Best processors 2018: top CPUs for your PC

Back in 2017, when Intel’s Coffee Lake and AMD’s Ryzen CPUs made it out in the wild, the long-standing stagnation in the CPU world ceased overnight. Now, the longstanding competition between these two tech behemoths has been fully reignited, and Intel and AMD are at each other’s throats, competing for your interest. Thankfully, out of this competition, the best processors that have ever existed were born, and there’s never been a better time to upgrade to one of the best chips on the market.

Now that AMD is ready to release its follow-up to the extremely successful Ryzen CPUs and Intel is even getting ready to release a new line of CPUs that feature discrete Radeon RX Vega graphics, it’s an extremely exciting time to buy one of the best processors. However, due to their very nature, the market for the best processors is volatile to say the least. It can be a little intimidating to anyone who isn’t used to the ups and downs when it comes to CPU prices. Luckily, we here at TechRadar have your back – we’ve created a list of the best processors that we’ve used and reviewed, and have even included our exclusive price comparison tool, so you know you’re getting the best price.

In 2018, there is a chance for everyone to get their hands on one of the best processors – regardless of budget. Both AMD and Intel are offering a wide range of CPUs in every shape and size. Even if you can’t get your hands on one of the newest CPUs on the market, there are still plenty of great Kaby Lake processors that are more than worth it. So, no matter what you’re looking to do – whether you’re a bleeding-edge enthusiast or someone who just wants something that works – this competition and innovation means everyone’s a winner.

Trust us, we get it. You pull up Amazon or Newegg, looking for the best processor for gaming, and immediately you’re flooded with a wave of confusing model numbers. This confusion is natural and is an unfortunate side effect of the booming CPU market. Fortunately, TechRadar has your back – we’ve created this list of the best processors available in 2018. Every single chip on this list was tested and reviewed by us, so you can be confident that they’ll be worth your time and money. So, sit back, relax and get ready to realize PC performance you’ve previously only dreamed of.

During the Coffee Lake-S launch, Intel claimed that it’d be giving us its best gaming processor ever; they weren’t wrong. This ’K’ series chip decimates AMD’s flagship in almost every way possible. Abandoning the company’s invisible rule to keep processors sporting over four cores out of the hands of the mainstream, the i7-8700K makes hexa-core the new vogue.

Read our full review: Intel Core i7-8700K

When AMD released its Zen architecture-based Ryzen chips back in June, they relied on the promise of a price-to-performance ratio that finally knock Intel off of their untouchable throne. Simultaneously, however, they fell quite short of Intel in terms of raw horsepower. That all changed overnight with the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X, a chunk of silicon that’s not only a better value than Intel’s Core i9-7900X, but it’s also easier to anchor into the socket of any x399 motherboard.

Read the full review: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that with its mid-range chip, AMD offers more cores for less money when compared to Intel. While in year’s past this has equated to making compromises in other areas to keep the costs low, the Ryzen 5 1600X remains economical without being shown up. After all, operating with six cores and 12 threads, there’s no shame in a 3.6GHz base frequency, not to mention the 4.0GHz boost in addition to overclocking capabilities.

Read the full review: AMD Ryzen 5 1600X

Many people will assume that because it requires discrete GPU to use, the AMD Ryzen 3 1300X is built solely for gaming. Once you drop your assumptions, though, you’ll see it as the little processor that could. That’s because, at a price that’s the definition of reasonable, you’re getting a chip that’s 53% faster at encoding video than the Intel Core i3-7350K in Handbrake and – with the right GPU attached – can easily help you attain 60 frames per second in Overwatch.

Read the full review: AMD Ryzen 3 1300X

Like the 7700K that preceded it on this list, the Intel Core i5-7600K is an unlocked, overclockable quad-core processor from Intel. However, it also suffers from the same integral shortcoming; that is that it’s barely an upgrade over the i5-6600K. Be that as it may, squeezing out only 300MHz over its precursor brings it nearly in line with the last-gen Core i7-6700K when overclocked. All the while, it won’t put too much of a dent in your budget either.

The primary contender to Intel’s Core i7-7700K, the AMD Ryzen 7 1800X poses a convincing threat to Intel’s flagship. While it’s unfortunately more expensive than the 7700K, uncharacteristic for the oft value-focused Red Team, the Ryzen 7 1800X most certainly keeps up with some of Intel’s older chips. Plus, unlike the Core i7-5960X and -6700K it most intimately rivals, the AMD Ryzen 7 1800X is much more qualified for VR now and into the future.

Read the full review: AMD Ryzen 7 1800X

The naming convention is confusing, given that the Intel Core i7-7820X is part of Intel’s “Skylake-X” series rather than the X-class chips built on the 14nm Kaby Lake node, but semantics matter very little when you get to go hands-on with an Intel CPU boasting this many cores. Although the fact that you’ll need a new motherboard to use this octa-core monster might be enough to scare some users off to Ryzen, Intel loyalists shan’t mind the upgrade.

Intel's 18-core processor is all about brute force. With the ability to kick up all of its cores to 4.8GHz (by our testing at least), this monstrous CPU brings performance to a new level of insanity. The only caveats are this processor power draw and price are equally beastly.

Read the full review: Intel Core i9-7980XE

With the amount of money you’ll save by purchasing the Intel Pentium G4560 over a Core i3 chip, we promise you won’t mind the ever-so-slight loss in performance you can expect from this hardy value chip. As the first Pentium processor in quite some time to feature hyper-threading, the G4560 goes out of its way to show us all what we’ve been missing. And, in benchmarks, it proves itself eerily adjacent to the more expensive Intel Core i3-7100.

One of the biggest drawbacks that AMD faced following the release of Ryzen was the fact that even the best processors in the line didn’t support integrated graphics, thus limiting their appeal to anyone trying to build a cheap home theater PC. Thankfully that’s changed. Packed with impressive Vega graphics, the AMD Ryzen 5 2400G is a groundbreaking APU that’s great for anyone who’s looking to build a PC for multimedia viewing – as it will let you enjoy all the 4K content you want without requiring you to purchase a discrete GPU.

Read the full review: AMD Ryzen 5 2400G