CPU recommendation for 120 locked gaming

[Iamtheguy]

Hi guys, I recently went from 1440p ultrawide to 1080p viewsonic xg270. Now I found myself CPU limited as much as GPU limited on my old i7 4790k. Given how impossible it is to get a GPU atm, I've decided to upgrade my CPU instead. Which CPU do you recommend for 120fps locked in as many games as possible. I am only using this PC for gaming and my budget is $600 -700 dollars.

[Chief Blur Buster]

Hi guys, I recently went from 1440p ultrawide to 1080p viewsonic xg270. Now I found myself CPU limited as much as GPU limited on my old i7 4790k. Given how impossible it is to get a GPU atm, I've decided to upgrade my CPU instead. Which CPU do you recommend for 120fps locked in as many games as possible. I am only using this PC for gaming and my budget is $600 -700 dollars.

(New user first 3 posts are mod-approved)

You'll want very fast single threads, so any good sale i7 on the 10th or 11th generation with a very high minimum base frequency (preferably in the 4+ GHz base frequency league). Avoid the 20-thread ones, those will be slower base clocks, you'll probably be limited to 4-8 cores/threads, to minimize CPU bottlenecks in most current games.

If you're skimping on cash -- one can also settle for even an older used i7-7740 (4C/8T) that can do a 5GHz all-cores overclock on just common aftermarket watercoolers -- make sure you include a budget for a good-rated prepackaged watercooler.

But I think you can go way newer than that and make sure you are Windows 11 ready, you need 8th gen or newer, aka i7 8000-series and newer...

[Kertwaii]

ryzen 5600x (300$) + almost any b550 board (150$) + good 8x2 gb ddr4 3200 cl14 or 3600 cl16 ram (100$)
Should be the best bang for the buck choice until ddr5 or newer cpus
The only slightly better contenders could be other 5000 series ryzen cpus but they are more expensive and game performance is mostly the same except heavily multithreaded games. Or 10600k/10700k/10850k/10900k but you'll need to OC and have a more expensive motherboard and still the performance will depend by game
There are other cheaper and older options but single thread will be weaker
Check gamersnexus/anandtech/techpowerup comparison benchmarks to make your choice