Technology & Positioning
The Intel Core i3-14100 was announced in January this year at CES, Las Vegas. It is the company's most affordable Core 14th Gen processor, priced at just $140. Only the Intel 300 (Celeron equivalent) is cheaper, but it's a dual-core design. The quad-core Core i3-14100 is sold under the "Raptor Lake" architecture, but technically it uses the same die as the older Alder Lake Core i3's—the H0 die. It is fabricated using Intel 10 nanometer "Intel 7" process and features 12 MB L3 cache, support for both DDR4 and DDR5 memory and boost clocks of up to 4.7 GHz. The TDP is set to 60 W.

Application Performance
This is our second review using the new 2024 CPU Test Suite, which runs the newest versions of our apps and includes new workloads, mostly for AI-related tasks, which are becoming more and more important every day. Averaged over these 49 tests, the Intel Core i3-14100 offers a 10% performance advantage over the Core i3-12100F, mostly due to higher boost frequencies of 4.7 GHz, or +400 MHz. This means the gap to the six-core i5-12400F shrinks to just 17%. AMD's contemporary Ryzen offerings are all faster than the 14100 though. For example, the Ryzen 5 5600X is 16% faster, the 8500G is 23% ahead and the 7600 has almost 50% higher performance. Specifically, for an entry-level processor like the i3-14100, single-threaded performance is important, as most everyday applications are single-threaded or use only a few cores. Users of these CPUs generally run software such as Microsoft Office, Adobe productivity tools, web browsers, and media players, which don't rely heavily on multi-threading. With its high boost frequencies, the i3-14100 excels in these tasks, often surpassing many of its competitors.

Gaming Performance
We recently tested the Ryzen 5 8500G, which limits performance with a discrete graphics card due to its narrow PCIe 4.0 interface, which supports only a x4 lane configuration, even when used with an electrically x16 slot. The i3-14100 doesn't have any such limitations, just like all other LGA1700 CPUs, it supports GPUs running at PCIe x16, up to Gen 5. Our gaming results confirm that the 14100 can match the 6c/12t Ryzen 8500G, and other competing processors are close enough that there won't be a substantial difference in the experience they provide. The 14100 is actually a very capable gaming CPU, which can be paired with any graphics card—it will run 1440p and 4K just fine. If you look at our results, take a look at the 11600K, which is an older 6-core design—the 14100 easily keeps up with that, even in minimum FPS. The next big upgrade for gaming perf is something like 12700K, 5800X3D, or Ryzen 7600—but these are much more expensive than the i3-14100. For gaming, too, low-threaded clocks matter, which is why the 14100 can do so well here. If your focus is on gaming with a discrete graphics card, definitely do consider the i3-14100F, which is identical to the 14100, except that it doesn't come with integrated graphics but lets you save $15, or 10%.

Integrated Graphics
The Core i3-14100 includes an iGPU, but it's a very weak model with only 24 CUs. While adequate for tasks like productivity, internet browsing, and media playback, it's not suitable for gaming, except for very old titles. For instance, even at lowest settings and 720p resolution, Counter-Strike 2 only reaches 16 FPS—not even close to "playable." Out of nine titles tested, three didn't start or crashed during startup. AMD's Ryzen 7000 processors also have an iGPU, marketed as "enough to light up a display, not for gaming," and even those are 50% faster than the i3-14100's iGPU. Although AMD's APUs have more powerful integrated graphics, they still aren't suitable for serious gaming in my opinion. The performance difference compared to even the slowest dedicated graphics cards is significant. For example, the GTX 1630 achieves 50 FPS where the i3-14100 gets 11 FPS, the RX 6400 reaches 74 FPS, and the GTX 1060 hits 77 FPS—and still none of these cards are known for being able to deliver great performance. At this point, it's probably smarter to buy a game console from Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo for a more enjoyable gaming experience.

Power Consumption
Since it's based on the same H0 Alder Lake silicon as the Core i3-12100, we didn't expect miracles from the Core i3-14100. It is an energy-efficient design that makes do with very little power. During gaming and applications it consumes around 40 W, which isn't much. When running heavy multithreaded apps, the processor can hit its 60 W power limit, which justifies increasing or removing the power limits for such demanding workloads. That doesn't mean that the processor is power-constrained or crippled at all, most of the time the default limit is good enough. Energy efficiency in single-threaded apps is very good, but lower than the 12100F, because the higher boost clocks require higher voltage, which doesn't translate 1:1 into performance gained—it's still the right design choice in my opinion. AMD's Ryzen 5 8500G offers substantially better energy efficiency in all scenarios, because it was developed from the ground up for thin-and-light notebooks. Given the lower overall power levels of both processors I don't think that's a dealbreaker though, but it shows what's possible with the right technology.

Cooling Requirements
Cooling such a minimal heat output is quite easy. Unlike many other processors, Intel does include a basic heatsink with the CPU, which helps bring down total system cost. While not that powerful, the cooler is sufficient for the heat generated as our tests show—there is no thermal throttling, unless your case has terrible ventilation. This is good news for builders on a budget or people who want to set up a small form factor machine. While the stock cooler will reach 70°C+ under full load that's not a problem at all, the thermal cutoff is still far away from that. Using a high-end air cooler like the Noctua D15 results in CPU temperatures that are among the lowest we've ever seen, which allows you to dial back the fan speed for a quieter experience.

Overclocking
Unlike AMD Ryzen CPUs, Intel is pretty strict with locking their non-K processor models down. There is no multiplier based overclocking on the 14100 and BCLK overclocking is limited to 102.9 MHz. With 12th Gen processors like the 12100F you could raise BCLK sky-high to reach 5 GHz+ OCs—Intel killed that with 13th and 14th Gen. Still, the extra 3 MHz on BCLK do help slightly, especially when paired with higher power limits. Do make sure to check your actual multipliers when going that route. In my testing the CPU lowered its maximum multiplier from x45 to x44 unless the multipliers were set manually. No idea why that's the case, not even sure if it's a bug or feature to discourage overclocking. Either way, with Intel losing competitiveness fast, maybe it's time to reconsider all these artificial product limitations and segmentations and just give customers what they want?

Pricing & Alternatives
The Intel Core i3-14100 is currently listed online for $140, which is a pretty low price point for a LGA1700 quad-core processor. At this price point it's a great choice to just get a machine up and running for light loads. If you don't need the integrated GPU, then consider the 14100F, which is just $125. On the other hand, spending an extra $15 to have an option to run without a graphics card for debugging/during RMA/upgrades could be worth it. While the price of 14100 is certainly decent, it's not low enough to make it a no-brainer, there's lots of competition. The strongest Intel alternative is the 12100F, which sells for just $85 and offers performance that's close enough for most purposes. The money saved could go to a faster graphics card, for example, or a bigger SSD. If lower power usage is very important for you, then the Ryzen 8500G could be an option, but at $160 it's more expensive and has a considerably slower PCIe interface—I'm not convinced. If your focus is on multithreaded applications, then it might be worth to look at the Intel 12400F ($105) or the 13400F ($170), which both offer higher core counts, but you need applications that can spin up additional threads to use them. Actually, the i3-12400F is what I would buy if I wanted an affordable entry-level system based on Intel LGA1700—you save $35 and get two more cores, but lose 300 MHz max boost and the integrated graphics, which is a reasonable tradeoff for me. On the AMD side my favorite is the Ryzen 5 5600X, which sells for just $135, yet offers a 6c/12t design with a bit higher performance (but not +50% as the core count would suggest). The 5600X supports DDR4 exclusively, which could come in handy if you have an existing DDR4 setup and want to upgrade without buying new DDR5 memory. While the i3-14100 does support both DDR4 and DDR5, there is a percent performance hit of a few percent when using the older memory standard. If you have the money, then an AMD Socket AM5 platform with Ryzen 7600 ($190) could be an interesting choice, especially looking forward, because AMD guarantees socket compatibility until 2027+, which will simplify further upgrades.

Upcoming Releases
AMD has announced their new Zen 5 processors, which will launch in the coming weeks. The lineup starts with the Ryzen 9 9600X though, which will certainly cost more than the 7600X right now ($200), I'm not sure if that that can significantly affect the value proposition of the i3-14100. Intel's next-gen Arrow Lake is expected to launch later this year, on a new socket and with a major redesign compared to existing Raptor Lake LGA1700 processors. This could make things interesting, but performance and pricing is unknown, and it seems likely that Intel will launch high-end SKUs first, like they've done in the past.