The best CPU below $100

[plonk420]

maybe Phenom II X6 at the oldest? you want to at LEAST come close to a Nehalem, otherwise you're probably just wasting electricity... if you're DEAD SET on an FX, maybe undervolt and underclock it to under 120-150 watts full draw...

[Dirk Broer]

maybe Phenom II X6 at the oldest? you want to at LEAST come close to a Nehalem, otherwise you're probably just wasting electricity... if you're DEAD SET on an FX, maybe undervolt and underclock it to under 120-150 watts full draw...

Phenom II X6 as oldest means you say goodbye to anything older than AM3 altogether -which in the long run certainly is the right approach. If possible, one should try to go for the TR4 platform, and if that is out of reach the Socket AM4 6-core Ryzen 5 and 8-core Ryzen 7 are a good alternative. For AM4 APUs nothing beats the Ryzen 5 2400G at the moment. The non-hyperthreaded Ryzen 3 2200G APU can already be bought slightly above 100 Euro's at he moment here.

And mind you: the Phenom II X6 1100T might draw just as much juice out of the wall as a FX 8350...here they are compared by CPU-World