Intel Core i3-12100 and i5-12400 review: Fast, affordable, and hard to criticize

Enlarge / Intel's 12th-gen Core i3 and i5 CPUs are good options if you want good performance but need to save money. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

It hasn't been a great time to build a computer on a budget. Some of that is due to ongoing supply issues and a particularly nasty GPU shortage (albeit one that may be very gradually easing). And some of it is because the products on offer haven't improved much lately-Intel's best budget and midrange processors were stuck with an aging architecture because of manufacturing problems, and AMD chose to focus on high-end products instead.

In anticipation of AMD's new sub-$200 processors, today we're looking at a pair of Intel's best sub-$200 processors in years. The Core i5-12400 ($210 with a GPU, $180-ish without one) is a six-core processor that offers great performance for budget-minded gaming PCs and anyone who wants to do light photo and video editing work without spending tons of money. And the Core i3-12100 (around $150 with a GPU or $120 without) is a quad-core chip that can handle games when paired with a GPU but is ideally suited for browsing, office work and schoolwork, video calls, and anything else you might want from a basic desktop in a home office setup.

Performance and power efficiency

We're primarily comparing the Core i3-12100 and Core i5-12400 to their immediate predecessors: the Core i3-10100, the Core i5-10400, and the Core i5-11400. We also threw in the Ryzen 5 3600 as a comparison point, which used to sell for $200 but hasn't been widely available at that price for a while; comparisons to the newer Ryzen 5 5500 and 5600 CPUs will follow after those chips have been released.

Read 17 remaining paragraphs | Comments