Today is a big day for AMD: the Ryzen 5000 series has been released to retailers with much anticipation. But if you don't need the latest and greatest, you'd be wise to look on the web for deals on slightly older hardware. I mean, Amazon is selling the 9700K for $282.99 right now.

This is about $100 less than Intel's recommended custom price. Since it is no longer worth that much and has recently dropped to around $300, Jacob asks the question, "Should I buy an Intel Core i7 9700K?" [Intel is moving to Comet Lake and will release Rocket Lake next year. But the 9700K (Coffee Lake) is still the better performing CPU. It has been overshadowed by new silicon, but it wasn't that long ago that it was Intel's second best desktop processor. And now it is selling for the lowest price ever.

What you get with the 9700K is 8 cores and 8 threads running at 3.6 GHz to 4.9 GHz (no hyperthreading, unfortunately), 12 MB of L3 cache, and a 95 W TDP. The newer Core i7 10700K (one of the best CPUs for gaming) has hyperthreading, so it has 8 cores and 16 threads, but is also nearly $100 more expensive.

Nevertheless, if you are primarily concerned with single-threaded performance, a 6-core/12-thread Ryzen 5 5600X ($299) with a B550 or X570 motherboard would be a wise choice. You can also build around an 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 3700X (about $305) to get an upgrade path to Zen 3. And the $282.99 9700K is definitely the one to go for, with strong single-threaded performance for gaming and very good multi-threaded performance.