In late May, Intel stepped on the gas and released not one, not two, but an entirely new stack of 10th Generation "Comet Lake-S" desktop processors, including the company's top entry into the midrange-enthusiast/mainstream segment, the Core i5-10600K.
This processor carries the "K" moniker, which indicates that it is unlocked for overclocking.
It's born into a tough spot, though: Its high price (expected to be around $275; more on that in a bit) and the shape of the competition may offset whatever gains you might eke from your tweaks.
If you want the fastest midrange gaming chip out there, from a pure high-refresh-gaming perspective, the Intel Core i5-10600K is technically the CPU for you.
But on actual value and real-world usage, it can't quite compete with what AMD's already laid out on the table.
We haven't had the opportunity to test the not-unlocked Core i5-10600, also released as part of this wave, but we suspect that chip may carry better value for the money if you're not insistent on overclocking.
(It has a likely estimated price of about $50 less, though a much lower base clock.)
The Core i5-10600K: Tough Ryzens on Both Sides
We have a full breakdown of the larger Intel 10th Generation stack and all the new (read: relatively few) features that are coming along with it on a platform basis; you can check those out in our review of the flagship Intel Core i9-10900K here.
In short? The company has crammed a few more cores into various tiers of its lineup while slightly dropping the price.
But overall, the cost of upgrading to the overclocker-friendly Z490 platform is a concern versus AMD and its mature AM4 socket, for which you may already own a compatible motherboard.
(Cheap AM4 options abound, too.) The initial Z490 boards tend to be deluxe models, though cheaper B460, H470, and H410 boards are imminent.
That said, this K chip is meant to be paired with a robust mainboard, if you're buying it for the tweaking.
So that means Z490.
The key chips on the AMD side of the aisle competing against the Core i5-10600K are AMD's Ryzen 5 3600 and Ryzen 5 3600X.
Here's a quick summary of the three chips' main differences...
One thing we didn't chart here is the process technology.
This Core i5, like all of the other 10th Generation Intel Comet Lake-S chips, is based on the chip maker's 14nm lithography, in a further refinement dubbed "14nm++." That's in contrast to the 7nm "Zen 2" process AMD has employed since mid-2019 in its newest Ryzens.
The Intel Core i5-10600K is a six-core/12-thread CPU with an Intel UHD Graphics 630 integrated graphics processor (IGP), a rather high TDP of 125 watts, and a 4.1GHz base clock.
Intel claims the chip is capable of hitting 4.8GHz on both single-core and all-core tasks.
It, like the rest of Intel's 10th Generation Core i5s, doesn't support the Turbo Boost Max 3.0 or Thermal Velocity Boost features we saw in the Core i9-10900K.
The chip is compatible only with Intel's also-new LGA 1200 socket, which will be the centerpoint of new Z490, H410, B460, and H470 motherboards.
The thing to bear in mind here, however, is that if you are opting for the i5-10600K with the express aim of overclocking, you will want to opt for a Z490 board, which will have the "K" chip support for overclocking and, with better boards, the more robust power handling needed to push a 125-watt CPU like this one to the limit.
These boards started at about $160 at this writing and rose steadily from there.
One thing to note in passing which we discuss in more detail in our Core i9-10900K review: These boards do not gain you support for higher-bandwidth PCI Express 4.0.
AMD's newest X570 boards for its latest Ryzens, in contrast, do.
Many of the new Z490 boards come "PCI Express 4.0 ready," in essence suggesting that PCIe 4.0 support will come with next-generation LGA 1200 chips (code-named "Rocket Lake-S"); Intel would not confirm that.
But a substantial investment in a 10th Generation chip might mean the need to buy a new Rocket Lake chip when the time comes if you want to gain support for that new, faster bus.
(It's mostly of interest now only to shoppers looking for bleeding edge speed from a PCI Express 4.0 M.2 SSD.)
One additional important point of conversation in this tier (less so for processors like the Core i9-10900K), is the inclusion of the UHD Graphics 630 IGP silicon on the Core i5-10600K.
Both Ryzen processors lack any form of IGP, which means you'll need to have a discrete video card factored into the cost of your build or upgrade.
Some casual gamers at this level look for CPUs that can also carry their graphical workload, although we wouldn't recommend going that route for any longer than you have to.
(Most UHD Graphics 630-reliant chips can't do more than 50 frames per second in games like Fortnite at 1080p, and that game will run on almost anything modern.) Note that Intel also offers processors in its 10th Generation line that end in "F," which are slightly cheaper than their non-F equivalents but have the IGP disabled.
If you know you'll only ever use your CPU with a discrete video card, you could opt for one of these F-chips and save a few bucks.
But the savings isn't huge.
Pricing is also a thorny issue between the i5-10600K, its lesser 10th Gen Core i5 kin, and the Ryzen 5 competition.
We decided to list the current street prices for the two Ryzens rather than AMD's MSRP (list price) because—surprise, surprise!—prices changed a bit right as the Intel chips launched.
The cost of AMD's most competitive CPUs dropped across a wide range of online retailers we surveyed, in anticipation of the launch.
The other reason our price distinction is important: The only pricing we have seen for the Core i5-10600K at this writing is in "RCP Per 1K" prices, provided by Intel, which only tells the story of how much the CPUs will cost if you order 1,000 or more units at once—far from a normal scenario for most users.
Usually the ultimate figure is slightly higher than that for one-off buys by end users.
It's expected that retailers will charge closer to $275 for the Core i5-10600K out the door, and if that holds, at current pricing that would make it at least 20 to 30 percent more expensive than its closest AMD equivalent, the six-core/12-thread Ryzen 5 3600X.
(Possibly a lot more; we saw the $200 3600X price listed earlier at two mainstream etailers at this writing.) Again, that is not too surprising considering the huge leaps that AMD made alongside TSMC in bringing the cost per core of the latest "Zen 2"-based Ryzens down to levels designed to make Intel sweat.
Putting the Core i5-10600K on the Bench: Test System, Cooling Details
We tested the Core i5-10600K on an Asus ROG Maximus XII Hero (Wi-Fi) motherboard, with 16GB of G.Skill memory clocked to 3,000MHz (for comparability with our earlier CPU reviews), and an Intel SATA boot SSD paired with an ADATA SATA M.2 secondary drive.
All this was packed in ADATA's XPG Invader chassis, fitted with a Deepcool GamerStorm Captain 240 EX 240mm liquid cooler and a 750-watt Corsair power supply.
For our gaming tests, we used an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, at Founders Edition clocks, as we have on all recent mainstream and high-end CPU reviews.
Unlike most of Intel's mainstream CPU line, the Core i5-10600K is one of the few that does not bundle an Intel stock cooler in the box.
We suspect a high-end air cooler or a liquid cooler for this chip and its 125-watt TDP is in order if you intend to tweak.
Indeed, you'll have to splash out for something.
(A 240mm cooler like we used in our tests will set you back at least $100 or so, unless you own one already.) That said, LGA 1200 works with coolers designed for other recent Intel mainstream chip sockets, such as LGA 1151 and LGA 1156.
So you may be able to repurpose an Intel cooler you own.
The lack of a boxed cooler here is in marked contrast to the various Ryzens on either side of it, which bundle one of AMD's serviceable Wraith air coolers right in the box, for some potential further savings.
(In the current Ryzen line, only the top mainstream model, the much costlier Ryzen 9 3950X, comes cooler-less.)
CPU-Centric Tests: AMD Puts Up a Fierce Fight
First, some performance preface.
We noted some more "teething" with this prelaunch testing session than with most new-platform-launch CPU reviews.
We suspect most of this wobble will clear with early BIOS updates; we can't help but think with the COVID-19 crisis and all of the disruption it has caused to commerce and business, that a smooth-as-glass launch could hardly be immune to at least a few hiccups.
We started our testing with a Gigabyte Z490 Aorus Master board provided by Intel with the chip samples, but we had difficulties getting the board to install Windows 10 on a couple of SATA SSDs; the install would fail, with the PC shutting down and rebooting partway through the Windows 10 setup process for reasons we were unable to diagnose.
We ended up settling on the Asus ROG Maximus XII Hero board as our alternate tester.
(We detailed the same issue in our review of the Core i9-10900K; we tried the Windows 10 install with each chip installed in turn, thinking that swapping out the chip might clear the issue, but we saw the same result with both i9 and i5 on that board.)
Also note: The Asus board received a couple of BIOS updates in the course of our testing, one of them (version 0509) coming so close to the launch that we were able to install it just two days before the launch date and rerun our tests, invalidating all our earlier results.
(It cleared up some thermal anomalies we noted in early tests, though.)
Cinebench R15 and R20
Among the most widely used predictors of a CPU's relative performance are the Cinebench R15 and R20 benchmark tests, which offer a good muscle measure for demanding multi-threaded content-creation apps.
These are thoroughly CPU-centric tests that gauge both the single-core performance and the multicore performance of a processor when it is stressed.
The resulting scores are proprietary numbers that represent the CPU's capabilities while rendering a complex 3D image.
Intel itself has been de-emphasizing Cinebench as a core benchmarking utility for the last few launches, but looking at these results, the tests don't cast the 10600K in a bad light.
Right out of the gate, the Core i5-10600K scores are almost right in range with what's meant to be its direct competition, the Ryzen 3600X.
But then, you have to remember the price difference between the two.
Also worth noting: what the step-up eight-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 3700X was going for at this writing.
(It was widely available for $289 to $329 from the big etailers.) Suddenly, our enthusiasm for the latest Ryzens makes a bit more sense? If you render graphics or work in the VFX field, AMD's answers will be the better value.
One note in the CPU tests: Watch the scores of the Ryzen 5 3400G.
This is an AMD "APU," or CPU with onboard graphics.
Remember our discussion about the UHD Graphics 630 IGP in the Core i5-10600K, and how the Ryzen 5 3600 and 3600X require a video card because they lack an IGP? The Ryzen 5 3400G is the closest equivalent AMD mainstream CPU with onboard IGP.
(It uses older "Zen+" process tech, not Zen 2.) As you'll see, it is a lot weaker than the Core i5.
(Mind you, it's also just $150, with four cores/eight threads, versus the 6/12 on the Core i5.)
iTunes
For another kind of real-world look at single-core performance, we use a very vintage version of Apple's iTunes to encode a series of music tracks.
It remains in our test lineup simply as a representative of legacy software that we all use from time to time that has not been optimized for multicore operation.
Intel won't take a loss lying down, and once again the company proves that even against more expensive AMD processors, the Core i5-10600K is the superior single-core engine of the bunch. (If that is what you are looking for.)
POV-Ray
The POV-Ray benchmark is a synthetic, highly threaded rendering test that offers a second opinion on the Cinebench results.
This test uses ray tracing to render (offscreen) a three-dimensional image.
(Note that it doesn't use the ray tracing features of Nvidia's RTX-class GPUs; this is purely CPU-focused.) We run all-cores and single-core variants.
The all-cores run shows the Ryzen 5 below and the Ryzen 7 above both beating the Core i5-10600K, though the single-core results are again all Intel's.
Handbrake and Blender
As an all-core rendering benchmark, the Handbrake test is a great indicator of how well a processor will handle tasks like video editing, video rendering, and video conversion.
These kinds of apps tend to make good use of all the cores and threads they can grab...
Handbrake tests shows the Intel Core i5-10600K keeping a regular pace with its AMD equivalents, but it yet again is shown up by the Ryzen 7 3700X at a percentage (the i5 taking 33 percent longer) out of sync with the modest price difference (the Ryzen 7 being about 20 percent more expensive) between the two chips.
Two more cores and four more threads help the Ryzen 7 a lot in tests like these.
Meanwhile, the shorter Blender test, as run with our test file, is mostly useful for highlighting the differences between low-end and high-end chips, and the similarities between chips within these two categories.
Here the Core i5-10600K does manage to beat the Ryzen 5 series chips by a hair, but that hair is equally as thin between itself and the Ryzen 7 3700X.
7-Zip
And here we have the 7-Zip file-compression benchmark, another thread-happy, CPU-intensive task...
In this test, the Ryzen 5 3600, Ryzen 5 3600X, and the Core i5-10600K are effectively in a three-way dead heat...and then the Ryzen 7 3700X shows up and dominates any value-proposition argument that the Core i5-10600K might have started to make with this bench.
Gaming in the Midrange: Core i5-10600K Frame Rates
Here's what we saw in our bank of gaming tests with our GeForce RTX 2080 Ti card running the show.
This top-end consumer graphics card is the primary limiter of performance at 4K with all of the CPUs that we have laid out below, but at 1080p, the card gets out of the way a bit more and lets the CPU differences shine.
Given its strong single-core chops (Intel's last signature move left at 14nm), it's not a shock to see the Core i5-10600K lead the AMD field here at 1080p.
As expected, at 4K with this card, it's all on the graphics card; the differences at that resolution are essentially...
