Whether you're looking to put together a new gaming rig or a mid-range productivity PC, Intel's Core i5-12600KF is one of the best CPUs you can buy right now. And thanks to Amazon Prime Day, it's down to its lowest price ever of $229 for Prime members. That's $35 off Intel's MSRP and $21 lower than it's ever been before according to PCPartPicker.
As a K-series chip, the Core i5-1260KF is unlocked for overclocking, so you can easily push it beyond its 4.9 GHz stock turbo frequency with a good cooler. Just know that the F at the end of this CPU's name means it lacks functioning integrated graphics. So you'll have to provide one of the best graphics cards to connect to your monitor. If you want to build a system with integrated graphics, you'll have to look elsewhere.
Intel Core i5-12600KF (4.9 GHz, 6P + 4E Cores): was $259, now $229 at Amazon (opens in new tab)
The best mid-range CPU for gaming is now at its best price of all-time. This processor offers 6 performance cores, 4 efficiency cores and up a boost clock of up to 4.9 GHz before you overclock it. It also supports DDR5 RAM and PCIe 5.0.
In our testing of the Core i5-12600K (the same CPU as the 1260KF, just with integrated graphics enabled), we saw it run our 11 test games just 8 frames per second (fps) slower than the much pricier Core i9-12900K (both at stock speeds with DDR4 RAM, at 1440p resolution). The only way to get significantly faster gaming performance than this CPU is to buy a top-end Core i9 and overclock the snot out of it. So painting this Core i5-12600KF with some affordable DDR4 RAM and one of the many graphics card that are finally becoming affordable again is a great way to build a powerful gaming PC.