CPU

The Central Processing Unit (CPU), is a computer component that performs the bulk of computational work for the PC. It does this by carrying out instructions in a computer program. Due to its role, it is often described as the "brain" of a computer.

A good CPU is essential for workstation tasks such as video editing and music production!

Recommendations (Opinionated)

Gaming

Budget

AMD Ryzen 3 2200G - The best price/performance in the budget gaming CPU market. It is also better at workstation tasks than Intel counterparts!

Intel Core i3-8100 - Costs more than the 2200G, but the better single core performance is beneficial for gaming performance.

Mid Range

AMD Ryzen 5 2600 - The best price/performance of any gaming CPU. It is also competent at workstation tasks!

Intel Core i5-8400 - Costs more than the 2600, but the better single core performance is beneficial for gaming performance.

AMD Ryzen 5 2600X - An alternative to the i5-8400 at the same price. Slightly worse for gaming but significantly better at workstation tasks if you want to do some editing on the side. Since AMD is changing sockets after 2020, money you would have saved from being able to reuse your motherboard does not apply here.

High End

Intel Core i5-9600K - The most powerful i5 which will grant you the best single core performance of any consumer grade CPU. The ideal choice for a high end setup.

Top End

Intel Core i7-8700K - Most games do not utilise more than a few cores and single core performance is not significantly greater than that of an i5 so this is not really worth it. But if you have the money for it, go ahead. It mainly improves workstation task performance over an i5.

Workstation

AMD's Ryzen chips are better at multi-threaded workloads than Intel's Core series chips, making them ideal for workstation tasks. Therefore, this entire section is Ryzen.

Budget

AMD Ryzen 5 2600 - If money is tight a Ryzen 5 is still a good choice and is definitely competent for workstation tasks.

Mid Range

AMD Ryzen 7 2700 - The ideal choice for most consumers.

High End

AMD Ryzen 7 2700X - Not as good of a deal as the non X version, but good if you want that little extra performance.

Top End

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX - Most definitely not worth it for consumers, but the performance is ridiculous.

Intel vs AMD

Intel has historically been the leader in the CPU market by a large margin. However since the release of AMD's Ryzen line of CPUs the story has changed. As of the second generation of Ryzen chips, Ryzen is significantly better at workstation tasks than Intel, and only slightly worse at gaming. Price/performance is better on the AMD front, and since AMD only changes chipsets every couple of generations, you don't need to upgrade your motherboard every time you want to upgrade your CPU, saving you even more money if you choose AMD.

(I realise this is really opinionated so I'll edit it later - Sabine)

Cores & Multithreading

Most modern day CPUs are multi-core. Having more than one core allows the system to run multiple tasks at the same time.

This can be better explained using an analogy. Imagine that a core is a worker in a factory. In this case the worker needs to do multiple tasks in the factory so they rotate, doing each task so they do not spend too much time on a single task. If we were to add more workers, we would be able to do more work if there were tasks the other user could do.

As most games only utilise one or two threads, having more cores does not normally impact gaming performance significantly. An i5 does not perform much worse in gaming than an i7, for example.

Workstation tasks, however, do benefit greatly from having more cores!

32 Bit vs 64 Bit

You might see 32- or 64-bit specified on the end of some installer filenames. This is important as 64-bit programs cannot be run on 32-bit systems.

Higher bit systems and programs are able to address more memory. 32-bit programs, for example, are restricted to 4GB of memory, whereas 64-bit programs can access 16 EXABYTES!!! of memory. Far more than any modern system would have.

Sockets & Chipsets

A CPU must integrate into a motherboard. The socket is the actual pin layout which the CPU connects to. Different sockets will accept different CPUs, for example the TR4 socket will accept Threadripper 1 and Threadripper 2 CPUs.

Intel has a tendency to change sockets with every new CPU generation, requiring consumers to buy a new motherboard when they wish to upgrade their Intel CPU. AMD in comparison tends to change sockets every 3 or 4 generations, allowing consumers to upgrade to a new AMD CPU without needing to buy a new motherboard.

Instruction Sets

A CPU follows instructions to do things. These instructions may be maths operations, memory operations, conditional operations and more. All programs languages are compiled into basic instructions which the CPU executes.

The reason this is important is that you can only run programs that are compiled for your instruction set.

The instruction set which Intel and AMD CPU use is called x86 and x86_64 (a 64-bit extension of the original x86). Another common instruction set is ARM which is is used by most popular smartphone CPUs.

Windows RT and the surface RT is an example of an operating system which which runs on ARM. As the operating system is for ARM, it is unable to run win32 applications (.exe) programs. This is the reason why you need to care about the instruction set.