than $90, both AMD’s Athlon and Intel’s Pentium Gold processors are well worth considering. If you plan to try running some games with the integrated graphics, you will likely want to stick with AMD, all else being equal. If CPU performance is the only consideration, you would do well to base your decision on price, and compare the cost of the CPU and a compatible motherboard to determine which would cost less at that time.
As for Celeron, unless you are building a very basic system for running single, light tasks at a time, you can do better. Get an Athlon or a Pentium instead.
Midrange Budget Processors (MSRP $90 to $150)
If you can scrounge up extra cash for a better CPU, AMD’s Ryzen 3 and Intel’s Core i3 processors are both well worth considering in the budget CPU world. The main difference between these chips and their lower-end counterparts is that they move up to having four cores each. They are overall well matched against each other, so which to choose, again, will largely come down to which is on sale for the best price at your time of purchase, and if you happen to own a compatible motherboard.
AMD Ryzen 3
AMD’s Ryzen 3 CPUs come in two main flavors. First, there are the “plain,” classic Ryzen 3 processors that all have four unlocked CPU cores with SMT technology enabled. They are all fully unlocked. Since they are unlocked, you can attempt to overclock these CPUs to get more performance out of them, if you are so inclined. A key distinction, though: These chips require a dedicated graphics card working alongside them; they lack IGP silicon.
The other variant of AMD’s Ryzen 3 CPUs is a group technically called “Ryzen 3 Processors with Radeon Graphics,” though they are also informally known as Ryzen 3 G-Series processors or, as a group with a select few Ryzen 5 processors, as AMD’s Ryzen G-Series processors. All of these CPUs have a “G” at the end of their model number (example: the Ryzen 3 3200G), which indicates that the CPU has an IGP built into the die.
These Radeon-branded IGPs are relatively powerful as integrated solutions come, and they offer significantly more performance than the current competing Intel solutions. The Ryzen 3 3200G has 512 cores in its IGP. The IGPs on these CPUs can even run some games rather well with higher graphics settings, albeit games that have a few years on the odometer.
The Ryzen G-Series chips you can currently buy on the open market only run up to the third generation: The Ryzen 3 3200G (and a Ryzen 5 3400G) are the latest. AMD does make 4000 series G-Series chips, and the company just announced Ryzen 5000 Series ones, but these are available only to system OEMs to incorporate into systems sold to end users. Ryzen 5000 G-Series chips should hit the end-user/DIY market later in 2021, though.
The downside of the Ryzen 3 G-Series processors is that they don’t have SMT support, which means they won’t perform quite as well in multi-threaded workloads as the regular Ryzen 3 CPUs without an IGP. It’s also highly recommended that you buy the fastest RAM you can afford to go along with any Ryzen 3 G-Series CPU to draw the best possible performance—especially graphics performance—out of it.
Both types of Ryzen 3 processors (G-Series and non-G) range in price (again, MSRP) from $99 up to $129, though the latest-generation ones have been hard to find for any reasonable price here in early 2021. Note that the boost-clock speed on these chips ranges from 3.4GHz to 4GHz. This makes the Ryzen 3 G-Series processors highly affordable solutions for anyone looking to build a budget gaming PC. The non-G Ryzen 3 CPUs don’t make out quite as well if you are starting your PC build or upgrade from zero, as they require you to buy a graphics card, but they are excellent options if you do already own a satisfactory card.
Intel Core i3
Intel’s Core i3 processors all have four CPU cores. The newest Core i3 processors (from Intel’s 10th Generation “Comet Lake” line, and the new-for-2021 “Comet Lake Refresh”) also have Hyper-Threading support, but the last-generation Intel Core i3 9000-series CPUs do not. This doesn’t remove the older Core i3 CPUs from consideration, but you should only consider them if you can get one with a fairly substantial discount and already own a compatible motherboard. At their MSRP or list price, they simply don’t stack up well against the 10th Generation Core i3 CPUs, and they use a dead-end socket.
Another shared aspect of current Intel Core i3 processors is that they come equipped with Intel’s UHD Graphics 630 IGP. (See our note below regarding Intel's isolated "F" chip models; these are an exception and lack working IGPs.) As we noted above, the 630 isn’t any match for the graphics silicon on the Ryzen 3 G-Series CPUs, but it can run some older games with lower settings.
That most of the Core i3 CPUs ship with an IGP is also a benefit that they carry over AMD’s classic Ryzen 3 CPUs. Some shoppers may view having an IGP as unnecessary if they are planning to buy a graphics card, but an IGP can be useful in ways you might not expect, especially if your graphics card ever starts having problems. It can also be used to drive a second monitor. This also means, of course, that you aren’t forced to buy a graphics card in the first place, and given GPU prices in 2021, that is no small consideration. The same can’t be said for AMD’s non-G Ryzen 3 CPUs.
Intel sets the MSRP on its latest Core i3 CPUs between $97 and $173, and they range in turbo clock speed from 4.2GHz and 4.7GHz, setting them a good deal above the competition in terms of raw clocks. You are more likely these days to find Intel’s Core i3 chips close to MSRP than any of AMD’s Ryzen 3 ones.
Upper-End Budget Processors ($150 to $200)
Above the AMD Ryzen 3 and the Intel Core i3 lines are a handful of AMD Ryzen 5 and Intel Core i5 processors that you might find below the $200 price line, depending on the day. There isn’t a unifying feature set here for both Intel and AMD, so let’s just dive straight into what each offers separately.
AMD Ryzen 5
Other than its older processors, AMD has just one modern Ryzen 5 processor that fits the budget category: the Ryzen 5 3400G (at a theoretical MSRP of $149). This processor is a straightforward upgrade over the Ryzen 3 3200G. It still has just four CPU cores, but it has SMT technology enabled to improve performance. It also has slightly higher clock speeds and a larger Radeon IGP, with 704 cores.
These features make it a worthwhile option for a budget gaming PC, though in 2021, its street price has soared due to all the silicon shortages. Our tests using the processor showed it was able to run popular esports titles like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) with ease, and it was able to play some more demanding games, such as Far Cry 5 and Rise of The Tomb Raider, at 1080p without falling below 30 frames per second (fps), depending on the settings.
Intel Core i5
Intel fares better in this slice of the CPU market than AMD does, seeing as it has a wider selection of Core i5 processors that fit into the budget category. Based solely off MSRP, at this writing four Core i5 processors were list-priced between $157 and $192. The least expensive of these is the Core i5-10400F, which lacks integrated graphics, followed by the standard Core i5-10400 with integrated graphics, at $182. (Intel’s desktop CPUs that append an “F” on their model numbers are the same as their non-F equivalents, only they come with the IGP silicon disabled, and thus require a video card.)
If you are planning to build a gaming PC with a dedicated video card, the extra $25 the Core i5-10400F saves you versus the Core i5-10400 is a no-brainer. If you don’t plan on gaming, you would need to put that money back into a graphics card, though, which makes it a less sensible budget option, as the only graphics cards you will find covered by that difference in price will be ancient, slow, secondhand cards.
All of the newest 10th Generation of Core i5 processors have six CPU cores with Hyper-Threading support. Older 9th Generation Core i5 processors are also worth considering if you find them cheap, but they lack Hyper-Threading. This leads to a significant performance hit for multi-tasking and highly threaded tasks, and it places the 9th Generation Core i5 processors more on a competitive level with 10th Generation Core i3 processors. (They’re also on a dead-ended platform, which leads into our next topic.)
A Key Consideration: Thinking About Platforms
Before buying a processor, it’s also critically important to find a compatible motherboard, or at least assess what you own. As this is an unavoidable added expense if you don’t have a board in the hand, you should always consider both the price of the motherboard and the CPU to determine what gets you the best value within your budget.
Neither AMD nor Intel motherboards hold a clear advantage in terms of price in every situation. Instead, which is best will often depend on what sales are available at the time you are shopping. Sometimes, you can score a CPU and motherboard combination at a discount. (Retailers like Microcenter often offer these specials.)
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You need to be sure that you get a board that is compatible with the CPU you are buying, as well. The actual, physical CPU socket is only the first layer of compatibility. Today's norm is Socket AM4 for all late-model AMD chips, and Socket LGA1200 for 10th and 11th Generation Intel and Socket LGA1151 for 8th and 9th Generation Intel.
This isn’t the whole story, though. Socket compatibility is no guarantee of core system-chipset-level compatibility. (In other words, just because a chip fits in the socket is no ironclad guarantee it will work in the socket.) This can be tricky to unwind, but to make it simpler, we compiled the following charts that show which CPU classes are compatible with which motherboard chipsets.
Compatibility is the number one most important thing you consider when choosing the motherboard. Strictly speaking, if you follow the above chart, you shouldn’t have many problems—but you should also double-check the board’s product page before buying to ensure that it supports the specific, exact CPU you plan to buy. Motherboard manufacturers produce lists of compatible CPUs for every board they sell, and you should never buy a board without first verifying the CPU you plan to buy is on this list. It’s vitally important, and your system will not work if you get it wrong—so don’t!
Features for this grade of motherboard are less important when paired with a chip like an Athlon, a Ryzen 3, a Pentium, or a Core i3, as even the most basic boards will present you necessities such as integrated audio, Ethernet, and a healthy heap of USB ports. You may want to buy a better board for specific ports or for features’ sake, but if your budget doesn’t permit any kind of splurge, there’s often no problem with opting for the least-expensive board that supports the CPU you plan to buy and has the ports and slots you need. (Hint: This is sometimes a midsize MicroATX, rather than full-size ATX, board in a given line.)
For AMD, these cheapest-chipset boards would be the company’s A-Series chipsets, whereas the competing Intel solution will use an Hx10 chipset. Both are the most limited options available from their respective companies, but they work just fine for basic PCs. That’s really about the most we can say about them, though.
Higher up, you have B-Series chipsets from both companies. A lot of changes happen when you step up to a B-Series board from an A-Series one, but to put it in simplest terms, you get more ports and faster parts. Intel’s H510 chipset, for example, doesn’t support higher-speed USB 3.2 Gen 2x1 or 2x2 ports, and the chipset supports only up to four native SATA 3.0 ports and six PCI Express 3.0 lanes. Intel’s B560, in contrast, adds support for both of these USB standards, increases the number of possible native SATA ports to six, and has double the PCI Express 3.0 lanes.
AMD’s B-series chipsets see similar gains over their lower-end counterparts, but it’s also at this level that AMD introduces support for overclocking the CPU. (You can’t overclock with the A-Series boards.) This gives you the potential to pull a little more performance out of your CPU as long as it’s unlocked, and most AMD CPUs are.
At the top of the chipset hierarchy are AMD’s X-Series and Intel’s Z-Series chipsets, which define their respective top-shelf consumer motherboards. These are designed for higher-end enthusiast systems and cost a bit more accordingly. The only reason you should consider buying one of these to complement a budget CPU is if you have firm plans to upgrade down the road to a high-end processor, and even then it’s not strictly necessary. These higher-end chipsets do tend to have the most USB ports, the most robust overclocking support, and the best networking hardware, among other things, but a low-end-chipset board will work fine for most people.
Once again, at this level you get an increase in ports on both platforms. The most notable change in features at this level is the addition of overclocking to Intel’s Z-Series motherboards. Intel also has Hx70 chipsets that are on a similar level, but these are targeted as business solutions. If you are shopping for a productivity machine, and you simply want better connectivity without the overclocking and enthusiast-grade excess, Hx70 could be worth looking into as a less costly alternative to a Z-Series board.
Other than the features inherent in the chipset itself, you should also check secondary characteristics of a motherboard. The audio and wired-networking hardware elements are separate from the main chipset. Intel has integrated Wi-Fi controllers into some of its chipsets but not all, and AMD hasn’t done this; if having built-in Wi-Fi support matters, that’s another element you will want to watch. Cooling is also important, especially if you plan to overclock, but in dealing with $200-and-under processors (and how far you are likely to push them on a stock cooling fan), you can mostly just view this as adequate or not by how large the heatsinks are on the board.
All of these things tend to improve as you scale upward, but you can find some midrange B-Series boards with networking and audio hardware that’s on par with what you’d get on a high-end board. Depending on what you plan to use the board for, all of these things should be considered, but like with the CPU, most folks can err on the side of savings unless they have a special, known need for a specific premium feature.
Before we break down the specs and our specific budget-CPU favorites of the moment, here are a few guidelines to what to look for under typical use cases.
You don't need much...just a general purpose computer. If you just need a single-task-at-a-time PC and performance isn’t particularly important, or if money is really tight, the Athlon and Pentium processors are made for you. These chips don’t offer much in the way of thrills, but they will get you online so you can check email, grapple with social media, and do school work. If you go with the Athlon option here, you could also play some older games, dialed down, without the game slowing to a crawl. The Pentium won’t hold up as well in this regard, but games that are a decade old or so should run well enough on that processor to be playable.
Picks: AMD Athlon 200GE, Intel Pentium Gold G6400
You do productivity work with a bunch of programs running at once. Look at an Intel Core i3 or Core i5 CPU on Socket LGA1151 or LGA1200, or an AMD Ryzen 3 or Ryzen 5 on Socket AM4. Note that a straight-up Ryzen chip or an "F" Intel chip will require a separate video card. To keep costs down, consider one of the Ryzen G-Series chips so that you can avoid buying a video card separately. These are a sensible option if you want to do a little gaming on the side and don’t mind running with reduced graphics settings. (Just make sure the motherboard has video outputs!)
Picks: AMD Ryzen 3 3200G, AMD Ryzen 5 3400G, Intel Core i3-10100
You aim to do light entertainment and gaming without a video card. See above regarding the "G" Ryzens. If money is super-tight, you can build a surprisingly enjoyable gaming computer using one of AMD’s Ryzen G processors. Intel’s integrated graphics don’t quite match up against their more powerful AMD counterparts, though, so this is one niche in the market that AMD currently has a strong hold on. As noted, though, be careful what motherboard you pair with a Ryzen G-Series processor, as not all compatible AM4 motherboards have video output ports. You will also want to snag the fastest RAM that you can afford to go along with it, as this has a strong impact on gaming performance when using an integrated graphics chip.
Picks: AMD Ryzen 3 3200G, AMD Ryzen 5 3400G
You want to play PC games on a budget, but with a discrete video card. If you don’t want to be saddled with lower graphics settings, a video card is a necessity, and for the best results you should consider a Ryzen 3, a Ryzen 5, or a Core i5 for maximum value. The 2020 Ryzen 3s (the Ryzen 3 3100 and 3300X) are especially strong.
Notably, if it will let you get a better video card in this scenario, you can even opt for a slightly older Core i5 or a Ryzen 5, from the Intel 9th Generation family or the third gen of Ryzen. You can expect to pay roughly $150 to $200 for the lower-end Ryzen 5 and Core i5 processors, but you might be able to find one for a bit less if you opt for a previous-gen chip. (We've seen good deals on third-gen Ryzens, though chip shortages in 2021 have put a damper even on these older chips.) If not, any of the other low-end CPUs listed in this article can technically be used for gaming, but just know that these least powerful processors may bottleneck your gaming performance. (How CPUs and GPUs interact in PC gaming performance is a huge, complex subject. Check out our guide to the Best CPUs for Gaming for much, much more on the topic.)
Picks: AMD Ryzen 3 3100, AMD Ryzen 3 3300X, Intel Core i3-10100, Intel Core i5-10400
You do lightweight content-creation work. Content-creation tasks tend to scale well and take full advantage of additional cores, as well as SMT technology. Both of these are important when considering which CPU to buy, but most of all for media-processing work. As such, the best budget chip for this segment would be a 10th Generation Intel Core i5. Last-gen Ryzen 5 processors may also be worth considering; the latest ones start at above $200, and thus don’t fit our guidelines. If money is tight, you could get by with a Ryzen 3 or Core i3 chip, but the amount of time you spend waiting for the system to process complex tasks will increase, and this is likely to be detrimental to your work experience in the long run.
Picks: Intel Core i5-10400
Need More Info on Which Budget CPU to Buy?
Below are links to deep-dive reviews of most of the CPUs recommended above and some other favorites. Check them out for more specific benchmarking detail and more info on their supported platforms. Note that if you're very budget-sensitive, previous-generation CPUs can still be excellent values, especially if you happen to own a compatible motherboard.
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