PC Gamer Reader Awards - tell us about the CPUs you love!

PCG Dave

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Apr 1, 2020
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What's the PC gaming gear that you've fallen in love with? It doesn't matter whether it's the latest Nvidia graphics card, a 2000-series AMD CPU, or that grinty gaming mouse you picked up a few years back but now can't bear to be without. Whatever it is, we want to know about it.

And we're not necessarily talking about what you think your most powerful superstar component is, or your most expensive purchase, we'd like you to tell us about the different parts of your gaming setup that mean the most to you. If you're regularly gaming with it today, and it sparks joy, then we want you to tell us just why that particular slice of PC gaming has found a place in your heart.

Over the next two weeks we're going to find out just what our PC Gamer readers are gaming with and why you love the kit you do. So each day there will be a new category of gear and we'd love you to get involved and tell us which products speak to you and why. Then we will gather all the entries together, come up with a shortlist for each of the following categories, and you will then have the chance to vote on which products should get the coveted PC Gamer Readers' Award.
Today we're asking about what processor you love. Is your Core i5 2600K running at a frankly insane overclocked frequency, won't hear a bad word said about your FX 8350, or are you putting all 24 threads of your Ryzen 3900X to great use? Tell us in the thread below, without quoting the original post, first with the name of the product in question, and then just a line or two about why it means so much to you.

And who knows... you might even find yourself featured on the site in our Readers' Awards coverage too.
 
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Jan 14, 2020
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Recently upgraded from an absolutely aged i5 3570k. It was running at a 4.2 GHz overclock for 7 years until about three months ago when I started having problems with overheating. Probably could have fiddled around with some new thermal paste or a cooler replacement, but I decided to bump myself up to a Ryzen 3700X. I'm very happy with the processor and will probably be using this for a long time.

I do miss my 3570k though, just because it gave me so many good years. I've never been a person to chase after what's shiny and new. I like to hold onto things as long as they're working, even if I have to cut back in other areas at times.
 
Apr 28, 2020
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What's the PC gaming gear that you've fallen in love with? It doesn't matter whether it's the latest Nvidia graphics card, a 2000-series AMD CPU, or that grinty gaming mouse you picked up a few years back but now can't bear to be without. Whatever it is, we want to know about it.

And we're not necessarily talking about what you think your most powerful superstar component is, or your most expensive purchase, we'd like you to tell us about the different parts of your gaming setup that mean the most to you. If you're regularly gaming with it today, and it sparks joy, then we want you to tell us just why that particular slice of PC gaming has found a place in your heart.

Over the next two weeks we're going to find out just what our PC Gamer readers are gaming with and why you love the kit you do. So each day there will be a new category of gear and we'd love you to get involved and tell us which products speak to you and why. Then we will gather all the entries together, come up with a shortlist for each of the following categories, and you will then have the chance to vote on which products should get the coveted PC Gamer Readers' Award.
  • Graphics card
  • Processor
  • Laptop
  • Monitor
  • Keyboard
  • Mouse
  • Headset
  • Microphone
  • Wildcard entry!
Today we're asking about what processor you love. Is your Core i5 2600K running at a frankly insane overclocked frequency, won't hear a bad word said about your FX 8350, or are you putting all 24 threads of your Ryzen 3900X to great use? Tell us in the thread below, without quoting the original post, first with the name of the product in question, and then just a line or two about why it means so much to you.

And who knows... you might even find yourself featured on the site in our Readers' Awards coverage too.
 
Apr 28, 2020
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I have an i5 3470, as it was the best bang for buck CPU to put in an old pc I was given. After 3 years it's served me well. Am tempted to build a new system in the next year or 2 and give my current one to my son.
 
May 9, 2020
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ryzen 3 3200G
This cpu is great with built in graphics card, only needing on heatsink in pc is great meaning all heat comes from one source instead of having to circulate heat from the graphics card and the cpu
also helps keep the size down for small pc builds and cost
Looking forward to the Ryzen 7 4700U
Keep up the good work Ryzen
 
Jul 13, 2020
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amd ryzen 3400g or the 1600 af. i dont have a good computer currently but these parts are great for people who want to build a budget system. the 1600 af is a bit higher than its normal price but yeah. these are my 2 favorite cpus imo
 
May 9, 2020
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Another good graphics card is the EVGA 2060 KO this gpu is a 2060 with a 2080 gpu
it's a 2060 but with a 2080 chip on a board I think they have gone up in price since they were released.
 
Feb 14, 2020
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I have an i5 6600K for so long clocked at 4.6ghz. It is my first CPU and I never had any temperature issue with this one even though I am using single fan tower cooler. It was always cool, powerful enough and easy to maintain since it is my first CPU.
 
Jan 31, 2020
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I am currently using a 3600. I built this PC with the plan to do the major upgrade when Zen3 and Ampere come out, however, I am so impressed with the 3600. That is the bang for your buck processor for most of us right now.
 
Dec 15, 2019
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I had an i5 3570k from 2012 up until Jan this year. It was running stable on stock at 4ghz and coupled with an R9 290, was a comfortable 1080p gaming chip. In nearly 30 years of PC gaming, it's easily the longest I've used any single component (although my Corsair TX750 PSU isn't far off that record). I committed to team red, upgraded to a Ryzen 3600/Vega 56 and sold that old i5 chip within a day of listing on gumtree. I know it's sad to feel connected with an inanimate piece of silicon but I feel a slight pang of regret at letting it go 😥
 
Jul 14, 2020
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back in mid-2018, at the time, my only goal was to get into VR. and I was on the AM3+ platform. against everyone's advice, I stuck with AM3+ and got an FX 8350. It isn't the greatest 8350, but I've had it OC'ed to 4.6 on air for many months super stable and it still runs everything I need it to. Screw the FX haters. this chip was cheap and is serving me well to this day. In fact, the thing that truly needs upgrade in my PC is the 1050 TI because 4gb of VRAM aint enough.
 
Jul 14, 2020
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I kinda like my z97 asrock extreme 4 used with the xeon e3 1245 v3 and some corsair vengeance , I buyed that recently to enjoy some cheap power muscle rig in a third world cuz the i build it's so expensive and the components had a low cost right now on eBay. It's sad, 50usd to that Mobo ,60usd to that CPU, and 55 usd to that ram, I living on Paraguay and all those item has been shipped with a third party private courier and cost me an extra 27 dollars.
 
Jul 14, 2020
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And come
I kinda like my z97 asrock extreme 4 used with the xeon e3 1245 v3 and some corsair vengeance , I buyed that recently to enjoy some cheap power muscle rig in a third world cuz the i build it's so expensive and the components had a low cost right now on eBay. It's sad, 50usd to that Mobo ,60usd to that CPU, and 55 usd to that ram, I living on Paraguay and all those item has been shipped with a third party private courier and cost me an extra 27 dollars.
And come with a overworked MSI gaming x rx580 8gb of VRAM cuz is 100usd from those mining farm
 
Still on a Ryzen 1600X. Was the best chip around when my old Haswell i5 gave up on me. I'll probably upgrade to a Ryzen 4000 or if I can drag it out wait for the AM5 socket and Ryzen 5000 series. That would be a new build though with DDR5 memory, PCIE 4 NvME drive etc.
 
Jul 14, 2020
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I have to admit, I don't have as much experience in the CPU arena, as I do in the GPU arena as CPU upgrades are heavy investments that haven't been something I've yet justified for any of my PC's.

That being said, I am running Devil's Canyon i7-4790K Haswell (OC'd to a stable 4.7GHZ on EVGA CLC240 with Noctua iPPC 3K RPM in push/pull on an open air, mounted to the wall, Thermaltake core P3 [in Red!] case) in my 1080P living room setup/primary gaming station. It's old, no doubt about it, but with the 4 sticks of G. Skill Trident Z... shoot I want to say 2666MHZ (maybe 2800MHZ I can't recall off the head and not gonna look it up right now) RAM I have in there, it's still a speedy little well, devil. It shows it's age in some CPU-dependent games, but overall it still holds up shockingly well for what is quickly becoming the defacto bare minimum CPU spec for any new game in 2020.

In my newer LAN PC, I have a Kaby Lake i7-7700K that is still a beast and performs very well for a Quad Core chip. That one is also OC'd to a very stable 4.7GHZ on EVGA 280CLC with Noctua iPPC 3K RPM in a push/pull, though this is in an enclosed Silverstone RL06. I mean I also opted for 32GB of 3200MHZ Dominator Platinum RAM, so it dominates anything I throw at it. In terms of gaming, it has yet to show any signs of age, even in CPU-heavy games, so I'm incredibly happy with it. To be fair I have an EVGA Hybrid SC 2 1080Ti paired with it, so that does most of the heavy lifting in my 1440P setup, but again, I haven't yet experienced any bottlenecking due to the CPU, so I'd say it has performed admirably.

I won't get into too much detail on my Bedroom PC CPU cause even though it's a tad bit newer, it's only an i3-8100, that at best can handle light gaming (though I did pair a Zotac 1080Ti mini with it), so it gets the job done at competent medium-sometimes high levels. It was primarily purchased for streaming movies on a 1080p Plasma TV and for general computing needs for my girlfriend. Not much to say, other than it works as intended.

I have not yet tried my luck with any kind of Ryzen setup, but being as I've always been an intel guy, I don't necessary see that changing in the future, but maybe I'll seriously consider it whenever I opt to build a new PC.
 
Brand loyalty over computer components drives me completely spare.

My i7 3770k is probably the standout bit of kit, in that it's soldiered on since 2012 - well, technically 2013 as the original was replaced under RMA.

I've stayed principally GPU bound in games, and the few instances where the CPU is a bottleneck (e.g. sections of FO4, and some parts of some newer games esp. Ubisoft titles) haven't quite been enough of an issue to force an upgrade. I've been very glad of the choice of the 3770k over a 3570k as the extra threads have kept it viable for some additional years.

It's been overclocked to 4.6GHz most of its life, but I dropped that after stability issues in AC: Origins a couple of years ago. Rock solid stable under all other real world and synthetic loads, mind you.. only in AC:O did it want either more voltage or lower frequency. I opted for lower frequency and never felt a need to increase it again afterwards.

My eye is on Zen 3, however. 8 years of service is a good innings, and newer titles are increasingly showing some limitations in its performance. If I do upgrade, I'm hoping my 3770k will continue to serve for a long time in a media or home server type PC.

Edit: With DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 expected in perhaps 2022, these old DDR3 + PCIe 3.0 platforms have held out a long time (2.0 in the case of 2600k I suppose). Though that says at least as much about their successors as the CPUs and platforms themselves.
 
Last edited:
Dec 15, 2019
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Brand loyalty over computer components drives me completely spare.

My i7 3770k is probably the standout bit of kit, in that it's soldiered on since 2012 - well, technically 2013 as the original was replaced under RMA.

I've stayed principally GPU bound in games, and the few instances where the CPU is a bottleneck (e.g. sections of FO4, and some parts of some newer games esp. Ubisoft titles) haven't quite been enough of an issue to force an upgrade. I've been very glad of the choice of the 3770k over a 3570k as the extra threads have kept it viable for some additional years.

It's been overclocked to 4.6GHz most of its life, but I dropped that after stability issues in AC: Origins a couple of years ago. Rock solid stable under all other real world and synthetic loads, mind you.. only in AC:O did it want either more voltage or lower frequency. I opted for lower frequency and never felt a need to increase it again afterwards.

My eye is on Zen 3, however. 8 years of service is a good innings, and newer titles are increasingly showing some limitations in its performance. If I do upgrade, I'm hoping my 3770k will continue to serve for a long time in a media or home server type PC.

I very nearly upgraded from 3570k to 3770k a few years ago, because I wanted to take my z77 mobo to its limit and I knew how good the chip was. The 2nd-hand market for that i7 was still strong then, though.
 
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