Custom PC - UK (2020-08)

T

helowerdown Intel’s 9th-gen product stack you

go,themore the lack of Hyper-Threading seemed

tohurtitschances against AMD. The likes of the

Corei5-9600Kwereadequate for gaming, but they were

hopelesslyoutgunned in multi-threaded tasks, even by

cheaperAMDCPUs.

Likewise,theCorei5-8600K too also had six cores and six

threadslikeits9th-gen successor, but arrived too late to steal

AMD’sthunder.WhatIntel needed, above all else, was to boost

multi-threadedperformance, either by increasing core counts

oraddingHyper-Threading. Thankfully, that’s now been done,

withevery10th-genmodel supporting Hyper-Threading,

includingtheCorei5-10600K.

Thismeansit canexecute 12 concurrent threads, instead of

justsixlikeitspredecessor, and this essentially makes it very

similartothevenerable Core i7-8700K.

BothCPUshavethe same number of cores and threads

andunder the hood, and they both have 12MB of L3 cache.

Sadly, you won’t be able to upgrade to the new chip unless

you buy a new motherboard, though, as the Core i5-10600K

uses the new LGA1200 socket and requires a Z490 or other

400-series Intel chipset motherboard.

The Core i5-10600K sports the same physical tweaks

as the flagship Core i9-10900K, with a thinner die and

thicker heatspreader. This should, according to Intel, allow

heat to migrate out of the die faster and make use of the

more thermally conductive and thicker heatspreader,

potentially lowering temperatures and improving

overclocking headroom. It has the same 125W TDP as the

Core i9-10900K, but this is likely to be higher in reality,

although the Core i5-9600K and Core i7-8700K were

never particularly hot or power-hungry CPUs.

Frequencies are a fair bit lower than its more expensive

sibling, peaking at just 4.8GHz. This is because the Core

i5-10600K lacks both Intel Turbo Boost Max Technology

3 and Thermal Velocity Boost. While the boost on the Core

i9-10900K proved to be a tad unreliable in our testing, it still

potentially represents a 500MHz advantage over the Core i5.

The all-core boost frequencies sat at 4.5GHz for the Core i

and 4.9GHz for the Core i9-10900K – again, that’s a sizeable

advantage for the Core i9, but the Core i5 still has an extra

200MHz of boost frequency over the Core i7-8700K and Core

i5-9600K, which both peaked at 4.3GHz with all six cores

under load.

Costing just under £270 inc VAT, the Core i5-10600K only

costs around £15 more than the Core i5-9600K at launch,

and back in 2017, the Core i7-8700K debuted at around £

more. The trouble for Intel is that AMD’s recent price cuts have

seen the Ryzen 7 3700X’s price dip to £280 ,while the Ryzen

5 3600X can be bought for around £200. The fact that AMD

is set to launch Zen 3 CPUs later this year is beside the point

for now, as Intel needs to grapple with Ryzen CPUs that are

already available first, as well as persuading people to make

the necessary move to an LGA1200 motherboard.

Performance

We hit the same frequency of 5.1GHz across all of

the Core i5-10600K’s cores as we did with the Core

i9-10900K, again with 5.2GHz being stable in most

REVIEWS / PROCESSORS

THREAD

• 
  

  Awesome gaming
  performance for
  the money

  
  


• 
  

  Overclockable

  
  


• 
  

  Decent multi-
  threaded
  performance

  
  

THREADWORM

• AM D better value
  for multi-threading


• Requires new
  motherboard


• Average stock
  speed
  performance

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INTELCORE i510600K / £269 inc VAT

LGA1200 CPU

SUPPLIER novatech.co.uk