Intel Core i5-8600K 8th Gen 6-Core CPU Review

Intel Core i5-8600K

The new Intel Core i5-8400 Coffee Lake CPUs certainly left us impressed, despite our own skepticism prior to their launch. I’ve been eager to see what else the new Coffee Lake CPUs have to offer, and today I have the Intel Core i5-8600K CPU going on our test bench. This is likely to be one of the most popular chips for many consumers. The i5 range is a popular option for gamers, as it delivers most of the features and performance of an i7, albeit at a lower price. With this being a K-series processor, it’s also overclockable, meaning you can squeeze even more performance out of the chip.

More cores are the main star of the show here, a leap to six cores is a first for the i5 range, which has been quad-core for a very long time indeed. That should basically mean 50% more performance. Of course, it doesn’t always work like that, as every bit of software uses each core differently. Sometimes the performance can be the same, sometimes greater than expected, but that’s what I’m here to find out!

With as many cores as the Ryzen 5 range of CPUs, it’s going to be competitive. However, Intel has AMD beat in terms of clock speeds, and we already know that our preview Coffee Lake reviews beat out virtually everything in benchmarks. Let’s see what this one can do!

Specifications

• Cores: 6
• Threads: 6
• Base Clock: 3.6 GHz
• Max Turbo: 4.3 GHz
• Cache: 9 MB
• Max Memory Size: 64 GB
• Memory Types: DDR4 2666
• PCIe Lanes: 16
• TDP: 95W
• Optane Ready: Yes
• Lithography: 14 nm

Additional

Our Z370 reviews all feature this lovely stick of Optane Memory from Intel. This is a feature that’s still limited to the Intel platform, but one we hope to see expand into other parts of the market over the next few years.

“Intel Optane memory is a smart, adaptable system accelerator for PCs. It provides uncompromising system responsiveness for large capacity storage drives, making everything you do fast, smooth and easy.” – Intel