Intel Core i5-13600K Desktop Processor 14 cores (6 P-cores + 8 E-cores) 24M Cache, up to 5.1 GHz

Product Information

Considering that the Intel Core i9-13900K didn't get a price increase over its 12th-gen counterpart, the price hike here is probably the biggest disappointment with this chip. Enthusiast users are used to spending the extra money to have the best right out the gate, so they could absorb some of the price inflation rather than let it fall squarely on the one chip that most people are going to use. This chip also draws 65% more power than the Core i5-12600K for a roughly 25% better performance. These are hardly signs of efficiency, and it continues the exact wrong trend we saw with Intel Alder Lake. For comparison, the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X has a max power draw of 211.483W, and its 3D V-Cache variant has an incredibly tight 136.414W power draw in my AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D review.

Overall, the Core i5 shows excellent power consumption readings during our tests. It peaks at 471W during our Adobe Premiere test, which is the lowest of any of the CPUs we tested for comparison. Intel's Core i5 pulls slightly more power in the Cinebench test than the competing Ryzen 7 7700X, but it also performs slightly better in that test, which makes this a rather mixed result. Intel is a trusted brand known for producing high-quality processors, and the i5-13600K continues that legacy, providing a reliable and stable computing experience. In the end, the Core i5-13600K outperforms the Ryzen 5 7600X by about 40%, while improving on the Core i5-12600K's performance by about 25%. As far as bottom line results go, this would make this processor a slam dunk, but one thing keeps this chip from true greatness: its power consumption. If you look at the breakdown of actual games, the two chips performed identically in Red Dead Redemption 2and Gears Tactics.There was a solid 10% improvement in Far Cry 6and a massive 12% jump in F1 22,however, balancing out the scales. The Intel Core i7-13700K, meanwhile, is meant for more professional users who have more taxing workloads like professional designers, video editors, 3D modelers, and program developers. Gamers are also major targets for the 13700K, since many games require a lot of computational power at a fairly constant rate for long stretches of time, something very few other apps demand.

Rich in Cores

Looking at the best processors, you're going to want to buy from Intel's 13th Gen family of chips. The 12th Gen series offered some excellent SKUs and we rated the 12600K highly in our review, but the newer processors are simply better. Replacing the 12600K, the Core i5-13600K comes with 6 P-cores and 8 E-cores, compared to the 12600K's 6 P-cores and 4 E-cores. That's double the number of secondary efficient cores with the newer chip that make all the difference. Processors that support 64-bit computing on Intel® architecture require an Intel 64 architecture-enabled BIOS.

The Core i5-14600K brings some performance improvements, no matter how minor they are. That comes at the cost of power draw, though. Across the suite of games I tested, the Core i5-14600K drew about 15% more power on average. This is just looking at gaming. In more CPU-intensive tasks, the actual wattages will be much higher. Jacob Roach / Digital TrendsWhile Intel Meteor Lake chips still use the same 10nm "Intel 7" process as the previous 12th-gen Alder Lake chips, the 13th-gen chips improve on the previous architecture in a number of key ways.

While the 13600K has the lowest minimum power draw of the three chips tested with 1.973W (an 18% lower power consumption than the 12600K's minimum of 2.415W), it also maxes out at an astonishing 204.634W, which is about 83% more power to achieve a roughly 40% better performance.

Where to buy Intel i5-14600K US

Intel's relative price increase with the Core i5-13600K is unwelcome. But we’ve run our tests and cannot deny that the Core i5-13600K still offers exceptional performance for what you pay. Sure, it isn't as fast as the Core i9-13900K or the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X in CPU tests (those flagships have a big core-count advantage), but in games with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080—or anything weaker. really—it is more than a match for these two higher-end CPUs. The big concern we have here: The climbing price of Core i5 processors will also likely mean budget-friendly options released further down the road will also cost more. This is a trend we have seen far too much of in recent years, and Intel certainly isn’t alone here, but that doesn’t counter our disappointment at this generational price increase.