Best CPUs for Windows 11 in 2024

AMD’s CPUs, which have continually been improving or providing the best value for money since the launch of Ryzen.

These CPUs can be considered ‘best all rounders’, as even my 2700X from 2018 is still doing ridiculously well compared to other PCs made at the time.

As of right now, for regular humans and not weird nerds who need the most out of a piece of silicon (I’d go look up the 5900X and 5950X for that sort of stuff), AMD’s 5600X is by far and away from the best value for the power that it can put out.

Sitting around £260/$300, this Zen 3 CPU is both a fantastic upgrade for those on older hardware and an excellent starting point for entirely new builds.

Performance across the board when it comes to gaming is top-notch and can even beat 10th gen Intel CPUs at similar price points when it comes to creative work thanks to AMD’s multi-threaded performance. While it’s marketed more towards gaming, this CPU can absolutely do some light creative work in Photoshop and similar level programs.

The biggest downside to the newer Gen 3 Ryzens is that they all seem to lack an integrated graphics card, so when installing you’ll absolutely need a discrete GPU – which if you’re building or upgrading, you probably already have covered.

Recommending Intel CPUs is a little weird at the moment. The Blue Team have found themselves a little lagging behind in both performance and technology, as their incessant need to do everything themselves has rendered their current architecture a bit outdated in comparison to say, AMD’s Ryzen.

However, we wouldn’t be doing a Best CPU review if we didn’t intend to give you the skinny on just about everything CPU, would we?

Please bear in mind that if you’re on the 10th or 9th generation of Intel, just disregard this bit and maybe consider holding on until they release something worth upgrading to. The power differences between 9th, 10th and 11th are minuscule for those that just want to game and use their PC in a regular way. For someone like me, who edits video with hefty amounts of terribly daft VFX, if I was considering Intel, I’d be looking at the most recent generation anyway – it covers all bases.

While I’m recommending you stay on 9th or 10th generation CPUs, be aware that PCIe 4.0 isn’t supported on them and only on 11th and any future upgrades that come around, so if you have any intentions of slotting in high-speed SSDs or potential future GPU upgrades, just keep this in mind.

The Intel i5 11600K is absolutely the best bet here. While the performance differences between this and its previous generation aren’t massive leaps, the ability to use PCIe 4.0 is probably just enough to squeak it out.

Okay, money is no object and you’re absolutely gunning for the best CPU overall. In our Motherboard round-up for Windows 11, we mentioned Threadripper for creatives, but of course, Threadripper can be used on anything really. It’s not like Quadro graphics cards, where NVIDIA design them specifically for other means instead of gaming,

So here’s the deal: the AMD Threadripper 3990X is overkill. In price, performance and more, if you’re just going to use it for gaming.

Threadripper prides itself on its multicore infrastructure and today’s games aren’t really designed with using the vast power of this particular CPU, so it will be wasted potential and in some cases, cash.

However, if you’re streaming, making things in DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Pro, After Effects or even designing games yourself and need the quickest PC possible, then after 5 pm you clock out and get into some gaming yourself, this is absolutely the processor you want to go for.

Multiple companies that build PCs will always have a Threadripper variation of their AMD builds as a ‘best available’ sort of option.

These aren’t cheap though and the motherboards needed do have their own special slot – AM4 boards will not work – so you’ll be shelling out a little extra on top of the gargantuan price of the CPU itself.

But like we’ve said, if you’re creative, don’t sleep on the Threadripper, especially if your work is incredibly taxing – like rendering – and you need to work through a lot of it.

So here’s the weird thing, in our motherboard article, we fell back on some older motherboards to show you what would still work with Windows 11, but with CPUs, the current selection is actually a fairly broad spectrum of price ranges and performance. There’s rarely a need to actually recommend anything ‘old’ in a budgetary sense, as the ‘old’ CPUs can sometimes actually be still in line price-wise with their replacements.

A 10th generation Intel i7 is still £300 in some places, while the 11th gen, i5-11400 is only around £170. While the performance overall will be a gap, you have to remember that this is half the price and makes for a perfect budget entry.

With no K on the end of the name though, it means you won’t be able to overclock it, but at the price, it currently sits and for the performance, let’s be honest, when it comes time to upgrade you’ll probably just replace this one instead of trying to fend off another purchase in a few years by potentially setting fire to yourself.

If you’re gaming at 1440p or 1080p, you’ll find plenty to love when paired with the graphics card.