Intel has been under tremendous pressure from AMD in the mid-range segment (around $200–$300). With Zen 2, team red introduced several offerings in this price range, many just $20 apart. All these parts are six-core with twelve threads, the Ryzen 7 3700X is even 8-core, 16-thread. To achieve any sort of competitiveness, Intel had to rethink their policy of reserving HyperThreading to their top SKUs only. This is why, unlike all its predecessors, the Core i5-10600K in this review is a 6c/12t model which had HTT disabled. Intel also pushed the TDP rating from 95 W to 125 W, which created headroom for running higher clock speeds. Last but not least, the full L3 cache is available now, 12 MB instead of 9 MB, to make up lost ground against the 32 MB cache AMD is offering on Ryzen.

When averaged over our application benchmarks, the Core i5-10600K does well, punching far above its weight. It is 6% faster than Core i7-8700K, 5% quicker than Core i7-9700K, and just 8% behind last generation's Core i9-9900K flagship. Only the Core i9-10900K is substantially faster with an almost 30% advantage. Against AMD's lineup, the i5-10600K is surprisingly competitive as well. It's around 5% faster than Ryzen 5 3600 and 3600X, and the eight-core Ryzen 7 3700X is only 8% faster. The differences vary wildly between applications, especially tasks that are easy to parallelize, like rendering, are AMD's strongest suit, and Intel has a clear lead in single and low-threaded apps, which are relevant to the majority of consumers today.

For gaming, the Core i5-10600K is a clear winner. At 1080p, it is faster than any AMD CPU—the Ryzen 9 3900X is beat by 5%. Against Intel's own lineup, the Core i5 does very well too. It is faster than all Gen 8 and Gen 9 processors with the exception of the Core i9-9900KS. The Core i9-10900K is merely 2.5% faster. All these differences are small, barely relevant. As you go up in resolution, the differences shrink even more as the bottleneck moves from the CPU to the GPU. As always, if you are mostly a gamer, definitely try to invest as much money as possible in the GPU, as that's what will be driving your framerates.

Just like in our Core i9-10900K review, power efficiency of the 10600K is lower than its predecessors, which is slightly unexpected. The reason is that Intel is still using the same 14 nanometer production process with exactly the same architecture. Since they are pushing their processors to run at higher clock speeds, they had to bump the voltage slightly to achieve the desired yields. Overall, this results in a loss in energy efficiency of around 10%–20% compared to "Coffee Lake," not a major issue, but definitely worth mentioning. What really surprises me is that Intel did not include Turbo Boost Max 3.0 and Thermal Velocity Boost on the Core i5-10600K. Turbo Boost Max 3.0 is reserved for the Core i7-10700 series and Core i9-10900 series, and TVB only for the Core i9-10900. Yet again we see the typical Intel segmentation pattern here—AMD does the opposite as all their CPUs have all the features, and those little things add up. I have no idea why Intel would not include their two most advanced turbo modes on the Core i5-10600K; it wouldn't have cost them anything, yet provides free performance.

In this article, we tested "stock" performance vs. "Max Turbo", which is the processor running with all its power limits removed. On the Core i5-10600K, these are PL1 = 125 W and PL2 = 182 W. If you scan through our charts, you'll see that there's almost no difference between both results. The reason is that the Core i5-10600K with its 6c/12t configuration will rarely exceed 125 W in typical applications, and definitely does not hit 182 W unless you're running a stress test, which has the extra power headroom in our second test yield no additional performance. This means the Core i5-10600K runs at its best performance out of the box without any tweaking, which is good.

Manual overclocking didn't do much for our processor either. Reaching an all-core 4.90 GHz OC on air was easy, but 5.00 GHz was hard, even with a 240 mm AIO. Looking at the increase in power draw and cooling requirements, I don't think either of those scenarios are worth it unless your CPU is sitting at 100% all time time on all cores. It's surprising how overclocking has changed within the last months from "essentially free performance" to "not worth it." Processors from both Intel and AMD are affected. In my opinion, this suggests that CPU makers are tapping more and more into the last bits of headroom left in the product, as they are reaching for the low hanging fruit that is easy to capitalize on. Upping MHz is easier than trying to find some IPC gains in a complete architecture redesign.

Pricing of the Core i5-10600K is good, MUCH better than with previous mid-range CPUs from Intel. The reason is that AMD has strong products in this segment, so Intel was forced to make these concessions. You can now buy a Core i7-8700K or Core i7-9700K equivalent for $100 less than a few weeks ago, and you'll end up with a highly capable gaming rig that's future proof for years to come. What erodes the Core i5-10600K value proposition is that the processor doesn't come with a bundled heatsink—the competition from AMD includes a decent cooler for free, which helps with overall system building cost. The fact that only Z490 is available right now, and that new LGA1200 motherboards are required for Comet Lake, also seriously limits motherboard choices; there is no second-hand availability of these parts, either, though with LGA1200 you'll at least be ready for Intel's next-generation Rocket Lake. While many new motherboards include features like USB-C 20 Gbps and 2.5 Gbps Ethernet, I still feel motherboard pricing has to come down another $20–$40 to be competitive with AMD. Right now, platform cost of Comet Lake is too high, especially when it comes to price-sensitive users. AMD's Ryzen 5 3600 and 3600X are highly competitive, definitely more affordable and only with slightly lower performance, a trade-off that will make sense for a lot of gamers as they can invest the savings in a faster graphics card. If you are looking at building a 1080p gaming rig and feel like a 4c/8t CPU is sufficient, also check out the AMD Ryzen 3 3300X, which is fast enough in games and lets you save another $150 on the CPU, so you can go a tier higher on the GPU. I have a Core i5-10400F on the way, so stay tuned.