Intel Core i5-13400 CPU Is Right On Par With The Core i5-12600K But For Less Money
The PC outlet has currently listed the Intel Core i5-13400(F) and Core i3-13100(F) CPUs which are fully available in stock and available for sale. This makes this retailer one of several in Asia who’s selling Intel’s next-gen lineup prior to their 3rd January embargo. In terms of specifications, the Intel Core i5-13400 CPU features 6 P-Cores and 4 E-Cores which total to 10 cores and 16 threads. The CPU has a base clock speed set to 2.5 GHz and a boost clock speed set to 4.1 GHz across all cores and 4.6 GHz on a single core. The CPU comes with 28 MB of L3 cache and will have a 65W PL1 TDP and a PL2 TDP of around 120W. The CPU should be a hot seller in the budget segment given its performance jump and around $200 US value where Intel’s 12th Gen line already dominates. The CPU performance was measured in various benchmarks such as Cinebench R23, Blender, and the PugetSystem suite which consists of Adobe Premiere and Photoshop apps. In Cinebench, Intel Core i5-13400 was around 10% slower than the Core i5-12600K in multi-threaded and 5% slower in single-threaded workloads. The PugetSystem benchmark showed a less than -5 percent difference in performance while the CPU was 5% slower against the Core i5-12600K in Blender. In terms of power and temperatures, the CPU did run very cool using a stock cooler but the power draw was slightly on the higher side and reached up to 140W on the existing BIOS which is over 2x its 65W PL1 rating. It is reported that motherboard vendors will be releasing a new BIOS at launch which will fix this higher power draw since this is more of a board-related issue rather than a CPU issue. The main question is pricing and we know that the Core i5-12400 was priced around $200 US while the ‘F’ variant was sold for around $170-$180 US. If the same pricing is kept for the Core i5-13400(F) CPUs, it will definitely be a better value than the Core i5-12600K which retails around $240-$250 US at the moment. While this CPU will ship with a box cooler, you can spend the extra cash on a better cooler. Furthermore, the Intel 13th Gen Non-K CPUs will be compatible with newer B760 & cheaper B660 motherboards which are plentiful in the new and user market plus being available in DDR5 & DDR4 flavors gives Intel a massive advantage over AMD’s Ryzen 7000 Non-X CPUs which are going to launch in January too.
