Even though AMD's Ryzen 5 2600 is an older generation silicon slice, it remains one of the best CPUs for gaming if you are assembling a budget PC. That was true even before the price dropped, and especially true now with the latest discounts.

Newegg has the Ryzen 5 2600 for $119.99. Apply coupon code "EMCDFDM34" at checkout for an even better deal: $10 off to $109.99.

This CPU is well worth the price: it's a 6-core/12-thread processor with a base clock of 3.4 GHz and a boost clock of 3.9 GHz. It also has 16MB of L3 cache and a 65W TDP. In our experience, this chip can typically achieve 4GHz on all cores (and perhaps a bit more) if one is willing to overclock.

Despite being a cheap CPU, you can build a respectable gaming PC around this chip. How respectable depends on how much you invest in the GPU. A top-class graphics card may seem like an odd combination, but with a 2080 Ti, some of the fastest CPUs for gaming outperform the 2600 by 10 to 25 percent at 1080p ultra resolution (depending on the chip). That way, you won't be able to tell the difference except by running benchmarks.