Intel's Core i3 12100F is a value champion CPU for gaming - and it's down to £88
Golden Cove cores and PCIe 5.0/DDR5 support are impressive at this price.
Intel's Core i3 12100F is a surprisingly viable gaming CPU, with four Golden Cove P-cores and eight threads with DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 support, all for under £100. Don't be put off by 'Core i3' either - this model is similar in speed to the last-gen Core i5 11600K and not too far behind the Core i7 10700K, such is the leap forward Intel made with its 12th-gen CPU architecture. Today this processor is even cheaper than normal too, with prices dropping to £88 at Ebuyer in the UK.
The Core i3 12100F is relatively straightforward as a product, as it doesn't use the hybrid architecture found in higher-tier chips with both P-cores and E-cores. Instead, it just has those four Golden Cove P-cores, which boost up to 4.3GHz and a rated maximum of 89W.
Combine this capable chip with a cheap B660 motherboard, perhaps with cheaper DDR4 RAM though DDR5 boards are also available, and you're onto a winner: a low-cost system that still performs well in games and has clear upgrade potential with up to a 14900K possible.
This approach allows you to dedicate the majority of your budget to your graphics card, which is the biggest driver of performance in most gameplay scenarios. Specifically, high frame-rate esports titles tend to be more CPU-limited, while slower-paced and more graphically intense fare at lower frame-rates (eg 60fps) have lower relative CPU requirements - so they'd be a perfect fit for a build using this CPU.
Your monitor resolution also comes into play - as resolution increases, the burden shifts from CPU to GPU and the differences between cheap and expensive CPUs lessen and can even disappear entirely. Therefore, if you're gaming at 1440p or 4K then there's little reason to choose a faster CPU than this unless you're also targeting higher frame-rates - or need to run tasks that benefit from a large number of CPU cores, such as video rendering or code compiling.
In any case, this is a great budget option that's worth considering against AMD alternatives like the Ryzen 5600 (for AM4 DDR4 motherboards) and 7600 (for AM5 DDR5 motherboards).