I won't go into much technical detail here since there's people a lot smarter than myself who can get into the nitty gritty. Generally speaking though - this CPU absolutely smokes, especially for the price. Don't let the 'i5' name fool you. The i5-13600K (and KF) is a top-class processor that for most users, will offer more than enough performance for intensive tasks while having probably the most reasonable power consumption and cooling requirements of the top-three 13th generation Intel processors.
I came from an i7-5960X - still a solid processor in this day and age but unfortunately my motherboard wasn't exactly kind to me attempting to take it above 3.8 GHz. Despite it bottlenecking against my 2080 Ti, it still ran cool under a 360mm CLC, topping out at no more than 51 degrees C gaming (GPU load) and 60 degrees under full CPU loads. But since the current market for new components is pretty good, I opted to go all in on a 13th gen build rather than find a better X99 motherboard.
Odds are, you're probably going to be cross shopping the i5-13600K with the i7-13700K and the i9-13900K. Unless your workflow necessitates the additional core count or you're chasing records, the performance difference between those CPUs and the 13600K did not seem worth the hundreds of dollars of additional cost and the massive increase in peak power consumption. Power also equals heat, and that was another motivating factor for going with the 13600K, having been accustomed to a relatively cool and quiet build for some time. That said; with the additional cores and much higher boost frequency, I was expecting higher peak power draw and temps despite a lower TDP on paper.
And they were definitely higher, under the same 360mm CLC. After running benchmarks with Cinebench and 3DMark, I was hitting peak temps in the mid-to-high 70s under full CPU loads. Gaming loads however were definitely more manageable though, sitting in the 40s and seldom breaking 50 degrees, which was actually a small but appreciable improvement over the 5960X. I'd advise at minimum a high quality air cooler or a 240mm CLC for this processor.
The out of the box performance is something else though. I managed to hit 23345 on a multi-core Cinebench test and a 16459 combined score on 3DMark Time Spy. Again, this is stock clocks paired with an overclocked 2080 Ti and 32GB of DDR5 at 5600 MHz. At 3440 x 1440 and 144Hz, games run like butter. I could dabble in overclocking it since I have the headroom but honestly, I don't see the point. It's fantastic as is.
All in all, I feel like the 13600K is kind of the no-brainer option for most people looking to put together a high-end system on a budget. You're getting most of the performance of it's more expensive stablemates for a much lower price and less obnoxiously high power and cooling requirements. The KF is also a little cheaper if you don't need integrated graphics. Just buy it. You'll love it.
| Processor | 5.1 GHz core_i5 |
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