[BoorishBears]

The cheapest 3600 in stock is $80 cheaper than the cheapest 10600k from the same retailer.

And they've has offered the 10600k with a $20 rebate on motherboards for months now...

$50 should come straight the case which is totally overshooting for a budget PC (I recommend the 300L here)

That leaves you with a 10 dollar difference for an CPU that competes with the i9 in gaming...

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And by the way, even the next build up chooses a 3600X over the 10600K despite the former even beating the 3700X in gaming benchmarks.

The 10600K is an insane value for gaming, and still fast enough for non-gaming tasks. Seeing as they're listing "heavy gaming" as a measurement on these builds it doesn't make any sense for at the very least the i5 to make an appearance.

[quacker]

Well, but you want to spend money on the GPU if you care about gaming.

Consider these two builds:

1. Ryzen 5 2600 ($150) + RTX 3070 ($500) for $650

2. i5-10900k ($280) + RX 5700XT ($330) for $610

The first build with the RTX 3070 is far better. The RTX 3070 buys you into 1440p high/ultra @ 90+ FPS, or 4k med/high @ 60+ FPS. Will the 2600 bottleneck that GPU? Maybe, but you still get better performance for the price by investing in the GPU versus the CPU.

[BoorishBears]

Who said anything about cutting GPU performance?

Also your comparisons are quite poor... 2600 shouldn't even be in the running here, the 3070 would be held back from doing the thing it does best, high FPS 1440p (in actual games mind you, not just CS:GO)

[quacker]

I mean, you said I should waste my money on a CPU upgrade that would make no difference in 1440p gaming. That's money I can't spend on a better GPU, which would make a difference in 1440p gaming.

[BoorishBears]

You realize you're mentioning a 2600 right? Which will place a tremendous limit on 1440p gaming?

My suggestion over the included build is spending $10 more on the build and getting a 10600K.

Silicon Lottery has found 100% of 10600ks will do 4.7 Ghz sustained all core.

Even at that number it will easily out perform a 3600 in a meaningful way. Over 70% of them do 4.9 Ghz which where it starts to reach i9 levels of performance in gaming by the way...

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And the cherry on top over the 3600 is you can actually buy the i5 outside of Microcenter. Microcenter is the only place carrying the 3600 for $180... but they also have 10600k on perma-sale for $250.

Meanwhile outside of Microcenter the 3600 is rarer than hen's teeth while the 10600k is widely available at $270. I happen to have 5 microcenters within an hour or so of me, but most people don't have that luxury.

[quacker]

A 2600 + RTX 3070 will outperform a 10600k + 5700XT in 1440p gaming. You're way overestimating how much a 2600 would bottleneck the GPU.

[BoorishBears]

Making a wrong statement confidently doesn't making true.

[calinet6]

You're missing the 5000 series Ryzens, which they just updated this for.

The difference is key.

[BoorishBears]

I'm not seeing any listing for 5000 series in the 1k price range, and the 10600k is actually in stock at or below MSRP...

Meanwhile it trades blows with the 5600X unless you're making a 7zip decompression and Cinebench rendering mule...

I'm guessing that's why they're not recommended? Being able to actually get the CPU is pretty important...