The CPU is the beating heart of any computer, whether it’s a work computer or a gaming PC. Currently, only two companies make processors for the desktop, Intel and AMD, and they both generally have a lot of great processors to offer in each price category. Luckily, there are a lot of great Black Friday deals on CPUs that you can take advantage of, so you might be able to get a nice little upgrade with the same amount of money. While you’re building your PC, take a look at RAM Black Friday deals, GPU Black Friday deals and AIO Cooler Black Friday deals.
Best AMD CPU Black Friday Deals
AMD CPUs have been having a resurgence recently, especially regarding mid and high-end gaming CPUs, although the prices have also risen quite a bit. Of course, not everybody is familiar with AMD CPUs, so if you’re not sure what to grab, our guide on which Ryzen processor you should buy is a great starting point to familiarize yourself.
- AMD Ryzen 5 5600G —
- AMD Ryzen 7 5700G —
- AMD Ryzen 7 5700X —
- AMD Ryzen 5 7600X —
- AMD Ryzen 7 5800X —
- AMD Ryzen 7 7700X —
- AMD Ryzen 9 5900X —
- AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D —
- AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D —
- AMD Ryzen 9 5950X —
- AMD Ryzen 9 7900X3D —
- AMD Ryzen 9 7950X —
Best Intel CPU Black Friday Deals
More people are familiar with Intel CPUs, and as a popular processor brand, that’s not surprising. There are a lot of great options here, too, but if you also aren’t familiar with Intel, we have a list of the best Intel processors you can take a look at to get an idea of what to get.
- Intel Core i5-11400F —
- Intel Core i5-12400 —
- Intel Core i5-12600KF —
- Intel Core i5-13600KF —
- Intel Core i7-12700KF —
- Intel Core i9-11900K —
- Intel Core i7-13700K —
- Intel Core i7-14700K —
- Intel Core i9-12900KS —
- Intel Core i9-13900KF —
- Intel Core i9-13900K —
- Intel Core i9-14900K 14th —
How to Choose the Right Processor for Your PC
There’s a lot more variability in CPUs than there are in GPUs because you can use CPUs on everything from gaming to audio editing, so each task has different core and thread number requirements. As such, you should get a sense of what you mainly want the CPU for and go from there. That said, a good rule of thumb is that the Intel i5 and Ryzen 5 CPUs are mid-range, i7 and Ryzen 7 are mid-to-high end, and i9 and Ryzen 9 are high-end, so that should give you a good starting point.
Another great rule of thumb to help you identify the different CPUs is to look at what letters they have at the end of them. For AMD, an X usually denotes a slightly faster version of the processor, while a G denotes an integrated GPU, so you could theoretically do some very basic gaming on it. As for Intel, a K at the end usually means an unlocked model that can be overclocked, while an F means it doesn’t have integrated graphics, so it can’t really run any games on it.
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