AMD's 6-core Ryzen 3600 is on sale for $175 today

There have been some sweet bargains on AMD silicon lately, like the budget friendly Ryzen 5 2600 that I wrote about yesterday. If you're looking for a Zen 2 deal, however, the Ryzen 5 3600 is down to $174.99, which is 12 percent below its list price (save $24.01).

Picking the best CPU for gaming depends on various factors, such as your overall budget and what kind of performance you're looking for. If you're after a reliable midrange CPU, the Ryzen 5 3600 is certainly worth considering.

The Ryzen 5 3600 is based on AMD's latest generation Zen 2 architecture (7nm). It offers up 6 cores and 12 threads of compute muscle, with a 3.6GHz base clock, 4.2GHz max turbo clock, and 32MB of L3 cache, with a 65W TDP.

You also get a bundled cooler with this CPU—AMD's Wraith Stealth. I'd advise going with a third-party solution if you're looking to push the boundaries with an aggressive overclock, but if sticking at stock settings or going for a mild boost in clockspeed (eg, via PBO, Precision Boost Overdrive), the Wraith Stealth should be good enough.

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).