Intel Core i3 12100F 4-core LGA1700

The Core i3-12100F is the best budget gaming CPU we've tested in a while. Single-thread performance is top-tier for the price, and it runs cool and quiet. If you're building a cheap gaming rig and already have a GPU, just buy this.

Single-thread performance is where this chip shines. It lands in the 86th percentile for single thread, which means it punches way above its price class in games that lean on one or two cores. The 3432 single-thread PassMark score is genuinely impressive for a budget part. Multi-thread is more middle of the pack at the 67th percentile, with a 13952 multi score. That's fine for everyday use and light productivity, but don't expect it to chew through video encodes or heavy multitasking like a higher-core-count chip. The 58W base TDP keeps things cool and efficient, and the 12MB of L3 cache helps with gaming frame times.

Against something like the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X, the 12100F obviously loses on core count and multi-threaded grunt, but it costs a fraction of the price and still holds its own in single-threaded tasks. The Dell Xeon E5-2637 V2 and PC Server and Parts E5-2697 v2-cr are older server pulls that look cheap on paper but run hot, loud, and need weird motherboards. The be quiet! Ryzen 3 Dark Rock Pro 5 is a cooler, not a CPU, so that's not even a fair fight. The MSI MAG X870E Tomahawk WiFi is a motherboard, also not a direct competitor. For actual budget CPU competition, the 12100F's real rivals are AMD's Ryzen 3 and 5 parts, and it holds up well against them in gaming thanks to that strong single-thread score.

This is where the 12100F absolutely cleans up. Our database puts it in the 74th percentile for affordability, and the budget score is a 90 out of 100. In the US, prices swing from USD 107 to USD 162 depending on the vendor, so it pays to shop around. Amazon has the best deal at the low end of that range. In Europe, the spread is tighter at EUR 108 to EUR 121. Either way, you're getting a chip that trades blows with much pricier options in gaming for the cost of a nice dinner out.

The Core i3-12100F is the budget CPU that makes you wonder why you'd spend more. Four cores, eight threads, and a 4.3GHz boost clock for this kind of money is frankly a little ridiculous. It's a 12th gen Alder Lake chip, so you get PCIe 5.0 support and a real upgrade path on LGA1700 boards.

No integrated graphics here, so you'll need a discrete GPU. That's the trade-off, but for a budget gaming rig, you were buying a graphics card anyway. The boxed Laminar RM1 cooler is included, which keeps the total cost down even if it's not the quietest thing in the world.

Skip this if you need serious multi-threaded horsepower for video editing, 3D rendering, or heavy multitasking. The four cores will bottleneck you hard in those workloads. Also skip it if you don't want to buy a discrete GPU, since there's no integrated graphics to fall back on. And if you're sensitive to fan noise, budget for an aftermarket cooler because the stock one gets whiny under load.

If you're building a budget gaming PC or a snappy everyday desktop, the 12100F is the easy answer. It's fast where it matters, cheap where it counts, and sips power. Pair it with a mid-range GPU like an RTX 3060 or RX 6600 and you've got a rig that'll handle 1080p gaming without breaking a sweat. The lack of integrated graphics and the loud stock cooler are minor annoyances, not dealbreakers.