INTEL CORE I5-10600K

One of the main problems with chips right now is the lack of availability, but thankfully they aren’t as sought-after as the latest GPUs, and this i5-10600K is in stock at the time of writing. It was a significant CPU from Intel on release as it addressed a key issue at the time: the lack of Hyper-Threading. It introduced 12 threads, for better multithreaded performance in productivity-based tasks like rendering and a more stable experience for gaming. Costing just $230, it offers good performance at an affordable level.

In terms of numbers, it has six cores, 12 threads, and a 14nm architecture, which is still a nice sweet spot and is more than good enough for a processor with this price tag. It also packs a 4.9GHz max turbo frequency. Where it suffers a bit is future-proofing, as it doesn’t support PCIe 4.0.

• RRP:$230 • Street price: $230