Pay for your PC in installments (up to 12 payments)What are the best CPU / graphics card combos in 2023?
2023 is an excellent time to buy or build a PC, as component prices have dropped significantly—especially RAM, SSDs, CPUs and even GPUs. However, many people miss out on the best CPU and GPU combo for gaming and productivity. The reason is simple: it’s already quite difficult to understand what makes one CPU or GPU better for gaming, streaming or even video editing, but combining them is even more complicated.
So today, we’re going to explain everything to you and give specific recommendations at every budget level to get the best CPU and GPU combo for gaming in 2023.
First things first: the dreadful Bottleneck!
The first thing to understand is the "bottleneck". A bottleneck simply means that one of your components limits the performance of our system, and if you could upgrade that component to make it faster, the overall performance of your system would increase. The bottleneck that most commonly occurs in PC configurations is the CPU compared to the GPU. So, if our CPU is too slow to keep up with our GPU, increasing the CPU speed would give you more frames per second (FPS).
If your GPU is the bottleneck, then getting a faster GPU would boost your performance. Note that the CPU is more likely to become a bottleneck when you push for a high number of frames per second, while the GPU is more likely to become a bottleneck when we increase the resolution from 1080p to 1440p, or even to 4K. This also depends on how much VRAM the GPU has available, because some recent AAA games need a large amount of VRAM to run at ultra-high definition.
But here’s the thing that even experienced PC builders often get wrong: no matter the configuration, our system will always have a bottleneck.
Our job as PC builders is to understand how to maximise our system’s performance, whether for gaming, streaming, video editing, or demanding multitasking workloads. For gaming, we want to maximise your FPS (frames per second), which means getting the fastest GPU we can afford, while spending enough on a CPU that won’t limit the graphics card. This depends on your budget, and the less you have to spend, the more important it is to find the right balance.
Obviously, if you have an unlimited budget, you’ll simply get the best of everything and spend around 4,000 euros on the ultimate gaming PC. But most of you have a set budget, which makes choosing the best CPU and GPU combo even more crucial for gaming performance.
The CPU is good, the motherboard and RAM too! (DDR4–DDR5)
Remember that when we increase the number of CPU cores, we also need to add more cooling—especially for Intel CPUs, you need to buy a better motherboard, which also costs more, not to mention the price differences between DDR4 and DDR5 RAM.
That’s what needs to be taken into account. For example, let’s say you want to buy a gaming PC with a Ryzen 5600 CPU and a Radeon RX 6600 XT 8GB GPU, and you’ve decided to increase our budget by 100 euros.
Where should you spend it?
You could upgrade the CPU to a Ryzen 7600, which is overall much faster than the Ryzen 5600, but at this level of GPU performance it would only give you a small FPS gain, because your GPU is the limiting factor, not the CPU.
So you’ve just spent your extra 100 euros on the Ryzen 7600, not forgetting the extra costs of DDR5 RAM. For around 5% more FPS, it’s not great.
Instead of that, if you spent those extra £100 to upgrade to a RX 6700 XT 12GB while keeping the Ryzen 5600, you would get around 25% more FPS, because you’re spending your money intelligently by upgrading the part that limits your performance. You’re also going from 8GB of VRAM on your GPU to 12GB of VRAM, which ensures you can run all the latest AAA titles at ultra high definition as soon as they release without running into VRAM issues.
And remember that the more you increase the resolution, from 1080p to 1440p to 4K, the more the load on the GPU increases and the less the load on the CPU decreases. So it’s more sensible to upgrade the GPU while taking account of the limitations.
VRAM & overhead, not that minor after all
There are two important areas to consider when it comes to bottlenecking. The first is the VRAM, meaning the amount of video memory available on your GPU, as we’ve already mentioned.
The second thing to consider is the GPU driver overhead. We’ve found in repeated tests that AMD GPUs require fewer CPU resources than Nvidia GPUs, mainly due to driver overhead. While the differences aren’t huge, they’re noticeable with less powerful CPUs.
When it comes to “future-proofing”, it’s important to note that some people still think you need to buy a more powerful CPU than you actually need right now in order to be ready for the future, to get a few more FPS in two to five years when the GPU gets upgraded. However, for most systems, this strategy means sacrificing an entire slice of GPU performance right now. Ultimately, the choice is yours, because it’s your money, but if you want to maximise FPS for the money you spend, focus on current performance.
However, for production or creative workloads that require more CPU power, it’s important to find a balance depending on the programmes you use. For example, when editing video with Adobe Premiere, having more cores is nice, but Premiere tends to use a limited number of cores and threads. As a result, having an overpowered CPU at the expense of the GPU—which is still very necessary for video editing—can actually reduce performance.
Other programmes may use as much CPU resources as you give them, without really using much of the GPU. That’s why it’s important to understand the software you use and their system requirements, so you can find the right balance between CPU and GPU for your application.
The best CPU and GPU combos for gaming in 2023!
Let’s start with the budget tier. You can build a gaming PC for under €500 right now. That’s a budget we don’t really recommend, but if you’re determined, then we really want the cheapest CPU platform that won’t bottleneck our GPU.
For a €500 budget
At the moment, the best options are the Intel i3-1200F and the Ryzen 5500. Both are excellent choices, paired with inexpensive motherboards (£100 for the B660 with the i3-1200F and £80 for the B450 with BIOS flash for the Ryzen 5500). They come with good-quality boxed CPU coolers included, and you can use for both a Corsair DDR4 3600 RAM kit, 2 x 8GB, available for £50. The total cost comes to between £220 and £239. For the GPU, you can go as low as a used RX 570 for around £55, or on the new market: a Radeon RX 6600 for £179, an RTX 3050 for £220, or an Intel Arc A750 for around £220 as well.
Note that the RTX 3050 is considerably less powerful than these other GPUs, and we recommend avoiding any GPU with less than 8GB of VRAM. The i3-1200F and Ryzen 5500 are very capable gaming CPUs, and you can pair them with a RX 6700 XT or a RTX 3060 Ti, or even slightly higher if you find a good deal on a GPU, without needing to upgrade the CPU. In this case, we recommend prioritising getting a newer GPU with more than 8GB of VRAM if possible, especially if you want to play the latest AAA titles at ultra settings.
For a small budget
The higher CPU tier we’d recommend would be either the AMD Ryzen 5600 for €130, or the Intel i5-12400F currently sold for €149. These CPUs deliver almost identical performance, and with a GPU like the RX 6700 XT, you’ll see an increase of around 10 to 12 FPS compared to the previous CPU tier.
For these CPUs, you’ll need a compatible motherboard. For example, for the Ryzen 5600, practically any B550 motherboard with a VRM heatsink will do. For the i5-12400F, you’ll need a Z690 or Z790 motherboard. As for RAM, you can keep using a 2 x 8GB DDR4 3600 Corsair kit for €50. Both CPUs come with good included box coolers. This results in an upgrade cost of €59 to €99 compared to the previous tier for your GPU combo.
For the GPU, we recommend looking at at least an RX 6600, an RTX 3050, or an Arc A750 if buying new. These CPUs scale quite well, but they hit a limit at around the RX 6950 XT or the RTX 4070, and at that point you’ll definitely want to move up to the next CPU performance tier.
Note that if you need more cores for productivity tasks, you could consider the Ryzen 5700X or the Intel i5-13400, or even the 13500. However, they don’t bring much more gaming performance, and there are much better options, as we’ll see later on.
For a mid-range budget
Let’s now move on to mid-range to high-end CPU and GPU combos. We actually have several interesting options here, with current prices. The best options are either AMD’s Ryzen 7600 and 7600X for around €215, or Intel’s i5-13600K or 13600KF with DDR4 RAM for around €290. These CPUs will give you around 25% more FPS with an RX 6950 XT or an RTX 4070 compared to the previous tier. The Ryzen 7600 is the fastest gaming CPU, while the i5-13600K with DDR4 delivers better multi-core performance for production tasks.
For the Ryzen 7600, you can use a cooler like the Deepcool AK-400 for about €30, a B650 motherboard for around €140, and a DDR5 kit of 2 x 16GB (32GB total) Corsair DDR5 5600 for €85. This results in an upgrade cost of €191 to €266 compared to the previous tier for your GPU combo.
For the i5-13600K, you should use a Z690 motherboard with DDR4 and a BIOS update feature for about €160, a 2 x 8GB Corsair DDR4 3600 kit for €50, and a cooler like the Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE for €45. This results in an upgrade cost of €191 to €266 compared to the previous tier for your GPU combo.
For the GPU combo, we recommend at least an RX 7800XT or an RTX 4070. You can go as far as an RX 7900 XTX or an RTX 4090 if you want, because these CPUs can handle them. However, at this stage, if you have money to spend, the only option for more performance will be to upgrade the CPU, because these are currently the fastest GPUs available.
For bigger budgets
Finally, for the best gaming CPUs in 2023, there are plenty of options, but AMD’s most compelling choice is the Ryzen 7800X 3D, currently sold for €430. For Intel, the i7-13700K is currently very fast, but it’s also very expensive. CPU and GPU prices, as well as components like RAM, are continuing to drop in 2023, so keep an eye out.
In conclusion
In summary, choosing the best CPU and GPU combo will depend on your budget and your specific gaming and production needs.
Make sure you understand properly how these components work together and how they affect your overall performance before making your decision.
