20 Best Cpu For 1440P Gaming (2023 Updated)

Purchased this processor along with a new ASUS Tuf Gaming B550 Plus Wi FI MB, 32GB G Skill Ripjaws V32GB RAM, (and SATA DVD +/-rw) to upgrade an ATHLON II based machine. combine equipment to bring desktop up to today’s standards.

MB has many performance features, simple BIOS upgrades, and large RAM capacity. Processor is very fast, and has the ability to overclock, which I may pursue in the future, but do not need at the moment.

Processor also comes with a standard cooler, which manages standard processing temperatures with minimum work. No performance or temp issues are noted at all. RAM is also very stable and able to overclock.

very nice upgrade to 12 year old desktop computer, which now runs flawlessly. included drivers are latest, and all company web sites provide very good update support (including AMD monitor, which will compare current drivers with latest releases and update as needed.

Note: I built my current machine in 2010, which included DDRII, dual core, and existing IDE DVD burner. Updated to 600 watt PS and SSD in last few years, and very happy that I am able to continue with customizing my machine, which is much more stable and sure than the prebuilt machines offered in the big-box stores.

Very happy with all performance.

My company recently implemented new security policies on our workstations which effectively removed all administrative privileges from our user accounts. To do anything that requires administrative privileges, even installing/updating software, we have to contact an admin to remote into our computers and enter their credentials.

As an electrical engineer I have a lot of software that I use for various work related reasons. Finding this new policy as a hindrance on my ability to do my work efficiently, I decided to update my ~8 year old PC and do my work on my own equipment.

Coming from a third generation i5 processor, the difference is night and day. I did find that the stock cooler was not cooling as well as I would like, even without overclocking. So I did upgrade to a larger and more efficient cooler and my idle temps are below 40C, and jump between 50C and 60C under heavy load.

My previous setup was water cooled but it is a pain to setup and maintain so for now I’m just keeping it simple with air cooling. I would have spent a bit more and purchased a processor with a higher core count but I have heard that AMD will be coming out with a new processor series with the AM5 socket, so I didn’t want to invest too highly on this AM4 processor.

This processor was my middle ground and so far I am very happy with it!.

I recently bought a Steam Valve Index VR setup and started using it on my home theater PC (i7-6700 on an MSI Pro Carbon mobo with 16 gigs of ram and a GTX1080 GPU). I found that after running some games like Arizona Sunshine or Time Carnage VR, the CPU would spike up to 98-100% on all cores while the GPU was maxing out at about 45%.

I decided to rebuild the computer using this CPU, an ASRock B550 Taichi, and 32 gigs of ram. I kept the GPU since a graphics card will pretty much cost you an organ these days, and the 1080 is still a strong performer.

The 5600X is about 700 mhz faster than the 6700, has 2 additional cores and 4 more threads, a much newer architecture, and it made short work of load times! In addition to that, all cores peak at about 88%, and the GPU is now showing about 55% usage.

5600X and 6700 are both 65W chips, but it’s amazing what 4 or 5 years newer tech gets you! In the AMD lineup, for gaming, the 5600X is it. The 5800X is much more expensive for only modest gains (content creation tasks aside), and the 5900X or 5950X are waaaaay more expensive and very much aimed towards content creators.

The 5600X is probably the very best price:performance deal in computer chips in a very long time!.

In my personal opinions, the price to performance ratio between AMD and Intel is no longer as wide as it was when I first built my gaming PC 6 years ago. Back then, Skylake 6th generation chip was a no brainer if you want a reliable overclocking power to play most game on max’ed settings at 1440p and 144Hz without bottlenecking your GPU.

Up until recently, I noticed this old i5 chip performance no longer meets the demands of the new triple A title games so I figured it’s probably time for an upgrade. Upon doing my research once again between the AMD vs Intel, there are other factors that are much more important to me than just cores and clock speed, as the true performance of the chip lies within its abilities that aren’t always so apparently at first sight.

I used to overclocked the i5-6600k to 4. 7GHz while paired with a 1080Ti GPU. So to me, this was a night and day difference in performance and speed once put together with the old graphic card. The same games are now no longer being bottled necked by the CPU and give more consistent capped144hz refresh rate vs my old chip.

Though the max power stated on the box of the chip rather high, it doesn’t mean that the chip itself will always run on max power. Note that while this new chip is advertise as 10 cores, the 4 cores were for “efficient” mode, which comes in handy when paired with a capable motherboard that let you request more raw computing power as needed.

Just to give you some perspective, while just browsing the web and periodically watch some YouTube videos, the CPU power demands has rarely exceed 20W, which is about 1/6th or so of max power. Once a graphic intensive game or application were loaded up however, it adjusts the boost clock speed in order to accomplish the task seamlessly.

Overall, I went with Intel and very satisfied with my decision. Due to my experience with Intel chip for my overclocking use, I had yet to run into major issues as long as adequate cooling was being provided.

And even so, it is still working hard after all the demands and stress I put on the chip daily.

After several years of disappointment Intel has finally decided to step their game up and introduced a new design that’s similar to ARM chips with a big. little design. That means that these 12 series chips all have some performance cores as well as some efficiency cores to handle lighter tasks and consume less power.

I upgraded from a 7600k which is quad core processor, to this 10 core (6 performance / 4 efficiency cores) chip and it has been a massive improvement. Games that used to stutter now run super smooth.

Battlefield 2042 was constantly pushing my overclocked 7600k to 100% usage and on the 12600K it uses about 25-30% on even higher settings than I was playing at before. Beyond that, it’s able to play 4k youtube on another monitor while playing the game and it still doesn’t stutter while remaining below 50% usage.

Bought this for $229. 99 during the holiday sale and for that money it’s an absolute bargain. If you have a heavier productivity workload then you might consider the 12700k but for most people the 12600k should be more than enough.

At the moment I also wouldn’t recommend going with DDR5 as it is extremely expensive, hard to find, and from all the benchmarks I’ve seen, not that much of an improvement and in some cases even a step back.

Was planning on going AMD for the last few years but never got around to upgrading, I’m glad I didn’t as this seems to be the sweet spot right now.

Fantastic value for a CPU that will blow the mind of anyone who’s been stuck with cheap laptops for their entire lives. Sounds specific, I know, but you’d be surprised at how much people would pay for this performance.

The only problems I’ve had with this CPU arose when I actively tried to push it to its limits; it snappily crushes whatever you throw at it during average officework activity, and (depending on other PC components, of course) it’ll obliterate all but the highest-of-end video-games, too.

And as stated in the review title, it isn’t just compatible, but GAME-CHANGING for whatever last-gen PC build you’re using. Obviously it would be optimal if you were to use modern parts, and do make sure you’re using a motherboard with an AM4 processor slot, but no joke, this CPU just WILL NOT let itself be brought down by any (compatible) old part.

Due to current chip shortages, it’ll be easy to wind up with this processor for well above $280. In a word: Don’t. You should wait for it to go around $220 or less, or get the 5 2600 which is almost as great.

People on a very tight budget that don’t care much about gaming will want to consider a different processor that has integrated graphics. Beyond that, it’s just a matter of whether you’d rather have something more powerful (and whether your motherboard has an AM4 socket).

This is probably right about the “sweet-spot” for value in terms of performance and relevancy for price.

I had gotten a Valve Index to experience VR, and found my PCIE 2. 0 on my old AM3+ board was insufficient to to bus bandwidth not allowing for the tracking Data. I paired this processor with a mid level gaming board with the modern architecture I needed.

It blows away the Octo-Core FX chip it replaced. My issue resolved, and my video card finally can run at its full capacity. Games I used to play on medium settings now go high and ultra with the same GTX 1660 Super.

The included heatsink and fan is super convenient. It runs quiet, was pre-set with quality heat transfer paste, and mounted with no trouble. Item arrived ahead of schedule with the free shipping as this was direct from newegg.

Best online purchase experience all year.

Pros: The newer 3600 silicon is much improved over last year’s initial silicon, with improved power efficiency, all-core frequencies and better overclockability. I have this chip running at 4. 40 GHz on all cores using only 1.

28125 V. With 2019 silicon, 4. 10 GHz would have been a lucky achievement with > 1. 35 V. Multi-threaded performance just edges an 8-core, 16-thread Intel Core i7-5960X Extreme Edition, with much greater single-threaded performance; both of which improve further with an overclock.

I’m not using the in-box cooler. It’s perfectly adequate for the 3600, but I prefer third-party coolers. This chip is paired with a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO and doesn’t exceed 67°C and 88 watts with the 4.

40 GHz overclock. You’re almost guaranteed to receive 2020 silicon if you buy any Ryzen 3000 product now as stock has been flying off the shelves. This means everyone can benefit from the improvements.

(2020 silicon can be identified by checking the second line next to the QR code on the heatspreader. The first four numbers of this line after the initial two letters are the date the processor was manufactured [two digits for the year; two for the week].

For my sample, it was manufactured in the 17th week of 2020. ) Cons: Nothing really to complain about. I knew what the 3600 was capable of before I purchased. It represents AMD’s best budget high-thread-count processor, and AMD can’t keep them in stock.

I have 4 of these in the house now. they were the cheapest K option I7 on scan at the time I needed to upgrade three PC’s and my last one was open box (seems to be reliable from Scan to do this). I spend many an hour on certain youtubers pages, and as i understand it the 11000 series got a lot of flack for not being enough of a boost over 10000 series and looking at benchmarks yes, this seeems to be the case.

What I will say, (TLDR. if you arent playing the latest photo realistic games, buying the newest CPU every year. dont worry about the spec increase unless you KNOW a huge change has just happened in the indusrty) I came from a 7700k and a 6700 on my Secord rig about the time 12000 got stocked on scan, with everything about PC’s being thrown up into the air by the PS5 launch around this gen, i figured the 11000 series was cheaper, and frankly not enough of a decrease in performance to warrant the price increase to 12000, so why not just aim for the best PC of the old architectures i could? 10700 with 2080ti’s and the PC has been so much faster and responsive than my last, ive had no reason to question this descision.

perhaps once motherboards start supporting direct resource usage like the PS5, the newer stuff will matter, but right now. no. and in fact on that point. Last year using FFXIV as a basis, we took four machines.

I7 11700k, 2080ti, I7 7700k, 980ti, I7 2700K, 2070 AMD FX-6350, 2070 All had 8-16gb ram, and honestly it was a reminder to us that EVERYTHING matters in a build. In FFXIV (not heavy to run, but not too old a game).

The 2700 nearly matched the 11700 for load times because of varying things like where the install was placed (hdd > SSD > NVME). internet speed mattered, GPU barely made a difference. RAM was somehow installed single channel on one PC and that made more of a difference in correction.

So back to this CPU. honestly the PC it is in is running great! much better than my 7000 series, so if youre looking to upgrade now, and its this or the 12000 series, youre on a budget and every penny costs.

unless at time of writing the 12000 series or competing AMD chip can now do the Playstation thing and access other resources directly. defnitely consider this CPU. especially if compared to your old one your getting more than a 20% increase in benchmark scores on varying sites.

I was waiting to get an AMD Ryzen 9 5900X to replace my old Intel Core i7-6700K but nothing is available at suggested retail price of $549. It is either out of stock or have been marked up to around $750 (+$200 above MSRP)! The next available choice was AMD Ryzen 7 5800X but I noticed that it was slower in some user benchmarks compared to the Intel Core i7-11700K (see https://cpu.

userbenchmark. com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-11700K-vs-AMD-Ryzen-7-5800X/4107vs4085). Best of all, the 11700K was readily available and less price that the 5800X so I bought it along with an Asus ROG Strix Z590-A motherboard.

To make a long story short, I’m able to run the 11700K at 5GHz for all 8 cores without any heating issues. I have a custom liquid cooling setup with a 360mm water radiator and 3x120mm Noctua radiator fans.

I also have an MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ventus 3X 10G OC GPU and able to run most of my triple A games close to or beyond 100FPS at 4K resolution and Ultra graphic settings (including the legendary benchmark game Crysis 3)! I noticed there is a lot of negative comments with the new Rocket Lake CPUs like this 11700K that come mostly from strong proponents of AMD Radeon CPUs.

Some make a good point that the new Intel CPUs draws more power than AMD CPUs. However, I don’t notice or care how much power it draws when playing games since all my Noctua case and radiator fans keep temperatures under control.

Some may even say that some games have slightly higher FPS between AMD and Intel (and vice versa). I’ve seen videos where the difference is just between 10 to 20 FPS – from either side. That’s clearly not going to be significant enough for anyone (except hardcore gamers) to tell the difference specially when it FPS is already over 120 – so don’t kid yourself.

As the article from Anandtech concluded (see https://www. anandtech. com/show/16535/intel-core-i7-11700k-review-blasting-off-with-rocket-lake/19), it is not always about who is the fastest or who is the most energy efficient, the clear answer during this chip crunch is to buy the processor you can find at a reasonable price.

And this is what I’ve done. Perhaps you should too.

Power hungry and less performant than the latest 12th Generation Core processors from Intel. Not worth the cost unless you are stuck on Intel’s LGA 1200 platform. That being said, it is a beastly processor and very capable of handling just about any workload, and brings Gen 4 PCIe connectivity for your compatible NVMe SSD’s and GPU’s.

This is the best option if you want an unlocked processor on the LGA 1200 platform. The i9 11th gen is also 8 core/16 threads, and costs a lot more. If you don’t have a Z590 or other 500 series motherboard, make sure it supports this CPU.

Not all 400 series boards support 11th Gen processors (even some expensive Z series boards – looking at you ASUS!). Check the motherboard manufacturer’s CPU compatibility list first.

The 9600K’s only drawback is that it isn’t hyper-threaded (1 core, 1 thread). But that’s true of the entire 9 series until you get to the i9-9900K. This was Intel’s answer to the pressure from AMD, much like the 7 series.

BUT having said that, they made the cores faster, so gamers rejoice. This chip is faster than the 9700k, still has plenty of cores for the basics in video editing, and is more than the average user would need for most purposes.

It also runs very cool in comparison to it’s hyper-threaded siblings and the competition (although those are designed for more heat). If you’re only going to game, or aren’t a video/audio editor or power user then this CPU is superb.

It’s also pretty much bulletproof as far as longevity. I’ve had 2 i9-9900k’s go bad now, and switched both over to 9600k’s both times. Again, it’s faster than the 9700k, just 2 less cores for multitasking.

Great budget CPU on Intel 300 series motherboard platform. Advantages: easy overclockable with good cooling devise, no memory compatibility issues like on AMD platform if used all 4x DDR4 memory modules.

Simply no memory controller issues. Best if used with good Z370 or Z390 motherboards with overclocking capabilities but will work as well with B310, B350, B365, H370 chipset as well. This i5 has cheap price and adequate for gaming.

It comes with integrated Intel 630 4k graphics so this CPU if not used for 3D gaming with good powerful graphic card, it can be used as good fast basic PC build with own graphics. Will still advantage AMD in single core.

Cons: it does not come with CPU fan as AMD processors does so if you already have LGA1150 or 1151 socket cooling devise I highly recommended.

Excellent, very fast CPU. If you know what you’re doing and have right motherboard, you can reliably overclock this CPU from the base clock of 3. 7 Ghz to 5. 2 Ghz. The Intel processors have a lower latency in nanoseconds compared to AMD processors.

The Intel processors are faster for gaming and desktop applications, compared to AMD Ryzen. The only area where Ryzen processors perform better is in multicore encoding, which is something that is better performed by dedicated hardware.

For everyday desktop applications and gaming, you’re better off with an Intel processor. The i5 9600K overclocks to within 2% of the i9 9900K, so it’s an excellent value.

Bought this processor on discount and it performs really well for its price. With it having integrated graphics, it helps power a second monitor without using my primary gpu

very happy with this cpu, its crunching 1’s and 0’s for a basic office pc so nothing to strenuous and it does it very nicely and the extra couple of cores are nice for later afternoon when you have all sorts open and floating around your desktop 🙂 happy chappy!.

Pros: – Overclocks very well as long as youre willing to up the power limit appropriately – Very stable platform, which is the main reason why I purchased this CPU – Its a perfect CPU for gaming and CAD when you need high IPC Cons: – Very power hungry for 8-cores – Can run very hot when the power limit hits a certain threshold – A little pricey at the moment, but worth it depending on what youre using it for – And of course, the big con which is that its a 14nm chip Other Thoughts: Ill be honest, I am very impressed with this CPU.

I was very torn whether to go with the Ryzen 5900x, but for my line of work, I really needed a CPU with a high IPC, which this fits the bill. Ive got this overclocked to 5. 1GHz on all cores, with it set to turbo boost to 5.

3GHz on one core (two threads) and it performs way beyond my expectations. To achieve this, I had to set the power limit to 280W, with the offset voltage maxing out at only 1. 360V. Temps reach about 85C max while rendering, using the Noctua NH-D15 CPU cooler.

This CPU would easily overclock higher, but 280W is all Im willing to give it, and I wouldnt be able to cool it with my air cooler. Ive paired this with the MSI MPG Z590 Gaming Carbon WiFi Gaming Motherboard & Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB DDR4 3600 Memory.

My previous setup was an 8700k overclocked to 4. 9GHz, but was starting to show its age while doing CAD work, so I upgraded. No joke, while rendering a 4K image at maximum quality using Solidworks Photoview 360 with three test images, it completes each rendering in almost exactly half the time! I am so impressed! Also, all my programs are so much snappier, especially Solidworks.

I didnt expect this much of a performance boost from my 8700k. I highly recommend this CPU!.

You might wonder why I bought this instead of investing in 12900k or 12700k or anything like that since 11th gen has a very bad repo from tech community overall. in my case, I built a PC on 2020 and I had bought a 1900 (non k) version.

I mainly use it for work and gaming. No major multi-thread use case for me. I invested in a very nice z490 top of the line back then MEG ACE. As we stand here now, there were following paths – continue to use the 10900 on such a great over clocking board, get a 10900K or invest in z690, ddr5, 12th gen processor etc.

My goal is to use the z490 platform for another two years or so. Hence, I decided to update to 11900k as it is at a massive discount as of today. It gives me pcie gen 4 support (since MEG ACE supported it) and offers a 19% IPC uplift compared to 10900k.

This CPU also support DDR$ speeds in excess of 5GHZ out of the box. The replacement was smooth and had no issues.

CPU: i9-11900k (Haven’t overclocked it yet) MoBo: MSI MPG Z590 Gaming Force GPU: MSI RTX 3070 Gaming X Trio Case: Corsair ICUE 5000X RAM: 4 Sticks of Corsair Vengeance RGB SL 32G (2x 16GB) PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower GF1 1000W 80+ Gold AIO: CORSAIR iCUE H150i ELITE CAPELLIX WHITE, 360mm Radiator SSD: WD_BLACK 1TB SN750 NVMe Internal Gaming SSD Solid State Drive WD_BLACK 1TB SN750 NVMe Internal Gaming SSD Solid State Drive WD_BLACK 500GB SN750 NVMe Internal Gaming SSD Solid State Drive with Heatsink Removed Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB 2.

5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-76E1T0B/AM Misc: Asiahorse Power Supply Sleeved Cable for Power Supply Extension Cable Wire Kit CORSAIR iCUE SP120 RGB ELITE Performance 120mm White PWM Triple Fan Kit Comments: When placed at the top of the case, the space between the CPU power block and the AIO is a VERY tight squeeze.

If I had used cables that came with PSU it would not have fit. As it was the cable extensions from Asiahorse were flexible enough that I got it in there. You could use a 280mm radiator and be fine, or remove a fan and be fine also.

Annnd at the bottom of the case, I was barely able to fit the case’s USB 3. 0 cable because the case cutouts are so narrow. and how long and thick the case cable was. Oh! The Mobo has an EPS power block at the bottom that must be connected to the PSU otherwise your GPU won’t work.

Just an FYI there. All-in-all I am happy with the build. However. I would not suggest this Case and Motherboard combination for the two issues mentioned above.

If you are buying a “K” series processor, I have to assume you are not new to PCs. If you are using a 120mm radiator, there are some additional steps to make these chips work 100% of the time. If you only play games and do generic stuff, then 120mm radiators should survive for a few years but I do not recommend them for this chip.

If you are planning for a 360mm radiator, you are fine carry on. Unfortunately, I bought a few of these and I thought I could throw some standard “Corsair H60” 120mm AIOs on them to use for a couple years.

All of mine start throwing errors at 83c, and they will hit 83c in about 1 second during AVX workloads. However, even with the 120mm H60s mine do not go above 55c at 8 x 5. 0ghz for normal CPU heavy games like “Rust” etc.

Disable ALL Turbo Boost functionality while you are testing RAM with prime95( AVX512 ) or whatever. If you disable AVX512 it will lower temps by 6c at the most. I was able to keep mine below 70c with the H60s by limiting turbo to 4.

3ghz with AVX512 enabled. You can maybe get 4. 4ghz if you lower VCore a bit. If you do any video editing or anything which may use AVX2/AVX512 on the CPU, you should plan for a giant 360mm cooler ASAP.

If you just play games/VR, or do some heavy C++ compilations, or get crazy with excel, then 8 x 5ghz is super nice! I assume games wont use AVX512 for a few more years, but if you do any video editing you should consider capping the turbo boost at 4.

3ghz until you have better cooling. Whatever your case my be, I’d recommend having your Mother Board throttle at 80c because this chip absolutely will not do it for itself.

As of mid March 2021 when there aren’t many, or any at all, readily available new desktop PC components at least we got this. Make no mistake, performance wise this processor is great and in some workloads and video games, performs better than processors that are almost twice its price.

Moving from a 9th Gen Intel i7 to this has made a noticeable difference in just about every thing I do on PC. Interestingly, the largest improvement was in VR gaming, which now runs butter smooth with all hitching and stuttering completely gone and at a higher auto scaling resolution that it was before on a Vive Cosmos.

However due to the way it is constructed to achieve a high single core/thread speed, it runs really hot under high use loads such as video rendering, so hot in fact that unless you have a decent water cooling setup for it, you will frequently run into the temperature limit of 90°C.

This is not necessarily harmful for the processor, but it limits the maximum speed it will automatically adjust for. The cooler it runs, the faster it runs, so don’t expect 5 GHz on all cores all the time from it, even with the best consumer level water cooling setups.

It seems that, yet again, AMD has trouble designing a processor that can run flat out without thermal issues, this specific model in particular. Every individual chip will perform slightly different and mine will peak around 4950 Mhz at 82-84°C under normal productivity and gaming use with Precision Boost Overdrive (AMD’s auto overclocking feature) turned on.

For comparison, the i7-9700k that I upgraded from, could run at 5GHz on all cores full time at full benchmark load and not go above 80°C with a 360mm AIO water cooling setup. However for most people, this should not be considered an issue since very very few applications will run a processor that hard unless specifically designed to do so.

Then there is it’s other large issue, it’s MSRP. In terms of price per cores and threads, it really should have been no more than $399, ideally $349 when you consider the 5600X, which only has 2 fewer cores and 4 fewer threads is $299.

It feels as though this really should have been named the 5700X specification wise and priced more appropriately. It’s a bit of an oddity, but as I said earlier, it seems to be the only one that is often available, which could be an intentional production decision or lack of interest from it being the black sheep of the 5000 family for the reasons mentioned above.

Whatever the reason may be, if you have a good cooling setup and don’t mind overpaying a bit on MSRP instead of paying hilariously inflated scalper prices for a different processor, or waiting for the other models to maybe reenter the market some day just before the heat death of the universe, then it is a great processor, it just comes with a couple caveats.

Pros: The r7 5800X is a massive upgrade over my previous R7 1700 non-x. I noticed about 15-20 frames per second improvement in Hunt showdown at 2k. I would hover around 80 to 95 fps on medium high settings with at GTX 1080ti, now with everything else the same except for Motherboard, CPU and cooler i am getting consistent frames between 95 to 115 FPS with the same settings and the same old CL16 2666 corsair vengeance RAM.

I recommend getting a AIO watercooler for this CPU it definitely runs hotter than a R7 1700, due to its 105W TDP vs 65W TDP of the 1700. I am planning on upgrading my RAM to CL16 3200 or 3600 DDR4 ram because the 2-5% performance increase over 2666 RAM with Zen3 processors even though 2666 still lets this beast shine.

Cons: I think that the only con is that the original MSRP of 449. 99 is a bit steep considering the R5 5600X is only 299. 99 MSRP. I would wait for the a sale on this processor i was able to get this processor for 367.

99 before tax and 399. 87 after tax. For 400 with tax it is a definite buy otherwise save for the r9 5900x when they come back in stock or just settle for the r5 5600x. Notes: my Build AMD Ryzen R7 5800x stock clock Corsair H150i 360mm Elite Capellix Gigabyte x570 AORUS Elite Mobo Corsair CL16 2666 DDR4 Vengeance RAM EVGA ICX GTX 1080ti SC2 Samsung EVO 850 500GB SATA SSD.

Unless I’m missing something, I can’t change the number of eggs I gave, and I was really waffling between 4 and 5. 5 would be more appropriate, but there you have it. I think from a budget standpoint, a 5600 makes more sense, and from a performance standpoint, a 5900 might be more your speed.

I decided to split the difference but I legitimately wonder if the AMD fanboyism doesn’t over-hype the MOAR COARS MOAR THREDS thing. I went for a 5800 hoping I’d end up with a better binned piece than whatever I’d get buying a 5600.

I think 6 vs 8 cores matters a lot less than people think it does. If, like me, you aren’t comfortable running a CPU at 90C, then you can either change the thermal limits in your BIOS, or you can just never monitor temps.

I installed my waterblock with the outlet and inlets swapped, and fixing that blunder saved a couple degrees, but that didn’t explain the 65C spikes while doing basically nothing and the 80C spikes doing moderate stuff.

It turns out, this CPU does everything in its power to run as hard and fast as it can, and it is literally designed to handle 80+ temperatures. It doesn’t slow down until it hits 90. It runs hotter on a single core of Prime95 than it does on a full 8 or 16 core load, as it will boost the heck out of 1 core for single threaded loads, and run twice as hot for that extra 10% boost.

And, it’s VERY good at throttling itself for protection. It has no qualms about hitting 90C, but I haven’t seen it go over 91C a single time under any circumstance. Get a good cooler for this, since good cooling directly means less thermal throttling and you will see better performance.

If you can, set a very shallow fan curve so your fans don’t spike between 40% and 100% repeatedly, because the temperatures on this chip are very spiky. In my case, I got reasonably quiet fans for my radiators, set a 60% duty cycle at 40C and an 80% duty cycle at 80C, and I’m pleased with the result.

I picked up a 2×16 GB 4000 MHz 16-19-19-39 memory kit and the XMP settings worked right out of the box, booted, survived some Prime95 and some gaming, except for the tens of thousands of WHEA errors.

I was able to drop down to 1900 MHz and instantly cleared out all the errors. I got excited about getting a golden sample, but I’ll settle for silver. Haven’t mucked around with overclocking yet, but I am looking forward to it.

It’s a very different approach and feels a lot safer than turning up the voltage knob and the speed knob in tandem and hoping the long-term longevity doesn’t suffer.

If you want to game, buy this. The early teething issues with DDR4 seem to largely be dealt with, and the performance is good. I’d generally start with basic questions of value and performance. but this thing needs no introduction.

It’s got performance, is dead simple to setup, and for the better or worse it’s largely free from requiring tweaking. While this is frustrating when one looks back into the past (still love Sandy Bridge), it’s also entirely reasonable for a gaming machine to just work out of the box.

I love them. It’s not got the quirks of the 1xxx series. It’s not an intermediary step like the 2xxx series. It’s not almost there like the 3xxx series. It’s not an amalgam that requires new software like the 12xxx series from team blue.

It’s not a gigantic shuffling forward like everything from 8xxx-11xxx from team blue. It’s just genuinely good. To those who do like to tweak. you can. I loved it with Sandy Bridge. I’ve since grown to appreciate not slapping a water cooler on.

The 5600x is more than capable of keeping cool with even a moderate air cooler. and you can save all that money to plow into a GPU that will make this thing fly.

Coming from a Ryzen 3 1300x, this is a massive boost in performance. Very snappy (though that may be partially due to Gen 4 SSDs) and handles any task I can throw at it. As a challenge (mistake) I ran a Python script that opened over 100 Firefox tabs, but this thing survived with only a few seconds of lag.

I don’t know how the stock cooler performs for this chip, as I replaced it with a Hyper 212 Black Edition. That has proved to be more than capable, with the 5600x only hitting ~60 C under load. Read: there’s plenty of overclocking room for this chip.

However. Consider buying the 5600 non-x instead. The only real difference is the base clock, but the performance is nearly identical in most real-world cases. I would recommend that you save your money and do that.

If you see a reason to go with the 5600x, know it’s still a great chip but saving your money is probably a better idea. I only have a 5600x instead of a 5600 because of a sale. As GamersNexus said: “$30 for a letter.

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