Budget of budget CPUs. Possibly an ATL?
Pair it with a nice budget board for a cheap but capable build.
CamelCamelCamel.
100% mate. Just generally a decent, very cheap, gaming chip.
Grab some of that cheap ddr4 ram that seems to be popping up regularly at the moment and you're away.
But the 5600x can be overclocked and the platform supports the 5800x3d and the 5950x if you want more gaming or productivity performance down the road.
Definitely valid, tbh if I was building right now I'd probably go the AMD route because it seems LGA1200 boards have increased in price compared to when I bought (Nov 2021). However have been very happy with my 11400, and the savings (at the time) meant I could pair it with a 6800 XT so plenty of 1440p gaming to be had.
I'll upgrade to a i7-15700K or Ryzen 9800X for my next hop up the chain ;)
For gaming I think an i3 12100F would be better. Only those that already have an s1200 motherboard should get this.
Spitballing here with some rough part pricing.
This CPU - $183
MSI B560M - $129
16GB 3200 DDR4 - $79
MP33 512GB NVMe - $53
550w 80+ Bronze PSU - $59
Aerocool Mid case - $49
Thats $550 and whatever GPU you want to beef it up with away from a beast of a gaming PC. Not bad!
Would a cooler master 212 CPU cooler suffice?
Cooler Master Hyper 212 LED Turbo White Edition CPU Cooler with 2 PWM fans with White LEDs - White - RR-212TW-16PW-R1 https://amzn.asia/d/6HDizVP
Unnecessary
Just stock?
@DASHCAM NOW DUDE: It's a 65w CPU. Stock would be fine. If you wanted something better than stock, a CM Hyper 212 is an old favourite for many as a decent economical solution. It's not amazing, but it's well above stock.
You absolutely need to modify the PL1/PL2 value to actually make this chip run at proper speed.
I have a MSI B560M mainboard, a Deepcool Gammaxx GTE V2 cooler and I was running an i5-10400 at stock settings. It would run at 4Ghz all-core, all the time, at the default 65W PL1 setting. Changing PL1 made no difference, this CPU would run at its maximum rated all-core speed at 65W.
I swapped out the i5-10400 with an i5-11400… (because I put the i5-10400 in my kid's computer) and at stock settings the i5-11400 would run only at 3.6Ghz all-core (it would start at 4.2ghz but jump down quickly to 3.6Ghz).
Changing the PL1 setting to 125W continuous then fixed the issue - it now runs at 4.2Ghz all-core, all the time. Synthetic load testing found the CPU uses around 100-110W at that all-core load (so I set PL1 at 125W to cover it).
This is dirt cheap for gaming if you can get a cheap b560 or z490 board! On par with a 5600 with the power limit unlocked, not as good for other productivity but no problem for games!