This Ryzen 5 3600 is the heart of many gaming PCs - and for £70 it can be yours too
Good enough, with upgrade potential.
AMD's Ryzen 5 3600 processor remains one of the best "good enough" CPUs on the market, providing a six-core design and enough grunt to run most games at 60fps when paired with DDR4-3200 RAM and a good modern graphics card. The CPU launched at £200 and now costs around half that, but it does occasionally go on discount - and today that's happened, with the CPU now costing just £70 at Scan.
The 3600 getting a little long in the tooth now, with the likes of the Ryzen 5 5600 providing a decent step up in single-core speeds at just over £100, but at this reduced price the 3600 just narrowly feels like the better value option to me.
No matter which Ryzen 5 CPU you go for though, you'll be able to still have a meaningful upgrade in the future, thanks to the incredible Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which rivals even Intel's much more expensive Core i9 12900K while fitting in the same cheap motherboards and working with the same cheap DDR4 RAM as the Ryzens 3600 and 5600.
The only downside to this Ryzen 3600 deal is that the CPU doesn't come with a free AMD Wraith cooler, as it would normally do. You can pick up a cheap CPU cooler that delivers similar cooling performance while making less noise for around £20, but it's something to keep in mind for the value calculus anyway.
What's your current CPU? Are you on the latest and greatest from AMD or Intel, or are you still rocking a now vintage design? Let me know in the comments below!