The Best Budget CPUs for 2023

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 been double-true over the last few years, 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. Pile on inflation, and a general lack of investment by chip makers in low-end parts of late, and the old cost rules around PC components don’t always apply anymore.

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, or the very latest ones. 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. These are the best budget processors we’ve tested for 2023.

Deeper Dive: Our Top Tested Picks

Buying Guide: The Best Budget CPUs for 2023

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 basic 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.

(Credit: Zlata Ivleva)

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.

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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. And 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. (Think of a toll plaza that suddenly has twice as many booths open as before, though there’s still traffic.) 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 overall Best CPUs 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.

(Credit: John Burek)

For AMD desktop CPUs, the first digit in the five-character model number reflects the processor’s generation, with the digits following indicating the CPU’s relative performance level in that generation. The generations are not entirely straightforward, though, as AMD’s numbering scheme is not 1:1 with the actual generation…

• First gen = 1000

• Second gen = 2000

• Third gen = 3000 or 4000

• Fourth gen = 5000

• Fifth gen = 7000

For example: AMD’s Ryzen 7 5700G is part of the fourth generation of AMD Ryzen processors. Its overall performance is lower than that of the Ryzen 9 5900X. 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. (Intel’s previous generations, dubbed “Rocket Lake” and “Alder Lake,” are generations 11 and 12; “Comet Lake,” the preceding line, is 10th Generation.) As a result, Intel CPUs now use a five-digit product ID number (example: the “10100” in the 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.

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What Are the Benefits of Buying 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.

(Credit: Zlata Ivleva)

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. That is especially true with budget CPUs, since the price steps between them are smaller.

(Credit: Zlata Ivleva)

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: 

• Less than $90

• From $90 to $150

• From $150 to $200

A special note on pricing: For most of this article, unless otherwise specified, we are talking about list prices (MSRPs) here for all processors. These are the prices set by AMD and Intel at the launch times of their processors. CPU prices from retailers aren’t always consistent with these numbers. Demand for certain processors is higher than others due to their performance, competition, and price for performance ratio. This has caused some chips to sell for less than their MSRP while others are at times inflated; availability for these latter chips may be spotty. Because of that volatility, we stuck predominantly to list prices in our discussion here, not current street prices, as today’s comparisons could be rendered wholly irrelevant tomorrow.

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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 Athlon processors available to end users, as of the end of 2021, employed 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. Among 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 would make it one of the least-expensive current CPUs on the market, though availability is an issue.

The best consumer-oriented Athlon at the moment, to our eyes, is the Athlon 3000G, which has a higher 3.5GHz clock speed and listed at launch 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.

(Credit: Zlata Ivleva)

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 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 lowest-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. Note that a change in branding is coming to these chips (more on that in a moment).

(Credit: Zlata Ivleva)

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 you can do a lot better without spending that much more.

(Credit: Zlata Ivleva)

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 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 better than the HD 610, and the HD 630 makes the CPU a more viable option for running some older games at low settings. Even with this improvement, however, the Athlons are well ahead 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 worth considering if you don’t see something better on sale. (That’s possible; at this writing, we did see AMD’s four-core Ryzen 3 4100 for $69 or the six-core Ryzen 5 4500 for $79, which we’d get in a heartbeat before any of these chips, though either would need a graphics card alongside it, lacking an IGP.) 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.

Either way, don’t discount the motherboard consideration; it could well outweigh any savings from the chip itself. Most of these Intel chips run on Intel’s older LGA 1200 socket, which was supplanted by Intel’s LGA 1700 on its 12th Gen chips (2022) and 13th Gen chips (2022), so the motherboard you’d stick one of these Celerons or Pentiums in will be a future-looking dead end. But that may be fine if the price is right or you own a board already.

You won’t find Celerons or Pentiums on Intel’s newer LGA 1700 socket (nor Athlons on AMD’s new AM5 socket). Indeed, though we haven’t seen any releases yet, future budget processors from Intel on desktop will just be dubbed “Intel Processor,” according to an announcement the chip maker made in the fall of 2022; the Pentium and Celeron names will be going away in future cheap chips.

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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. So that boosts their effective cost if you don’t already have a card you can use.

(Credit: John Burek)

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 and Ryzen 7 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 provide 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 in circulation.

(Credit: Zlata Ivleva)

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. 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, whether you’re looking at the 10th Gen, the 12th Gen, or the spanking-new 13th Gen versions. Pre-10th Gen Core i3 CPUs should be off your radar; they are now old, and you should only consider them if you can get one with a very substantial discount and already own a compatible motherboard. At their MSRP or list price, they simply don’t stack up well against the 10th to 13th Generation Core i3 CPUs, and they use a dead-end socket. (Mind you, so do the 10th Gen Core i3s, but their required LGA 1200 boards are cheaper than the LGA 1700 boards for the most recent chips.)

Another shared aspect of current Intel Core i3 processors is that they come equipped with Intel’s UHD Graphics. The earlier 10th Gen Core i3 chips use the UHD 630 IGP; the latest two gens of Core i3 desktop chips use the UHD 730 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.

(Credit: Zlata Ivleva)

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 own or are planning to buy a dedicated graphics card, but an IGP can be useful in ways you might not expect, especially for diagnostic use if your graphics card ever starts having problems. This also means, of course, that you aren’t forced to buy a graphics card in the first place, and given GPU prices, that is no small consideration. The same can’t be said for AMD’s non-G Ryzen 3 CPUs.

Intel set the MSRP on its 10th Gen Core i3 CPUs between $97 and $173 (we see the 10th Gen chips nowadays mostly under $115), 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.

As for Intel’s more recent 12th and 13th Gen Core i3 chips, they work on the newer LGA 1700 motherboard socket. The chips themselves range from around $100 to $150, but the “problem” with them is that they require LGA 1700-based boards, and you’ll find few such boards for under $100, and some of those boards may require you to buy new memory in the form of DDR5. (The smattering you do find under $100 will likely be MicroATX boards based on the H610 chipset and using DDR4.) The lowest-cost LGA 1200 boards aren’t much cheaper, but you’re more likely to already own one, which makes all the difference in the budget-CPU calculus.

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Semi-Budget and 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 and Ryzen 7

AMD’s new Ryzen 7000 series of processors offer a significant boost in performance, but they are also priced higher than previous generations of Ryzen processors. This makes them non-starters in the budget category, or at least until we see more sales and price drops. If you’re looking for a budget AMD processor between $150 to $200, you’ll need to look at something in the last generation Ryzen 5000-series product line. One major positive impact the arrival of the new Ryzen 7000-series has had on the market is that it has pushed the prices down on AMD’s last-gen parts. Some Ryzen 7 processors can now be found right around $200, like the AMD Ryzen 7 5700G that also packs in a very capable IGP. There’s also the Ryzen 7 5700X that’s generally close to $200 now—it has a bit more power but lacks an IGP.

(Credit: Zlata Ivleva)

Our tests using the G-series processors and their IGPs show them able to run popular esports titles, like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), with ease; some more demanding games, such as Far Cry 5 and Rise of The Tomb Raider, run at 1080p without falling below 50 frames per second (fps), depending on the settings. Not bad if you can’t spring for a graphics card.

Intel Core i5

With AMD’s Ryzen 5 processors selling at highly competitive prices, this places a great deal of pressure on Intel’s Core i5 line. Intel can’t really match up to AMD’s G series when it comes to integrated graphics performance, and if you will be relying on integrated graphics, then AMD is simply the better choice. If you will be putting a graphics card in the system, however, Intel does have some highly competitive options. In particular is the Intel Core i5-12600K, which also dips below $200 at times now, and this is arguably the single fastest processor you can buy for under $200. Intel does have a few other Core i5 chips that can be competitive, but the performance gains you get from the Core i5-12600K are quite significant, and this makes any older or lower-end Core i5 chips less compelling unless they are heavily discounted.

(Credit: Zlata Ivleva)

Intel also has new 13th Gen Core i5 processors that just launched at the start of 2023. We haven’t reviewed these chips of yet, but on paper they look similar to the Core i5-12600K but with altered clock speeds and prices. These chips would also be attractive options for use in a budget or midrange gaming PC. Just know that with either these 12th or 13th Gen chips, you’re dealing with Intel’s LGA 1700 socket and probably thus need a compatible motherboard and perhaps new DDR5 memory. More about all that in the next section!

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A Big Side Issue for Budget CPU Buying: The Platform

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 Micro Center often offer these specials.) 

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. The budget AMD chips we are recommending all support Socket AM4. The Intel options we’ve discussed support a couple of different sockets; you’ll need to get a Socket LGA 1200 motherboard for any 10th or 11th Gen Intel processors, or a Socket LGA 1700 motherboard for any 12th Gen or 13th Gen Intel processors.

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: For budget shoppers, this is often a midsize MicroATX, rather than full-size ATX, board in a given line.)

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Which Chipset Is the Best Match for a Budget CPU?

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 2×1 or 2×2 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. In this segment of the market, rather than buying an amped-up board to overclock, you’re just better off spending that extra money getting a better, faster CPU to start with!

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. Pairing a budget chip with a $200-plus motherboard is often misallocated funds, except in a few edge cases.

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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. A slightly costlier Ryzen 3 G series (with integrated graphics) or Core i3 (with same) will also do nicely.  You could also opt for a recent 12th or 13th Gen Core i3 on LGA 1700, but mind the board cost.

Picks: AMD Athlon 200GE, Intel Pentium Gold G6400, Intel Core i3-10100

You do productivity work with a bunch of programs running at once. Look at an Intel Core i3 or Core i5 CPU on Socket LGA 1151 or LGA 1200, 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!) Again, you could go for a recent 12th or 13th Gen Core i3, but factor in the price of the new motherboard.

Picks: AMD Ryzen 5 5600G, 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 stack up, 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 with integrated graphics chips.

Picks: AMD Ryzen 3 3400G, AMD Ryzen 5 5600G

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, but they are hard to find.

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 12th or 13th Generation Intel Core i5. AMD’s Ryzen 5 5000-series processors may also be worth considering. 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. Current market prices also make the Core i5 or Ryzen 5 chips better options for the price, with the Ryzen 3 and Core i3 chips only worth considering if money is extremely tight. Even so, prices are still pretty high in the 12th and 13th Generations for Intel (plus the platform costs), and so we stick to the below Intel as our budget recommendation.

Picks: Intel Core i5-10400

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Need More Info on Which Budget CPU to Buy?

Check out our links to deep-dive reviews of most of the CPUs recommended above and some other favorites. At the actual reviews, we have 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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