Our recommendations for the best gaming CPUs place premium AMD chips at the very top, yet most players will do best by choosing the most budget-friendly, fairly recent processor that still fits comfortably in their build.
Right now, that role belongs to the Ryzen 5 5600. It’s from a lineup launched in 2020, but it still keeps pace with today’s expectations, including PCIe 4.0 support for both SSDs and graphics cards. In the past few months, we’ve seen the 5600 dip to around £100, which makes it a strong option for anyone starting a new system or upgrading an existing Ryzen setup. The real question is: how well does it age, about five years later?
To answer that, I recently put together a Ryzen 5 5600-based PC at home and ran it through a range of tests, from synthetic benchmark suites to current game titles.
If you’re assembling a system like this yourself, we suggest skipping the Noctua case fans and the aftermarket CPU cooler to keep costs down. The 4TB SSD is also more than enough for most use cases.
These are all the parts in this build, with the GPU left out.
| Category | Component | Justification |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 5 5600 | In 2025, this is the most affordable Ryzen chip that’s actually worth looking at, and it’s the subject of this review. |
| GPU | Acer RX 7800 XT 16GB OC | Our favorite mid-range graphics card option: it delivers strong performance in rasterized workloads and includes plenty of VRAM for roughly £450. That said, Nvidia products tend to offer better ray tracing results and extra features. |
| RAM | 32GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3200 CL16 | DDR4-3200 at CL16 offers a well-rounded sweet spot for AM4 in terms of price-to-performance, and this 32GB Corsair kit is both affordable and well regarded. |
| Main Storage | Crucial P310 1TB NVMe SSD | Among Crucial’s newer PCIe 4.0 SSD options, it provides fast read and write speeds and comes with fairly attractive value. |
| Secondary Storage | WD SN5000 4TB NVMe SSD | This model is aimed at storing games and files you don’t access as often, and the high capacity is something we definitely appreciate. |
| Case | NZXT H5 Flow (2024) (Black) | I wanted to test NZXT’s newest H5 Flow because it combines a clean look with excellent airflow, and the earlier version was also widely popular. |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte B550 Aorus Elite AX V2 | A solid AM4 motherboard choice with dependable I/O, built-in Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth, plus PCIe 4.0 support for the GPU and the primary SSD. |
| Cooler | Noctua NH-U12S | It may be more than you need for the 5600, but it’s still an excellent cooler that moves a lot of air quietly. |
| Fans | Noctua NF-A14 PWM chromax, black.swap & Noctua NF-F12 PWM chromax.black.swap. | These are efficient, low-noise case fans that noticeably improve airflow. |
| PSU | NZXT C850 Gold ATX 3.1 (Black) | With 850W, there’s plenty of headroom for the current set of components and room to support upgrades later, including compatibility with the latest hardware generation. |
Next, let’s break down why this CPU stands out as a smart purchase and look at the results from the initial testing.
Ryzen 5 5600: how does it fare in 2025?
- Component selection and reasoning [this page]
- Why we picked the 5600, along with synthetic benchmarks
- RT benchmarks: Cyberpunk 2077, Returnal, F1 24, Indiana Jones & The Great Circle, Forza Horizon 5, Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl, Black Myth: Wukong, The Callisto Protocol
- Game benchmarks: Cyberpunk 2077, Returnal, F1 24, Forza Horizon 5, Black Myth: Wukong, The Callisto Protocol, Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6, Dirt Rally 2.0.
- Gaming performance overview: 1080p, 1440p, 4K
- Final thoughts and verdict