The Ryzen 5 3600 is a reliable, midrange CPU for gaming, and it's marked down right now.

There have been some sweet bargains on AMD silicon lately, like the budget friendly Ryzen 5 2600 that I wrote about yesterday. If you're looking for a Zen 2 deal, however, the Ryzen 5 3600 is down to $174.99, which is 12 percent below its list price (save $24.01).

Picking the best CPU for gaming depends on various factors, such as your overall budget and what kind of performance you're looking for. If you're after a reliable midrange CPU, the Ryzen 5 3600 is certainly worth considering.

The Ryzen 5 3600 is based on AMD's latest generation Zen 2 architecture (7nm). It offers up 6 cores and 12 threads of compute muscle, with a 3.6GHz base clock, 4.2GHz max turbo clock, and 32MB of L3 cache, with a 65W TDP.

You also get a bundled cooler with this CPU—AMD's Wraith Stealth. I'd advise going with a third-party solution if you're looking to push the boundaries with an aggressive overclock, but if sticking at stock settings or going for a mild boost in clockspeed (eg, via PBO, Precision Boost Overdrive), the Wraith Stealth should be good enough.