Intel is currently dominating the CPU market with its new Alder Lake platform, but older gens are still good. Check out the best Intel processors in 2022.
Intel is currently dominating the CPU market with its 12th Generation Alder Lake platform. After a slow few years, Intel is back on top in gaming and productivity, with a range of new chips that massively improve on the previous generation while outperforming the AMD competition. However, Intel will soon be facing tough competition in the form of AMD’s Ryzen 7000 processors.
The Core i5-12600K tops the list thanks to its aggressive price and high performance. It’s the best CPU you can buy right now, not just the best Intel CPU. With 10 cores available, it has plenty of room for productivity work, and the performance cores offer enough juice to outpace the competition in games.
Why you should buy this: It’s the best Intel processor on the market right now.
Who it’s for: Gamers who need a little extra bandwidth.
What we thought of the Intel Core i5-12600k:
The Core i5-12600K is the best CPU you can buy right now. It’s not just the best Intel processor or the best gaming processor, but the best processor overall. It comes packed with 10 cores for around $300, with six performance cores and four efficiency cores. The performance cores shred through games, while the extra efficient cores provide some extra bandwidth for more demanding workloads.
The single-core improvements with Intel’s 12th-gen processors shine with the Core i5-12600K. In games, it can outpace even the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X in some cases — and that processor is nearly three times as expensive. Overall, it manages to top the gaming charts, only playing second fiddle to the more expensive processors from Intel’s 12th-gen lineup as well as some high-end AMD options like the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which is, again, pricier than the Core i5-12600K.
It also benefits from the hybrid 12th-gen architecture. This class of CPU is most commonly best for pure gaming. For gaming and streaming, we usually recommend bumping up a step. That’s not the case with the Core i5-12600K. The 10 cores provide plenty of bandwidth for gaming and streaming, which is something we rarely see on a $300 processor.
Why you should buy this: It’s still a solid midrange CPU, and you can usually find it on sale.
Who it’s for: Gamers looking for a deal.
What we thought of the Intel Core i5-11600K:
Intel’s 11th-gen Rocket Lake platform isn’t perfect, but the Core i5-11600K is still a decent option. It’s worse than the Core i5-12600K by a long shot, but you might be able to snag a chip for cheap — which will open up a little more budget for one of the best graphics cards.
It depends on the game, but the 11600K maintains a small but measurable lead over the 10600K in most titles. In some games, such as Death Stranding, the 11600K actually beats the 10700K and can match the 10900K in others. Although not quite the generational improvement Intel fans hoped for, the 11600K proves that you don’t need a high-end processor for gaming.
The gen-on-gen improvements are clearer in non-gaming tasks. The 11600K blows past Intel’s last-gen offerings and offers more credible competition to AMD’s mid-range chips in productivity tasks, leveraging application-specific accelerators to great effect. Single-core performance is up, too, without a big trade-off in multi-core performance.
The 11600K is a great gaming processor. It comes with enough juice for gaming while offering decent power for productivity tasks, and that combination is tough to find for under $300. That said, the 12600K is a better option overall, so only go with the 11600K if you can find it at a steep discount. Seeing as its price is close to its successor when not discounted, you’d get better value for the money by buying the Core i5-12600K instead.
Why you should buy this: It’s still a decent performer in 2022, and it’s a great budget option.
Who it’s for: PC builders on a tight budget that only need a few cores.
What we thought of the Intel Core i5-10400F:
Despite not sporting the Core i3 tag, the 10400F is one of Intel’s cheaper processors. It’s an incredible value at around $130, packing in six cores and 12 threads, a base clock of 2.9GHz, and a boost clock of 4.3GHz. It’s around $80 cheaper than the 10600K while sporting similar specs. The biggest difference is the «F» suffix, meaning that the 10400F does not have integrated graphics and will require a discrete graphics card.
Even with the low price, the 10400F performs well. In tasks like rendering, the 10400F is able to match the 9700K while surpassing AMD’s budget Ryzen 3000 chips. Although the 10400F is underpowered for most CPU-intensive workloads, it’s still a great Intel processor for web browsing, light image editing, and office applications.
If you’re a gamer, the 10400F is an even better choice. With plenty of cores and a solid boost clock, the 10400F can put CPUs three times its price to shame. If you pair it with a nice graphics card, you can achieve gaming performance on par with an i7, and sometimes even an i9.
The 10400F marks a sweet spot in Intel’s range. Below it, performance drops significantly without much cost savings, and above it, price scales faster than performance. If you’re looking for an everyday CPU with enough power for light productivity and gaming, it’s hard to beat the 10400F.
If you can afford it, a viable alternative is the next-generation 11400F. It is slightly faster, but it’s more expensive than this model.
