Thank you Ryzen for taking Intel out of the quad core dark ages, It was the greatest gaming CPU at the time and I OC'ed it to 4.9ghz without too much problem. Only real issues is that my only upgrade on this platform is a 9900k which isn't that much better in gaming.

Quick to shred through any workload I throw at it. As a former low end gamer (some might argue THIS is also low end lol), I only know low end titles, so I couldn't really stress test to the very extreme.

So far, it's never bottlenecked on anything. If you can pick it up for cheaper/same price as a 3600, it would make for a great value build.

Breath of fresh air after years of Quad-Core i7s.

Solid cpu, cant complain about it at all

This is a really solid CPU, Intel did a great job here. The only thing I dislike is it holds back the GPU but that's because this an older CPU paired with a 4080!

This is the CPU that brought Intel out of the dark days of quad-core i7s and into the age of some halfway modern processing power. A great CPU in its day and aged like fine wine. Still plenty powerful for the vast majority of users today, on par with or slightly better than a Ryzen 3600X at stock and much more tunable.

Pros: Good performance, proven platform, durable. Early (pre-8086K) examples in particular are supremely overclockable.

Cons: A little picky about memory, thermal issues caused by TIM drying up requiring a delid on severely degraded examples, i7 tax on the used market, high power draw compared to more modern Ryzen equivalents.

If you get a good deal on a used one of these, go for it! It'll do well for a gamer or someone looking to build a cheap home workstation, even half a decade on from its release.

Been bulletproof for 4-5 years now. Have it overclocked to 4.8 Ghz don't really remember the settings it has been 4 years since i oced. Pretty awesome still running great just wish I had more cores.

Still does what I need it to do in 2023.

Very good, has withstood the test of time, can take everything with ease.

Easy upgrade, more for fun than anything. Bought it used for cheap. Came from an i5-8600 nonK.