So, you think you want to build a decent PC? 

Well, you probably do, especially if you’re reading this article.

However, what might not be so clear is whether you should build a Ryzen-based rig or use one of the more recently-released Intel chips. With the new Zen 4 chips not due out until the second half of 2022, the latest offerings from AMD have now been on the market for well over a year. 

With that said, they still pack some punch. Today, we’re going to see how the i5-12600K, which is around a year younger than its counterpart, stacks up against the Ryzen 7 5800X. 

We’ll be comparing the specs, affordability, feature set, power consumption, and the benchmark results of both chips, before making a recommendation which will hopefully make it clear exactly where you should be putting your cash.

Specifications

1. Specification Comparison

The 12600K has ten cores and sixteen threads, while the 5800X has around 20% fewer cores (eight) and the same number of threads (sixteen). Working in AMD’s favour, though, is the fact that it does have a smaller processor manufacturing node, meaning that there is a shorter distance between transistors (7nm, as opposed to the 10nm distance on Intel’s new chips).

The 5800X also has a significantly larger L3 Cache, and lower TDP. This is all good news for the Ryzen line, but Intel – having the newer product on the market – have made the wise decision to include support for DDR5 and LPDDR5 in their Alder Lake range. And, while the 12600K definitely draws more power between these two, it also is capable of a higher boost clock speed.

Verdict: Despite all of the good intentions of AMD to make a much more energy-efficient chip here, the fact that Intel have the more powerful product (on paper, at least), and have included support for the next generation of memory, makes it hard to justify picking the 5800X (except, maybe, for gamers particularly concerned about their ecological footprint).

2. Price & Availability

The 12600K, as with most of Intel’s processors right now, is only available on Amazon via third-party sellers. When we last checked, the cheapest you’ll be able to find it for is $349, which is around 16% higher than its list price.

The 5800X paints a much more appealing picture for buyers, being readily available at a discount of just over 21% ($427.99). Also working in the favour of this Ryzen chip is the fact that it will be compatible with many older motherboards (those with AM4 sockets), while anyone picking up an Alder Lake CPU will also find themselves an extra couple of hundred dollars down due to the need for a new LGA 1700 board.

Verdict: The fact that buying a 12600K means having to deal with scalpers is off-putting. Having to buy a brand-new motherboard with it will only compound that. On the other hand, the 5800X could actually save you a significant amount of cash, especially if you already have an AM4 mobo. So, if money is a serious factor you need to consider, go with the 5800X.

3. Included Features

The 12600k belongs to the Alder Lake line, which brings with it some very interesting new features. Perhaps the most notable of these is the Golden Cove architecture, which has been designed from scratch and combines two different types of cores (“Performance Cores” and “Efficiency Cores”). In theory, this allows for better scaling in power-consumption according to how the PC is being used.

Additionally, DDR5 and LPDDR5 compatibility provide a significant head start for Intel’s offering. AMD have now announced that their AM5 chips will support the next generation of memory, but their release has now been put back to at least “2H 2022” (so expect them in the summer at the earliest).

And, as with the other chips in their ‘K’ range, the 12600K comes with an integrated GPU (the UHD 770). While it’s modest – much more modest than a good dedicated GPU, and significantly lower-powered than the iGPUs of the Ryzen’s ‘G’ series – it does provide a fall-back option that the 5800X does not. If you do choose to rely on the 770 while shopping for a more powerful graphics card, we’d advise you to temper your expectations; it’s absolutely fine for Rocket League and other eSports games, but it’s not going to provide impressive visual results by most measures.

The 5800X, being part of Ryzen’s newest generation of chips, has a much less eye-catching list of features this time around. However, one of the most talked about inclusions on this chip is the entirely new architecture design which takes the emphasis off of the Infinity Fabric. This is due to the Core Complex Dies (CCD) now being able to hold eight cores rather than four; consequently, AMD have significantly lowered the need for IF as each of the eight cores can access the 20MB L3 Cache without any inherent latency. Their higher-end chips still support IF (for example, on 12-core chipsets), but there’s no need for one in this case.

Verdict: Intel have really outdone themselves with their latest generation of chips. By taking a much more forward-thinking approach, their support for PCIe 5.0, DDR5, and LPDDR5 has given them the much stronger feature-set on paper. If your main concern is whether or not your CPU can support the latest technologies, it’s hard to recommend against the 12600K.

4. Power Efficiency

One of the most interesting shifts Intel have made is to redefine the power consumption of their Alder Lake processors. Rather than using the TDP definition, they’ve now moved to two separate terms; the first is PBP (which stands for “Processor Base Power”), and the other is MTP (“Maximum Turbo Power”). What they have kept fairly quiet is that these chips can scale up their power toward the MTP without the user really being aware of it.

The 5800X has a base TDP of 105W, which is a 16% decrease compared to the 12600K’s base clock. Even when overclocked, any AM4 chip won’t be able to pull more than 142W, which is still lower than the MTP of Intel’s chip (150W).

Verdict: Again, AMD have always done a good job of making their chips power efficient. With the latest Ryzen line, this has continued to be the case, and the 5800X is capable of providing staggering gaming performance while using significantly less juice than its competitor. Definitely worthy of consideration for any eco-minded gamers out there. 

5. Benchmark Comparison

To get the best possible understanding of how these two chips stack up against each other, we’ll be pulling the benchmarking results from several different sources. These should help us to not only understand which chip has better processing capabilities on paper, but also how that actually carries through into real-world usage.

The first source we’ll look at will be UserBenchmark, which attempts to compute and analyse “millions of benchmarks”. Their results tend to be good for getting a rough overview of what to actually expect from these chips. 

Based on their generated report, the 12600K appears to be the vastly superior product. It outshines the AMD in just about any area most gamers are likely to be concerned with; things like faster single, dual, quad, and octa-core speeds (whether at base clock or overclocked). The 5800X, on the other hand, has slightly better memory latency and looks to be more energy efficient.

Thankfully, we can also get some actual game-performance scores, thanks to Tom’s Hardware. Their comparison of the two CPUs (as well as the 5900X) allows us to see exactly how they each handle some of the most demanding titles on the market today.

The first of these is Horizon Zero Dawn, which was tested at 1080P with the Ultra graphics preset. In that test, the 5800X was the marginal victor with an average FPS of 178.7; ever so slightly beating the 12600K, whether it was paired with DDR4 (176.4 FPS) or DDR5 (176.5 FPS).

With the resolution bumped up to 1440P, something a little interesting happens. The 5800X still churns out a perfectly good 153.3 FPS on average, but the 12600K with DDR5 now out-performs it with an average of 154.4 FPS. However, pair the 12600K with DDR4 and you’ll see a fairly inconsequential drop to 152.3 FPS.

One of the most startling gaming tests was their comparison of both chips while running Microsoft’s Flight Simulator at 1080P and Ultra settings. In that matchup, the 12600K with DDR4 pulled a very impressive average of 143 FPS. Switch that memory to DDR5, though, and there is a somewhat severe reduction of just under 19 FPS. The 5800X sits more-or-less right between them, with 135.6 FPS on average.

Likewise, the Red Dead Redemption 2 comparison (at 1080P with the Ultra preset) had somewhat surprising results. The 5800X managed an average of 171.9 FPS, beating the 12600K with both DDR4 (162.1 FPS) and DDR5 (160.1 FPS) RAM.

With results like these, it’s a good idea to bring in a third set of benchmarking results. For that, we looked at CPU Monkey, which looks at the results of benchmarking utilities like Cinebench and Geekbench, allowing readers to easily compare them.

In almost every single Cinebench test, the victory went to the 12600K. Sometimes this was by a fairly narrow margin (like 1% with Cinebench R15), while it grew to as large as 15% in others (R23 Single-Core, R23 Multi-Core, and R20 Multi-Core). The one W for the 5800X was the Cinebench R15 Multi-Core test (where it was the better-performing chip by 1%). 

Even in the Geekbench Single and Multi-Core tests, the 12600K was the clear victor (by 12% and 7%, respectively).

Verdict: It was very surprising to look at these results. Based on Cinebench, Geekbench, and User Benchmark scores, you could hardly be blamed for expecting the 12600K to be the superior CPU. However, it looks like the 5800X has genuinely better real-world performance, despite being limited to DDR4 memory.

6. Verdict

Consumers looking to put together a workbench machine should look no further than the 12600K. The Cinebench and Geekbench scores alone were enough to settle our minds in this regard, and the fact that this chip can also support the latest and greatest technologies is just another reason to invest in it. It might be more expensive initially, but we have a feeling that its longevity is going to make it a worthwhile investment.

For gamers, both of these chips will do a great job. However, the clear winner is absolutely the 12600K. While some of its wins over the 5800X were a little marginal, we feel that future titles are going to make much better use of DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 technology. Again, the initial overheads of getting set up with the processor are going to be higher, but we have a feeling that it’s going to be well worth it if it means you can get an extra year or two out of your machine.

If you’re only looking for a general use machine, we’d recommend going with the 5800X. It’s still going to churn out impressive performance during heavy multimedia editing work and gaming, and the cost (especially when you factor in the more affordable motherboards) make it an absolute no-brainer.

The post Intel Core i5-12600K vs AMD Ryzen 7 5800X: Which is Best Value? appeared first on PremiumBuilds.

Intel’s 12^th Generation CPUs have impressed across the board with their performance. To get the most out of them, it makes sense to pay close attention to your choice of RAM. In this article, we’ll explain how RAM specification can help improve CPU performance, show you our testing which demonstrates the effect of different RAM speeds, and then make our recommendations as to the RAM that will help you get the most out of an Alder lake 12^th Generation Intel CPU. 

DDR4 Vs DDR5

One of the features of the 12^th generation CPUs is their support for DDR5 RAM. This is dependent on the motherboard you choose, with your motherboard choice tying you to either DDR5 or DDR4 RAM.
The Case for DDR5 isn’t made out in this generation: DDR5 ram boasts impressive headline frequencies, but the timings show that it’s not a clear cut picture. This is borne out in testing, with DDR5 outperforming DDR4 in certain high memory bandwidth-intensive tasks like file compression and video rendering. DDR4, particularly well-specified faster DDR4, holds its own, particularly in gaming tests. Of course, there’s also the fact that DDR5 is three to four times as expensive as even high-quality DDR4 kits. We’re safe to say that for the 12^th generation, you should opt for a DDR4 kit unless you have excellent reasons to need DDR5, and very deep pockets as well. 

Once you’ve decided DDR4 is right for your Alder Lake Build, what then? Which is the best DDR4 RAM to choose from with this platform? We conducted a number of tests to find out the best RAM for the Intel Core i5-12400, i5-12600K, and Core i7-12700K for 2022 builds.

Testing Set up:

All of our testing was conducted on the MSI Tomahawk Z690 DDR4 motherboard (B09GLD72QH). We used an Intel i7-12700K (B09FXNVDBJ) at stock/default settings. This was paired with an EVGA RTX 3080 XC3 Ultra. Cooling was provided by an Arctic Liquid Freezer II 240 AIO (B07WSDLRVP). The power supply is a Fractal Design Ion+ 860W platinum PSU.

RAM used was: 

• Crucial Ballistix 3200Mhx CL16 2x8GB, (XMP and JDEC) (B083TRRT16)
• G.Skill Ripjaws V 3600MHz CL16 2x8GB (XMP and JDEC) (B07X8DVDZZ)
• Patriot Viper Steel 4400Mhz Cl9 2x8GB (XMP and Manual OC) (B07KXLFDL6)

Firstly, let’s define a few terms so that we can interpret our results.

MHz speed is often the headline specification of RAM, but it’s somewhat misleading in that on its own it’s not particularly helpful in determining RAMs potential for performance. It’s the frequency the RAM runs at, but more correctly should be ‘MT/s’ or Million Transfers per Second, as RAM is Double Data Rate – it is accessible twice on every clock cycle. Therefore DDR4 3200Mhz RAM actually runs at 1600MHz, which is the speed you will see in various RAM diagnostic utilities. Faster RAM has the potential to perform better, as the rate of access increases. This primarily increases Bandwidth, and to a degree also lowers latency since the memory controller is waiting less time for an available access window to transact with the RAM. However, faster isn’t always better. Very high-speed RAM (greater than 4000MHz) is difficult for memory controllers to run, and may not be stable particularly in larger capacities. If you’re looking for 32GB or 64GB of RAM, you may find you need to reduce speeds for stability.

CL timings or CAS latency are the numbers you see quoted in listings for RAM: 16-16-16-32 or similar. These lists the primary timings and they are the number of clock cycles it takes to perform certain important functions. Lower numbers are therefore better. By multiplying clock speed with CL, you gain an indication of the ‘first word’ latency of the RAM in nanoseconds. Since it’s measured in time, again lower is better.

Gear 1 vs Gear 2. This is Intel’s naming for the ratio of your memory controller speed to the RAM speed. Ideally, for the lowest latency, it should be 1:1 and this is known as ‘Gear 1’. If your RAM frequency exceeds the stable speed of the CPUs memory controller, then ‘Gear 2’ may be employed, halving the memory controller speed in relation to the RAM. This induces a latency penalty. For Alder Lake, the memory controller appears to be happy in Gear 1 up to around 4000MHz, but individual CPUs may vary. 

1. Synthetic Benchmarks

The CPU test in Time Spy is highly Multithreaded, using our 12700K to the full. As it turns out it’s also sensitive to memory speed. You can see here how detrimental to performance running 2400MHz CL16 RAM is – the score is 1,500 points down on the next set of results. This is what happens if you fail to set XMP, your RAM runs at these basic ‘JDEC’ defined speeds and that can really hurt performance.  Both 3200Mhz and 3600Mhz CL16 RAM kits are commonly available and currently cheap. You can see they perform identically in this test returning 16,000 points each.

Looking at the ‘high performance’ RAM kit, this is a 4400 MHz RAM Kit, using Samsung B-Die chips, that we tweak to further improve performance.

Firstly, at XMP settings this kit runs at 4400Mhz CL19, but in gear 2. This, combined with the looser timings, offsets the higher frequency operation. Tweaking further brings us to a 4400Mhz CL17 settings and our third-highest result. Finally, Tightening timings to 4000Mhz Cl15-16-16-36 brings us to our best score of 17026, but it’s by a marginal 100 points. All three configurations perform near identically.

Rendering is another task that can be memory intensive, but is it dependent on memory speeds? We ran a couple of tests to check.

Cinebench R20 uses a tile-based renderer to complete a scene as fast as the CPU allows.

Ordered by result, we can see that there is essentially no trend here. 60 points are well within the margin of error for Cinebench R20 and we can see that the ‘worst’ RAM specification, 2400Mhz JDEC settings are butting up against one of the best: Manually tuned RAM at 4000MHz Cl17. 2600Mhz CL16 ties 3600Mhz Cl16 as well. This test doesn’t demonstrate any coherent scaling with RAM Speed. The lesson here is that many tasks simply aren’t dependent on RAM speed, and also that you shouldn’t use Cinebench to look for performance improvements if you’re tweaking RAM!

Cinebench R23 shows similarly unhelpful results. Again, this is all within the margin of error for this test and there’s no clear trend aligning with RAM performance.

And finally, another rendering test, this time Blender, a popular 3D Creation platform.

We rendered out two scenes on the i7-12700K, with the following results:

We’ve put a bit of a spoiler here in the form of some DDR5 testing as well. You can see that the results in all three instances, 2400Mhz, 400MHz optimised, and even DDR5 at 6000MHZ is the same: This is another task that does not scale with RAM speed to any appreciable degree.

2. Gaming Benchmarks

So, some synthetic tests show memory scaling, and some don’t. But what about gaming?

Well, games as a rule respond very well to reduced RAM latency on previous intel platforms. Getting data to the CPU with less delay allows it to process the game world faster, returning higher frame rates.
We can demonstrate this using a number of tests.

1. Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Firstly, Shadow of the tomb raider makes things easy for us by showing the effects of RAM speed on the game engine thread itself, in the in-game benchmark.

Using the min, average and maximum framerates, we can see a clear trend in performance as we move up to faster RAM specifications. Whilst JDEC specification 2400MHz RAM languishes behind at 202FPS average, the 3200MHz Ram improves to 227FPS, the 3600 MHz kit to 239FPS, the 4400 MHz kit to 244FPS, and the manually tweaked 4000 MHz kit run to 257 FPS on average. Note that minimum and Maximum frame rates increase accordingly. 

Now, this is all well and good but is it representative of anything in the real world? Well, the overall FPS results of this benchmark confirm the Ram speed scaling and demonstrate the extent to which it can help:

Here, we can see that the 4400MHz Kit actually returns the highest results, with the 4000MHz RAM kits actually trailing slightly behind. The XMP 3600Mhz kit is also close to the peak result. You can again see the clear detriment of slow RAM, with 2400Mhz a clear 10% slower than any of the better options.

As for the reversal of fortunes for the 4000MHz manually tweaked ram? – Well, XMP has settings for a number of timings that we did not have time to optimise for this testing. The Render thread often acts as a limiting factor and depends more on Ram Bandwidth than latency. Overall, you can see the broad impact of tweaking RAM, but also the subtle nature of changes in timings and settings that can add noise to the results.

Nonetheless, this test demonstrates how faster RAM assists CPU performance and allows games to run with less restriction from CPU limitations, resulting in higher frame rates.

2. Rainbow 6 Siege

Again in Rainbow 6 Siege, we can see a broad trend favouring faster RAM, with 2400MHz the slowest at 500FPS, the 4000MHz and 4400MHz options posting similar results from 530-540 FPS average, and the 3600Mhz CL16 RAM kit posting the best results at 564 FPS. Again, XMP likely takes optimisations to tRFC and other secondary and tertiary settings that deliver more consistent all-round performance here. Nevertheless, such is the performance of the i7-12700K we’re really splitting hairs looking at RAM speed impacts on this benchmark.

3. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020

Flight Sim is a Game, or simulator if you want to be serious about it, that places unique importance on the CPU performance. It’s often the limiting factor in frame rates in this game, and lifting CPU capability directly translates to more frames on screen in a lot of circumstances.

In this test, we fly a Daher at a low altitude across Manhattan and log frame rates for 3 minutes.

Here again, we see the detrimental effect using slow ram, or not setting XMP on your RAM, has on performance. 2400MHz languishes at 98 FPS. Faster RAM scales near linearly across the speeds on test, with 3600Mhz bringing a decent lift to 107 FPS, and 4400MHz and faster continuing to increase performance. Remember, with gear 2 and loose timings this 4400MHz kit isn’t the fastest RAM on test here. The effect is subtle, but the trend is clear: Faster RAM helps this title, which is unsurprising given the CPU heavy nature of performance limits in Flight Sim 2020. 

4. Forza Horizon 5

This modern AAA open-world racer has a detailed inbuilt benchmark that lets us peek under the hood and see how performance is impacted.
Firstly, we can see that the sim engine itself benefits hugely from improving RAM speeds:

This is pretty unequivocal. Going from 2400MHz JDEC specification to 3600Mhz Cl16 nets you a huge 70FPS average gain. Pushing to optimised 4000MHz RAM at CL16 makes that a 110FPS margin, over a third faster again.
Once the game has processed the world, it prepares the render to pass to the GPU, this is the CPU render stat also shown in the results:

Here we see a less dramatic but still significant performance trend: The rendering process gains around 20 FPS or 10% going from the slowest RAM to moderately well optimised 3600Mhz Cl16 RAM.

And finally, do these under-the-hood numbers make any real-world difference? Well, they can do yes, as shown by our results:

Optimising RAM sees an easy gain of around 15FPS in the overall benchmark score. 

Conclusions:

Throughout these tests, we’ve seen an overall trend of faster ram assisting performance, both in some synthetic tests and also in games. We hope you’ll excuse the somewhat ‘messy’ nature of the data. It is what it is, this is real data, and the nuances of RAM speed and timings and how they interact with different software performance is a complex web. There is no one best set of RAM for all circumstances, but you can certainly pick RAM that will give you better results more of the time. As our results consistently show, you can also pick bad RAM or fail to set it up correctly, and this can bring tangible harm to your system’s performance.

We’d also like to address the issue over the gaming benchmarks. We’ve purposefully run these tests at 1080p, High settings, to bring you data that is at least somewhat relevant. But we are still using an RTX 3080 at 1080p. It’s quite correct to say that at 1440p and up the limiting factor becomes the GPU making these results less relevant. However: What is important is that RAM speed sets a baseline for performance in many games. You buy yourself more headroom by choosing better RAM. And that’s important in demanding CPU bound situations or as a system ages. A system with bad RAM may well show performance problems where one with well-chosen RAM won’t, and that could mean the system as a whole survives another generation of graphics cards upgrades.

Alder lake CPUs are exceptionally high performance, and it would be a real shame to limit their potential with poorly chosen RAM.

Recommendations

Overall, on the basis of cost, availability and ease of set-up, we still recommend 3600Mhz CL16 RAM for Alder lake CPUs. This RAM brings you the bulk of performance improvements with a minimum of money and time invested. There are Crucial Ballistix and G.Skill Ripjaws V kits available in 2x8GB Format at under $100. They’ve got decent timings, and represent great bang for buck.

If you need 32 GB, around $150 to $180 gets you G.Skill or those Ballistix kits in 2x16Gb Format.

There are also currently Crucial Ballistix Max 4000Mhz Cl18 Kits available at around $90 for 16Gb. They also represent a nice option, as they run in Gear 1 mode and give roughly the same total latency as a 3600Mhz Cl16 kit. Grabbing those and tweaking timings downwards could yield some pretty impressive results, but they’ll work just fine at XMP.

The post Best DDR4 RAM for Intel ‘Alder Lake’ CPUs (i5-12400, 15-12600K, i7-12700K) appeared first on PremiumBuilds.

Intel’s new generation of CPUs was released last month including the core i7-12700K. We’ve been given one to test and review. In this article, we’ll put it through its paces against the flagships from the last year to see how it measures up.

Intel has been lagging behind in the CPU wars for a couple of generations now. The 11^th generation failed to challenge AMD’s Zen 3 line up and the 10 core i9-10900K is the last true powerhouse they released, now 18 months old. 

To remedy this Intel have redefined CPU architecture, releasing the 12^th generation, known as ‘Alder Lake’ with a hybrid design with both powerful P-cores for performance, and more efficient e-cores. This apes ‘big-little’ design CPUs found on mobile devices where efficiency is king, but we still want some high-performance cores for demanding tasks.

This CPU is fabricated at 10nm, which should improve efficiency and lower power use. Meanwhile, there are 8 P-cores on the 12700K, which have hyperthreading and can hit 4.9GHz all core speeds, and 4 e-cores too, which clocks at 3.9GHz maximum and lack hyperthreading. That makes this a 12 physical, 20 logical core CPU. Backing it up it’s got 25MB L3 cache, Intels UHD770 integrated graphics, and the K specification means this CPU is unlocked, so it can be tweaked for performance on Z690 chipset motherboards.

This CPU is vital for Intel to stamp their authority on the enthusiast CPU market, so we’re eager to find out what it can do.

Test methodology and System

We’ve taken great care to ensure this test is fair. To do that we’ve controlled every variable that we can. All the synthetic and gaming results you’ll see are obtained with the same RAM settings across the CPUs under test. We’ve tested using an MSI Tomahawk Z690 Motherboard for the i7-12700K, A Z590 ROG Maximus XIII Hero for the 10^th and 11^th gen Intel CPUs, and the MSI Mortar B550 for the Ryzen 5800X.

For all the gaming and synthetic tests, we kept to Intel’s specifications for multi-core enhancements, power limits, and Thermal Velocity Boost. We did this because to our mind this is comparable to how we’ve tested the 5800X using PBO. Both CPUs were allowed to perform as they do with minimal set-up, according to the manufacturer’s intentions, but with the automatic optimisations in place. It’s also the default behaviour of the MSI Tomahawk Z690. 

We verified this behaviour with A-B testing in a number of metrics and with both our RAM settings and motherboard settings the results represent this CPU performing at its best, outside of more involved manual tuning or overclocking. RAM was set to 3600MHz CL16-16-16-32 in all tests except the specific memory tests.
We tested primarily with a Noctua NH-D15S cooler, but the performance was also verified with an Arctic Liquid Freezer II 240mm AIO. Thermal throttling was not encountered in any of the tests presented in this review.
For the GPU we used the EVGA RTX 3080 XC3 ultra but run our test settings in order to expose the CPU performance as much as possible, this powerful and consistent GPU helped us do that. 

So, let’s dig into our results!

1. Synthetic Tests

Cinebench R20

Cinebench R20 allows us to test multicore or single-core performance whilst rendering a scene. It is almost entirely independent of memory speed which allows us to isolate raw CPU performance. 

We conducted three runs and averaged to obtain these results. The i7-12700K Clearly brings its core advantage to this test, with 12 physical cores overwhelming the 10 cores of the 10850K.  Running a single-core test demonstrates the performance of a single P-Core: The score of 737 points is a clear 100 points above that of the other three CPUs under test. Our main regret here is not having a 12 core 5900X available for test: No doubt it would be a close-run battle here for the multi-core crown. 

Blender

Using Blender to render a couple of scenes, we get a sense of the rendering performance of these CPUs. This test is highly multithreaded, using all cores to maximum capacity until the workload is complete. 

Note that shorter bars are better indicating less time taken: In this test, we can see that for the ‘Classroom’ render, the i7-12700K is a full 100 seconds faster to complete this workload than the next fastest CPU, the Ryzen 5800X. In the shorter BMW27 test, the Alder lake CPU is 30 seconds faster than the second-fastest CPU, the i9-10850K.

We feel obliged to point out that we’re using this as a synthetic test of the CPUs, and if you’re actually looking to accelerate 3D rendering an NVidia GPU will complete the task in a fraction of the time of even the 12^th Gen Intel CPU here. 

Clearly, the i7-12700K is very potent in multi-core workloads, with only the Ryzen 9 CPUs and the i9-12900K able to challenge it. It comfortably wins every test in this section.

3D Mark

Using 3D Mark we focus on the CPU component of the Fire Strike and Time Spy benchmarks. These tests do bring memory performance into play somewhat and also heavily favour higher core counts as it’s a parallel test that uses all cores. 

The i7-12700K stamps its authority on these tests as well, making significant gains over every other CPU on test. Just as in the other synthetic benchmarks, it’s the clear winner. 

2. Game benchmarks

We ran our gaming benchmarks at 1080p and high settings to isolate CPU performance as much as possible, but retained settings that are relevant in the real world. The RTX 3080 helps us see differences in underlying performance. 

Rainbow 6 Siege

Rainbow 6 Siege has an inbuilt benchmark which we’ve found very consistent.

In this benchmark, the i7-12700K turns the synthetic performance results into tangible performance gains, with 80FPS more than the 5800X, and more than 100FPS more than the flagship Intel 10^th and 11^th generation CPUs. 

Doom Enternal

Doom Eternal is also very well optimised and capable of high frame rates and we logged two minutes of play to give us these results:

This test initially showed the Ryzen 5800X beating the 12700K by a small amount: That’s an interesting result given the apparent single-core advantage of the Intel CPU. Brief analysis showed that Doom eternal is one of the games that Windows 11 struggles with on Alder Lake, so a switch back to Win 10 and a re-test showed the 12700K improving to the tune of 10fps average. At 380 FPS the performance is no slouch on either, but the 8 Core Zen 3 CPU still holds its own here.  This result also highlights the challenges of a brand new platform and a new Operating System – performance refinements will continue as the operating system matures and better allocates tasks on this complex CPU.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Moving on to more demanding titles, Shadow of the Tomb Raider’s inbuilt benchmark has exceptional consistency and gives us a breakdown of CPU performance, it’s those numbers we’re looking at here to completely isolate it from GPU performance.

This test swings back to the i7-12700K’s favour, with a clear 40FPS advantage over the other CPUs. Note we have isolated CPU performance here, so this isn’t indicative of actual FPS which will be GPU limited. 

Red Dead Redemption 2

Red Dead Redemption 2 is another strong showing for the Ryzen 5800X.

Again it’s surprising to see the Ryzen 5800X doing well against the 12700K, with just a few FPS to the new CPUs favour. It’s possible we’re finding the limits of even an RTX 3080 at 1080p ultra settings, and whilst lower settings might show wider gaps we think it’s more interesting to demonstrate how close these CPUs can be ‘in the real world’. We re-ran this benchmark in Windows 10 and Windows 11 and found no appreciable performance difference, so this isn’t a case of the operating system limiting the new CPU architecture.

Flight Simulator 2020

And finally, the game that places the biggest demand on CPU power here, Flight Simulator 2020. This benchmark comprises a three-minute flight from La Guardia over Manhattan and delivers a stern test of the CPU. GPU utilisation stays under 70% here and performance is ultimately dependent on CPU speed. We’ve omitted the i9-11900K here as recent game updates have invalidated older testing with that CPU.

Here the i7-12700K is again the best performing CPU on test, using that spectacular single-core speed to deliver a 107FPS average. Note that core count doesn’t matter here, you can disable the 5800X or 10850K to 6 cores and obtain the same results. This test is all about cache size, and single-core speed and the 12700K has both in spades. We’ve got tonnes more in-depth testing on this game which will form a separate article, so if this sim is your focus you’ll want to keep an eye out for that. However, as a spoiler, the 12700K is absolutely the best option for this Simulator right now. 

Gaming performance conclusions

Our game testing sees the i7-12700K either match or beat every comparable CPU in gaming. The Ryzen 5800X runs it pretty close in a couple of titles, however, in others we see a commanding 10% or so FPS lead. We’ve purposefully run these tests at more representative settings, do demonstrate rather than overstate the differences you’ll find between these CPUs.

Nonetheless, the result here is clear: At $400 The i7-12700K beats the Ryzen 5800X, and the outgoing Intel flagships. Given what we know of the 5900X and 5950X, where their performance in games is largely dependent on that same single-core speed as the 5800X, they don’t offer any compelling advantage in gaming except for in a few specific titles. 

3. Memory Speed Scaling

RAM is the hot topic of Intels 12^th Generation, since depending on your choice of motherboard you can use either DDR4 or DDR5 RAM. The newer specification remains very expensive and hard to find, whilst performance benefits outside of very specific tasks aren’t clear cut. We’ve tested with DDR4 Ram throughout this review: We feel it’s what the bulk of people will choose for this generation, particularly with the more sensibly priced i7-12700K.

However, the message persists that ‘intel doesn’t scale with RAM speed like Ryzen’ so we wanted to find out if the i7-12700K was sensitive to RAM speeds.

To illustrate this, we ran the Shadow of the Tomb Raider Benchmark in a variety of speed configurations:

These tests cover the spectrum from ‘getting it wrong’ with default JDEC specification RAM, such as you’d encounter if you failed to set XMP, through to commonly available kits from 3200Mhz and 3600Mhz CL16, up to overclocked and somewhat optimised DDR4 RAM at 4000MHz Cl15-16-16-32 in Gear1.

You can see there is relatively consistent performance scaling as RAM latency decreases, but it’s not dramatic. We use Shadow of the Tomb Raider for this demonstration because it is responsive to RAM tweaking, many situations are not. Nonetheless, we can see that with a relatively affordable 3600MHz CL16 RAM kit, we have the bulk of performance on offer with minimal investment in both money and time. It remains our pick for the best RAM option for high-performance Intel CPUs into the 12^th Generation. That said, we found memory overclocking easy and fun on this platform: If you do want to tweak, we can recommend a high-performance B-Die kit, and no doubt timings could be significantly optimised from those used to demonstrate this result.

We have separate content coming expanding on this aspect of Alder lake CPU performance. 

4. Power and Thermals

Power draw and the consequent heat output has long since been the cost of high performance on Intel’s CPUs. We ran tests to explore this on the i7-12700K. We opted for the popular NH-D15S Cooler to examine the performance of a top tier air cooling solution on this CPU.

This CPU Maintains the Intel standard of a 190W PL1 for the duration of this test. Core speeds remain at 4.7GHz throughout – and did not throttle even in an extended 10-minute test. CPU temperature is maintained at a thoroughly manageable 79 °C. We repeated this test with an Arctic Liquid Freezer 240mm AIO and obtained the same results – both coolers were plenty capable of handling this CPU at default settings.
We ventured into overclocking, adding 1000 points to our Cinebench R23 Score with a 5GHz P-core and 4GHz e-core target. Results came at the expense of a 240W Power draw, and temperatures in the mid 90’s despite a -50mV undervolt. If you do intend on overclocking this CPU, we’d advise a 280mm or 360mm AIO as a minimum. That said it was thoroughly manageable and entertaining to see an Intel CPU respond to overclocking positively once again. 

Who is this CPU for?

The i7-12700K suits a broad range of workloads and needs. It’s the sweet spot for high-end gaming, content creation and computational workloads. Whilst the Ryzen 9 CPUs offer more physical cores, the times when they are brought to bear on most peoples tasks are minimal. Meanwhile, the faster individual core speeds of the 12^th generation assist much more of the time, delivering higher FPS in gaming, snappier processing in adobe apps and other tasks of that nature. The iGPU is also a bonus to many workloads, accelerating transcodes and transforms for video editors and digital artists.

The i5-12600K is a very valid option at around $100 less, for those workloads if you’re on a budget or for gamers who don’t need 8 P-Cores. The i9-12900K adds 4 more e-cores and remains the preserve of the high-end enthusiast. Most people will be better off saving money with an i7-12700K and buying a better GPU, more SSD space or more RAM.

The imminent release of the non-K CPUs also looks compelling. The first test of the i7-12700 show it performing incredibly close to the K variant: It may well be a sensible choice to keep budgets in control. Meanwhile, the i5-12400 looks set to become the new budget gaming champion, eclipsing the performance of the Ryzen 5600X in a $200 product.

AMD is now left somewhat out in the cold: Whilst the platform costs of the Zen 3 CPUs are lower, the 5800X at $400 still makes little sense against a $400 i7-12700K, and at $300 the i5-12600K matches or outperforms it an offsets the higher motherboard cost. AMD have a response in the pipeline in early 2022 with the ‘stacked V-Cache’ version of the 5800X, the 5800X3D CPUs, so it will be interesting to see how much 92MB total cache can make up the performance gap. The Ryzen 9 CPUs are still significantly more expensive, and their core counts don’t help most users nearly as much as the faster cores of Intels 12^th Gen. You need a very specific workload for a Ryzen 9 to be the best choice of CPU right now. 

However, if you’re sitting there with an Intel 10^th generation or a Ryzen Zen 3 CPU – I wouldn’t take the hype around this release as a cue to upgrade. This CPU is a good step forwards, but it’s not enough of a leap to warrant a platform change from those relatively recent and still high-performance CPUs unless you’re suffering poor performance due to CPU limitations. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, it has been nice to be impressed by an Intel CPU. The i7-12700K is an absolutely storming CPU and excels across a range of workloads, from heavily multithreaded productivity tasks to gaming. This i7 CPU happily beats the last 2 flagship Intel CPU’s, and it’s only challenged in multithreaded superiority by the Ryzen 9 CPUs and the current flagship i9-12900K.

This generation has righted many of the wrongs from the 11^th generation: Power draw and temperature are once again sensible. Performance is outstanding. Where the i9-11900K felt like you had to work to extract performance from it, the i7-12700K willingly demonstrates its prowess.

This CPU does many things right, and for most people looking to build a PC now, this or the i5-12600K are the right choices. However, if these CPUs and the accompanying $200+ Z690 motherboards push you over budget, keep an eye out: Early 2022 will see the value options become available, the i5-12400 and i3 parts based on this platform, as well as more affordable B660 motherboards. On the evidence of these flagship CPUs, and given the dearth of budget AMD CPU options at the moment, we should see Intel regain a dominant position In the CPU market. 

The post Intel Core i7-12700K Review: Alder Lake to the Rescue? Tested vs 5800X, i9-10850K and i9-11900K appeared first on PremiumBuilds.

The Intel i9-11900K was released at the end of 2020 and leverages Intel ‘Rocket Lake’ architecture to bring 8 cores and good overclocking potential to the flagship CPU of this generation. Whilst it offers undoubtedly high performance, it is a power-hungry CPU, particularly when overclocked or running stress tests, with power levels of 300W or more not out of the ordinary! Forming the core of a premium PC with the 11900K, it will usually be paired with a powerful Ampere or RDNA2 GPU, further extending the system’s demands for power.

If you are considering this CPU we’d recommend you assume a 250W power draw for the i9-11900K, add the TDP of your GPU, and then add a good 50% safety margin to ensure that your system can deal with transient loads and additional hardware such as storage, fans, and USB devices without any issues. In this guide, we’ve started with 750W PSU as a minimum for a system incorporating a high-end GPU and moved up where multiple GPUs or extreme overclocking headroom may be required. 

Finally, the ongoing supply and demand issues leave no sector of the PC market untouched, and Power supplies are no exception. This article encompasses the best options available at this time, taking into account those that have been out of stock for a long time or that are simply overpriced considering their specifications. 

Here are our recommendations for the best power supplies to combine with the i9-11900K to ensure a powerful, stable and reliable system.

Related: Intel Core i9-11900K Review
Related: Rocket Lake RAM Speed Analysis

Best PSUs for 11900K – Our Recommendations

1. Best Value PSU for 11900K

MSI may not be best known for its power supplies, having focussed on GPUs and motherboards in the past. However, the MSI MPG A-GF 750W has gained acclaim in reviews for its’ robust design, good performance and keen price. It also comes with an outstanding 10-year warranty indicating the confidence MSI has in the design and construction quality. It utilises all Japanese capacitors and uses the modern standard DC-DC topology. Electrical testing shows excellent voltage stability with minimal ripple, and it easily meets the gold standard efficiency standards. The fan is a quiet and high-quality design with a fluid dynamic bearing to keep the noise down even under load. It has fully modular cables which are flattened for easier routing, and of course, you only need to fit the desired cables to keep your PC as clean looking as possible. It is supplied with two 8 Pin EPS (CPU) power cables, and two PCIe cables to ensure that you can fully populate a Z590 motherboard’s CPU power sockets. MSI has clearly given careful thought to their entry into the competitive PSU market, and this quality and performance is a fantastic deal at $85.

2. Best All-Rounder PSU for 11900K

If you’re looking for a rock-solid PSU to run an RTX 3080, RX 6800XT or RTX 3090 then the Enermax Revolution D.F. 750W fits the bill perfectly. This 750W Gold efficiency rated PSU supplies ample power for the most demanding GPUs when used in combination with the i9-11900K. All the premium features you’d want are there: All Japanese capacitors rated to 105°C, Fully modular design, DC-DC secondary side circuitry and the full suite of protections. It comes with 2 PCI-E cables and 3 sockets, allowing it to power all but the most demanding single GPU setups with ease. It’s got a few neat features including a ‘Dust free’ button that raises the fan to maximum power, in reverse, to pull dust out of the unit as a maintenance task. It performs excellently under load testing with minimal ripple and strong transient load performance which is particularly important when powering high-end Ampere Graphics cards like the RTX 3080. A five-year warranty provides peace of mind. If you want some additional headroom for overclocking or potential future upgrades this unit will serve you well for years to come. 

3. Best PSU for Overclocking the 11900K

Corsair has long been the industry leader for high-end power supplies and the HX Platinum series represent their second-highest end Consumer option – with AX PSUs being unobtainable at the moment. Unfortunately, mining demand means that any PSU capable of powering multiple GPUs has become inflated in price and hard to get and the HX is no exception. This PSU, the HX Platinum 1200W, normally retails at $240 but is currently around $330 on Amazon. However, the core specification is as strong as you can hope for. There’s serious engineering behind this power supply with a semi-digital design and fan microcontroller. Electrical testing shows this to be a class-leading unit with absolutely no complaints or areas of concern. It easily achieves platinum efficiency standards ensuring minimal losses to heat, whilst fan noise remains low even under heavy load. Fully modular cables aid management whilst the use of Corsairs ‘Type 4’ Cable standards make sourcing custom cables easy. It’s topped off with a 10-year warranty to ensure long-lasting operation and peace of mind. 

4. Best PSU for 11900K Multi-GPU Build

If you’re running multiple GPUs on top of the Intel i9-11900K you need an absolutely top-notch PSU to handle the load. The Bequiet! Dark Power Pro is a flagship product from the German brand, with industry-leading engineering and design behind it. Rated for 1500W output at continuous load, and with Titanium power efficiency, this power supply is a great choice to run multiple GTX 3090’s or Radeon RX 6800XT’s for use in computation or rendering rigs. It’s also a good choice for multiple Quadro cards in a professional CAD or design workstation. It’s supplied with a pair of EPS power cables and five 600mm PCIe Power cables (each with twin 6+2 pin heads), to allow for a complex PC build even in full tower cases. It’s configurable between six 12V rails or they can be bridged into a single rail for extreme overclocking applications, whilst the Power supply is digitally controlled on all main rails to ensure stability and smooth power delivery. They’ve focussed on quietness with a frameless fan and gentle fan profile, and a whole side is given over to a mesh panel to aid airflow. Overall this power supply is exceptionally high quality throughout and provides the ideal basis for a hard-working PC with demanding components.

5. Best SFX PSU for i9-11900K

Lian Li are better known for high-quality PC cases but have recently released the SP750 SFX PSU. This compliments their cases like the Lian Li 011D mini which despite being a large case uses an SFX Power supply to reduce the overall size. This power supply benefits from Lian LI’s attention to detail in both design and engineering. It has slick alloy casing and top-notch manufacturing quality. 750W is a high power output for a small form factor design but Lian-Li and the manufacturer ‘Helly Technology’ have maintained excellent electrical performance with stable power output and very high efficiency, easily exceeding gold specification. Components are of high quality throughout. One downside pointed out by reviewers is that the fan can become loud at heavy load, And the 4 PCIe /CPU power sockets must be shared between motherboard CPU power and GPU power, so very high power draw GPUs requiring 3 PCI-E Plugs may require a larger power supply with more extensive connectivity options. Overall though this unit marks a strong entry for Lian Li into the SFX power supply market, and one that is well capable of supporting an i9-11900K in a range of interesting PC builds using unique and small form factor cases.

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The recently released Intel Core i9-11900K is a very fast processor. With a max turbo of over 5 GHz—it’s hard to say otherwise. While the question of whether the 11900K is an upgrade over the 10900K is debatable; one thing that everyone unanimously agrees on is that the 11900K gets very, very, hot.

Intel inexplicably reduced the total core count from its 10^th Gen i9 processors, going from 10 cores to 8. With heavy competition from AMD bearing down with the likes of the 5900X, consumers were somewhat confused as to what Intel’s game was. Turns out, it was pretty simple. Team Blue’s game plan was to push the 11900K as fast as technologically possible. This was in hopes that it will keep up with the competition. While they succeeded in some instances (gaming), AMD still managed to decimate the mere 8 cores of the 11900K. In fact, even the last-gen 10900K managing to keep up or surpass it in certain tasks. Add to this the fact that it runs hotter than the sun itself, and you’ve got a very confusing high-end CPU.

How Hot Does The 11900K Get?

With Intel pushing their 14nm technology to its absolute limits, the 11900K was bound to get hot. How hot, you ask? Well, when running a simple 10-minute stress test, the 11900K shoots up to its recommended maximum temperature of 98 degrees Celsius. You can however get this temperature down to around 88 degrees by sacrificing some performance; which is quite absurd for a high-end consumer CPU that sells for north of $500. Moreover, the 11900K easily overheats when using even a 240mm AIO. This already gives a sign of how extreme of a cooling solution you will need to tame this beast.

The 11900k also draws an average of nearly 200W at peak. This is definitely on the higher end. In comparison, the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X with its 12 cores only reaches an average of 135W.

With all that said, what caliber of CPU cooler must you get in order to effectively cool the Core i9-11900K? The short answer is water cooling. This is generally the only way to go— with one exception, which you will see below).

Best Coolers for i9-11900K – Our Recommendations

Overall Best Cooler for 11900K: NZXT Kraken Z73

To effectively cool the fiery inferno that is the Intel Core i9-11900K, you’re going to need a pretty beefy cooling solution. Most people don’t want to go through the hassle of setting up custom loop water cooling. Luckily, NZXT has the next best thing.

NZXT’s Kraken Z73 is an AIO that’s well-equipped to handle almost any thermal load you throw at it.  With its 360mm radiator along with the triple 120mm fans, the Z73 is able to keep up with the rigorous heat output of the 11900K.

The Kraken lineup of liquid coolers has long since been a fan favourite. This is mainly due to their clean, minimalist design along with top tier cooling performance.

The Kraken Z73 also features a circular 2.36-inch LCD display over the pump. This can be customised according to your liking to display a variety of system stats such as CPU temperature, pump speed, and many more.

The Kraken’s build quality is also very good, with the water block primarily using high-quality plastics and copper. With its muted colours and sleek design, you would find no trouble making the Z73 blend in with the rest of your system.

While the NZXT Kraken Z73 offers stellar cooling performance, it is quite expensive at an MSRP of $280. With that said, if you’re dishing out over $500 for a high-end Intel CPU— the chances are that you probably won’t mind spending some more for an adequate cooler.

Best Air Cooler for 11900K: Noctua NH-D15

It probably doesn’t come as a surprise to many of you that the only air cooler capable of sufficiently cooling the Core i9-11900K is the revered NH-D15 by Noctua. This is a 6-heat pipe, dual-tower behemoth of an air cooler. Furthermore, it is universally known as one of, if not the best CPU air cooler that money can buy.

The NH-D15 comes with a pair of 140mm PWM fans along with Noctua’s special blend of thermal paste. Its large size allows the NH-D15 to keep up with the hefty water coolers and AIOs. In most heavy loaded tests, the 11900K managed to boost up without thermal throttling—which is a testament to the amazing Noctua engineering at work.

The NH-D15 also comes with Noctua’s state of the art fans that run extremely quiet. They’re durable and well-built so you won’t have to worry about any unnecessary rattling. The PWM supported fan headers allow you to freely control fan speed and set custom fan curves depending on your usage.

The award-winning air cooler is iconic for its beige colour and industrial-looking design. Although you can also get the sleeker Chromax Black version if you wish for a more muted look.

For $100, you really can’t go wrong with the Noctua NH-D15. Especially since it manages to keep up with AIOs and water-cooling solutions that are three times its MSRP.

Best Budget AIO for 11900K: Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML240L

If you really want to run an AIO solution to cool your Core i9-11900K without breaking the bank, Cooler Master has got you covered. The MasterLiquid ML240L does not come with all the bells and whistles that you might find on a Kraken. But nonetheless, it manages to do an exemplary job of cooling the 11900K.

What the ML240L lacks in flair, it makes up for with a large pump and a 240mm radiator.  Cooler Master has opted for a dual-chamber water pump design. This leaves more horizontal space on the motherboard so your components won’t be cramped.

However, the MasterLiquid ML240L does lack a pump head display like that of the NZXT Kraken, which some may find incredibly useful to get system information at a glance. The good news is that the ML240L packs a strong pump with extremely quiet fans that does a no-nonsense job of handling the strongest thermal loads thrown at it.

At $85, the Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML240L is an absolute steal for an AIO. Moreover, when you pair it with a high-end processor like the Core i9-11900K, you won’t have to worry about running into any thermal constraints. Plus, you can spend the money you saved elsewhere on your system!

Conclusion

There you have it, our top three choices for the best CPU coolers to pair with the Core i9-11900K. While the all-new Rocket Lake generation of processors by Intel was met with a lukewarm reception, supply constraints with Team Red mean more and more consumers are gravitating towards what’s readily available.

So, if you’re buying a ridiculously power-hungry CPU like the Core i9-11900K, going with any of the above coolers will be your best bet. The Kraken Z73 offers stellar water-cooling performance for a premium price. On the other hand, if you don’t want to deal with the hassle and unreliability of AIOs, the Noctua NH-D15 matches the top water-coolers in its ability for a much cheaper price. However, if you desperately wish to add an AIO to your system; but do not want to spend exorbitant amounts on one—the Cooler Master ML240L is a strong budget contender.

The post 3 Best CPU Coolers For the Intel Core i9-11900K appeared first on PremiumBuilds.

In our review of the best B560 motherboards, we found a number of anomalies in their behaviour. In this article we’ll document what we found, to help you understand the problem and avoid the pitfalls. Some boards can be fixed by paying attention n to their settings in BIOS. Others cannot be saved and should be left on the shelf. So lets’ take a look at the potential pitfalls of the B560 motherboard range.

One of our first tests was a simple Cinebench R23 run, but given that the CPU and configuration were the same it yielded some surprising results:

The MSI Bazooka delivers 1500 points lower score than the two ASUS boards and the Gigabyte Aorus Pro. The ASock B560M HDV is about 800 points down on optimal CPU performance.

Let’s look at what happens if we dig back into BIOS and remove the power limits:

Clearly, something is up here with the ASROCK HDV and the MSI B560 Bazooka. The Bazooka now matches the other boards on test, the ASROCK performs better but still falls a couple of hundred points short of optimal performance.

To work out what’s going on, we compared logged metrics throughout these runs at default settings, specifically power consumption and CPU clock frequencies over time:

This graph clearly illustrates the differences in behaviour between these three boards. Here the solid lines represent core clock speeds, the dashed lines the power delivered to the CPU. The ASUS maintains power of about 110 watts throughout the test, keeping core clocks at 4200MHz. This is the result of ‘Asus multi-core enhancement’ being on by default, although the initial BIOS screen does advise you of this, I don’t expect its explanation to mean much to most users, except it seems like a good idea to leave it on.

The ASROCK board delivers 100 Watts throughout the first portion of the test and holds 4.2GHz all-core clock speed but then drops to 65W the long term power limit after about 50 seconds. This has the effect of cutting core clocks to 3.5GHz and results in longer test duration, and lower score.

Finally, we see the MSI Bazooka: Like the ASUS this initially delivers 110 Watts, and 4.2GHZ clock speed, but ramps down to 65W at just 24 seconds. Thereafter it holds a significantly lower 3.3GHz clock speed for the remainder of the test, finishing last and delivering the lowest score. This is a function of the ‘stock cooler’ settings being applied in BIOS.

This behaviour is the results of different implementations of Intel’s power specifications. Short term power should allow for 125W even on this i5-11500 which has a nominal TDP of 65W – that’s its long term power limit. We see it draw 110W on most of the boards because that’s the power required to achieve its maximum allowable all-core boost clock.

One of these graphs is more insidious than the others, and it’s not the MSI. If we adjust the power limit behaviour through MSI BIOS by selecting ‘Tower’ or ‘AIO’ cooler the MSI performs in line with the other boards. For the ASRock HDV, this means setting the power target, but it won’t allow user input of 125W, just 100W. Why is that?

This graph shows us why: We ran Cinebench for a 10-minute loop with power limits set as high as possible on the Asrock HDV, and the i5-11500. Here is power delivery vs Clock speeds over the duration of that test, 8 loops of the rendering task:

For the first three runs, all appear to be relatively normal, except that the CPU is only getting 100 Watts when it will use 110W for peak performance. By the fourth run we start to see something different though: The board spikes, then cuts power. Core clocks are no longer held at 4.2GHz but instead begin to fluctuate below that. As the runs repeat we see increasingly ragged behaviour. This VRM is failing to deliver clean power even at a reduced 100W level and is throttling the CPU as a result. Performance suffers. In the long term, if subjected to this workload, it’s clear the VRMs are over-extending themselves. And in case you’re thinking: ‘Surely that’s CPU temperature throttling’ The raw data shows that no core exceeded 60C throughout this test, and no core recorded thermal throttling at any point.

So, this is behaviour with a 65W rated part, an entry-level i5 CPU.

i9-11900K Testing

What happens is you dare to put a more power hungry chip on these boards?!

To test, we installed the i9-11900K on each of these boards, using unlimited power settings, to see what they were capable of. For comparison we’ve included the result this CPU gives on the ASUS ROG Maximus XIII Z590, a motherboard with insane VRMS capable of supplying well over 330W to this chip under demanding loads.

Here we can see the consequences of weaker VRMs. Both the MSI and the Asrock HDV, the two cheapest boards in this test, deliver substantially sub-par results. The Gigabyte and two Asus boards both achieve ‘full’ performance for this demanding CPU, nearly matching the Z590 at default behaviour.

Again, looking at the metrics, we can see how default board behaviour has a drastic impact on performance:

The Gigabyte is the only B560 motherboard that delivers sufficient power to reach a 4.7GHz all core speed, at 170W consumption. It maintains this for the duration of the test and records a score of 15,000 representing the potential of this CPU. The MSI initially ramps to 170W deliver as well but fails to lift core clocks beyond 4.2GHz and quickly falls back to a 130W power delivery, PL1. From there it maintains 4.2 GHz of the duration of the test.
Finally, the ASRock HDV starts out delivering about 135W for 18 seconds, then drops to the 65W PL1 limit. That means that the clocks fall back from 3.7GHz to 3.1GHz where they remain until the workload is complete. The ASRocks score in this test is just 10098. And as a reminder, that’s BELOW the score the six-core i5-11500 can post in this test given adequate power. Simply put: The CPU can only do as much work as you supply it power for. This ASRock motherboard limits that power enough to make the 8 core i9-11900K perform the same as a six-core i5-11500 in an all core workload, and if you don’t adjust power limits in BIOS, it’ll even make the i5-11500 drastically underperform. If you do lift those power limits and then subject the i5-11500 to demanding but entirely reasonable workloads, the VRMS can’t keep up.

Conclusions and the root cause

Fundamentally, the blame lies with Intel. This kind of underperformance due to power limitations is down to their inability to make the Rocketlake CPUs more efficient. Remember, none of the Ryzen Zen 3 CPUs, not even the 16 core 5950X demand more than 125W for full performance. Here we have a six-core part needing 115W to perform to full potential and motherboards failing to deliver the 170Watts that the 8 core i9-11900K requires to reach its all core boost clocks.

Then there’s the confusion around power limits. These CPUs quote boost clocks that are only achievable if you can deliver sufficient power and keep them sufficiently cool. Intel’s power specifications quote maximum power delivery and time periods – but there don’t appear to be any consequences for not adhering to them, breaking them, or simply not achieving them. Ultimately, when your boosting mechanisms are as complex and varied as Intels, you’re not setting a clear picture of the level of performance consumers can expect from your products. 

A mid-range CPU that can exceed 100 Watts draw in an all core load poses a significant problem for motherboard manufacturers. The i5-11400 has been touted as the new value champion for gaming – but you need a motherboard to run it. It’s sold with a 65W TDP but that’s not an accurate representation of its power demands. So motherboard manufacturers want to cater to a value-conscious market but need to make a board that can potentially be fitted with any CPU from an i3 up to an i9-11900K, or more realistically perhaps an i7-11700.

ASROCK has abjectly failed to do that. The B560M HDV is plainly inadequate. It throttles an i5-11500 at base settings. It will not allow those settings to be lifted to a point that achieves full performance from the CPU. It cannot sustain an all core workload for ten minutes without the cracks showing through. It’s not acceptable. 

Then we come on to the wider issues: Across the boards, we’ve sampled we’ve seen wildly different behaviour because of the power limits set and implemented by manufacturers. Credit goes to Gigabyte and Asus for manufacturing boards that can achieve the full potential of even demanding CPUs – but they’re not actually adhering to Intel’s specifications either, by allowing power limits that exceed specifications and durations that also run longer than those specifications. MSI are at least open about the need to define power limits when you set the motherboard up.

Some of these boards allow you to set your own power limits to achieve your desired result, but we don’t believe that consumers should have to do that on motherboards that are aimed squarely at the mainstream. If you’re buying a B560 board you have every right to expect it to work well with an i5 or i7 non K CPU without manually adjusting settings or understanding the detail of power delivery and limits, but some of them don’t.

So my ultimate conclusion is that if you do want to make use of an i5-11400 or any other Intel CPU and you’re considering a B560 board, it will take some research and sadly a little more money to get the most of your CPU. You can see out the linked article for the best B560 Motherboard recommendations, in tandem with the information presented in this article.

The post B560 Motherboard Power Limit Analysis: A Real Minefield of Bad Boards, Confusing Settings, Tricky Choices! appeared first on PremiumBuilds.

The Intel Rocket Lake i5 CPUs represent some of the best value gaming options on the market right now, particularly the i5-11400. To get the most out of them you need a B560 motherboard, so we thought we should test them out so we can make some recommendations to you.

B560 Motherboards under test

There’s a lot more going on here than simple features and looks – there’s some great B560 motherboards here but there’s also a product you’re definitely going to want to avoid.

We’ll take you through the features of these motherboards, how easy they are to install and set up, the BIOS configuration of each, and give some insights into performance because unusually some of these motherboards can actually limit the performance of a CPU, even an i5-11400 – one of them because it’s just a bad B560 motherboard, others if you don’t set them up correctly. Because we’ve selected boards across the range and from different manufacturers, we can use this to recommend other boards not on this test but that share components or specification with them. We’ve used our testing to give recommendations for boards to pick for the entry-level, mid-range and at the high end, so let’s get stuck in!

1. Features Overview

All of these boards share some basic features common to the B560 platform. All are PCIe 4.0 compatible in the primary M.2 slot and PCIe slot. All have 2 M.2 slots total. They all allow RAM overclocking.

The ASRock B560M-HDV is unquestionably the bottom of the stack. It has just 2 RAM slots, and it’s cut down from the normal mATX size using just 6 mounting points instead of the usual 8. It doesn’t have any POST code troubleshooting lights or a Bios flash button. The rear IO lacks Displayport and instead has HDMI, DVI and even a D-Sub port, along with 3 audio jacks and just 6 USB ports. There’s Gigabit LAN but no WiFi. It has just one full-length PCI-E x16 slot and two x1 slots. It lacks a USB 3.2 gen 1 header so many more modern cases aren’t compatible without an adaptor, and will lose that connectors potential speed. It has just 4 SATA ports for additional drives. There’s no heatsinking on the m.2 drive or the Voltage delivery circuitry – but more on that later.

The MSI B560M Bazooka has heatsinking on the VRMS and primary M.2 slot, and a military-themed aesthetic. There are 4 RAM slots but still just one full-length PCIe slot and two additional single length slots for WiFi cards or similar expansion. The rear IO is pretty sparse, with just 6 USB ports, 3 Audio jacks, and a 2.5Gigabit Ethernet port. There are HDMI and Displayport outputs if you want to use the iGPU. It does have some basic troubleshooting boot LEDs and 6 SATA ports. There’s an AIO pump header and adequate fan headers for most builds. It does lack the USB 3.2 Gen2 header so check your case compatibility. There are RGB headers but no RGB on the board.

The Asus TUF Gaming B560M-Plus WiFi plus is firmly mid-range and has a good suite of features. Importantly it has inbuilt Wifi 6, so there’s no need for an additional card to get WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, it’s right there on the rear IO. It’s got 8 USB ports on the rear plus a USB C, five audio jack connectors plus optical out, and 2.5 Gigabit Lan, as well as Displayport and HDMI.  The IO shield is inbuilt too, making install a cinch. There are 2 full-length PCIe slots so a capture card or similar ‘X4’ secondary card will fit in the lower slot. There are 4 RAM slots, 6 SATA ports, and a USB 3.2 Gen 1 header to give you those high-speed ports on the front of the case. It has the ‘TUF’ militarised aesthetic and some neat RGB highlights on the board. 

The Gigabyte Aorus Pro AX represents the higher end, with a sleek silver aesthetic, heavy aluminium heatsinking and an integrated IO plate. They’ve crammed in 9 USB ports on the rear, and a USB C socket as well, alongside the WiFi 6 antenna connectors. Internally there’s 2 full length PCIe slots, and one awkwardly placed single length slot, along with 6 SATA ports and a USB 3.2 gen 1 header socket. There’s also a good number of USB 3.0 and audio connectors as well as RGB control headers. It has a Q-Flash button on the bottom edge of the board, useful for recovering BIOS or updating without RAM and CPU installed. It’s worth mentioning the VRMs here, this board has a 12 phase 50 Amp VRM set up which is clearly the best specified in test.

Finally, we come to the only mini ITX board on test, the ASUS B560-I ROG Strix. This is a premium board but contends with the constraints imposed by its tiny size. The rear IO is integrated and includes 6 USB sockets, a USB Type C, WiFi 6 antenna connectors, and five audio jacks and unusually it also has an audio type C connector. There’s 2.5Gigabit ethernet, a Displayport and HDMI output. Internally there are two M.2 slots, one front at PCIe 4.0 speeds with dual-sided heatsinking and a rear PCIe 3.0 slot as well. You’ll have to contend with the mini ITX limitations of a single PCIe slot, 2 RAM slots, 4 SATA ports, one each of USB 3.0 and 3.2 gen 1 header, and one each of CPU, Chassis and AIO pump fan headers. ASUS include a handy USB C extension cable – and a key ring…

2. Ease of set up and install

Full marks go to Asus here for their M.2 clip which makes drive installation a cinch. The manuals are clear and accurate, and they have integrated backplates to ease installation.

The Gigabyte also has an integrated IO plate, but it loses marks for an awkward M.2 installation solution with a split standoff. The heatsink looks like it’s hinged but it’s actually just a tab. The awkward process is exacerbated by a manual that doesn’t have clear diagrams or even reference the m.2 installation process. It’s outdated and could do with a refresh to help first time builders along.

The MSI Bazooka has a separate I/O backplate, but the m.2 installation is easy enough and the manuals are clear. POST lights help diagnose any installation or settings errors. 

In a clear last place is the ASROCK HDV. The IO shield is incredibly basic pressed tin, there’s no diagnostic lights or BIOS flash button to help troubleshoot. At least with no M.2 heatsink, and only 2 RAM slots, it’s hard to get it wrong when you put it together. There’s a major problem when it comes to the configuration of this board though, which we’ll come to in the performance section. 

3. BIOS

You don’t often see a critique of BIOS in reviews. It’s a one time deal for most people who just want to build and set up their PC and won’t re-enter BIOS unless something goes wrong.

B560 is the first non-enthusiast chipset to permit RAM overclocking, so that opens up the need to enter BIOS to set up RAM correctly, and delve through menus and settings that otherwise you may never see. There’s another issue here, and that’s that some of these boards have default power settings that actually limit performance even of i5 CPUs. That means you might need to dig into power settings to get full performance and if the BIOS isn’t intuitive that can be a tricky task.

BIOS is somewhat subjective because your comfort with a particular lay out hinges on what you’re used to. However, in our opinion, the MSI BIOS is the best laid out and most intuitive to use. On initial set up it’s the only BIOS that clearly explains the need to set your power limits according to the cooler you’re using and shows exactly what the limits will be set to. Once you’re in BIOS, there’s a basic simple mode that lets you select XMP and boot order, likely the only 2 tasks you’ll need to do. Advanced mode opens up a wealth of options including fan tweaking, Memory overclocking, setting power limits for the CPU, and saving and applying profiles. 

Asus and Gigabyte suffer from the same slightly confusing advanced layout, with numerous options jumbled together and not always in a logical order. Asus buries sub-menus making them hard to navigate. It does however default to using ‘Multi-core enhancement’ which allows a CPU to utilise higher power limits, but it’s not entirely clear to the first time user exactly what this means and it’s very much sold as an option you should select. 

Gigabyte makes no mention of power Iimits: It appears the option may depend on what CPU is fitted. It suffers from the same problems as ASUS with a slightly confusing BIOS layout but does make some attempt to explain some settings like Load Line Calibration which is nice to see.

The ASROCK BIOS is acceptable in layout and function, but again the power settings are both obscured, and actually do not allow a free choice of power limits, likely because of constraints of the motherboard’s design. As a result, you cannot set a power limit higher than 100W and this has a negative effect on performance. Other than that, the Asus, Gigabyte and ASRock BIOSes are similar in layout and function and serve their purpose well enough. 

4. Performance

Firstly, one of the main reasons the B560 chipset is recommended is because it allows memory overclocking for the first time officially on non-K CPUs. This can bring decent performance benefits and is worth exploring if you are opting for this platform.

All of these boards allow memory overclocking, all have very similar settings available to enable that, and all allow running memory in ‘GEAR 1’ mode at 3600MHz – meaning the memory controller clock matches that of the RAM itself. All the boards accepted the XMP profile on the 3600MHz CL16 G.Skill kit we used for testing. 

Where we start to see some important differences is in how the boards behave due to their implementation of Intel’s power limit specifications, especially at default. 

To demonstrate, here’s a graph showing the Cinebench R23 score of each of these boards running an i5-11500 CPU using default power settings:

Whilst the two Asus boards and the Gigabyte Aorus all turn in similar results at about 10,200, we can see the MSI Bazooka and ASRock fall significantly behind. What’s going on?

Logging metrics, we can compare the CPU behaviour through this test on the different B560 motherboards.

This graph shows the impact of power limiting behaviour by the motherboard. The MSI deploys it’s high power limit which allows the CPU to draw 110W for the first section of the test, and permits running the CPU at it’s rated 4.2GHz all core speed. It then drops to a 65W long term power limit which limits clock frequencies to 3.3 GHz and causes a low score.

The ASRock HDV initially appears to be doing better: But look closely: It is never able to deliver more than 100W, and it then drops to 65W and the clocks to 3.5GHZ.

Meanwhile, the Asus TUF maintains 110W for the full duration of this test, running the CPU at 4.2GHZ throughout, and that’s down to ‘multi-core enhancement’ being active by default.

The MSI Bazooka’s behaviour can be fixed: Selecting ‘Tower’ or ‘All in one water cooler’ on initial set up in the BIOS imposes a higher power limit and allows the CPU to perform to its full potential. 

The ASROCK HDV however, cannot be saved. Imposing a 100W limit in BIOS improves the CPU performance as can be seen in this re-test with power limits removed, but its performance still falls short of the other B560 motherboards. If you’re thinking ‘hey, that’s not too bad, it’s only 200 points behind’… all I can say is please watch our linked video exploring this issue on B560 boards. We’ve got much more testing including testing with an i9-11900K, and they show why this is such a bad result for the ASROCK HDV, and why you shouldn’t consider this motherboard for even an i5 build. 

In terms of performance, the ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI boards perform equivalently and are able to extract the full potential from this CPU whilst the ASRock HDV gets a serious black mark against it for failing to meet Intel specification and failing to extract the full potential from an i5 CPU. 

Conclusions: Power delivery matters on B560 Motherboards

Our testing has highlighted important differences in the B560 chipset motherboards available. You need to factor in not only features and price, but also potential performance issues with some of these B560 motherboards.

The performance issue really is one of Intel’s own making: Their dogged adherence to squeezing every last drop out of aged architecture and process leaves them with mid-range CPUs that draw a lot of power when performing at their full potential. These components aren’t cheap, and this leaves motherboard manufacturers in the unpleasant position of trying to deliver compatible boards at an attractive price point. It appears that boards like the ASROCK HDV or some of the Gigabyte UD offerings are intended for use with i3 CPUs in office style low-demand builds because they’re not suitable for more demanding CPUs or usage. 

B560 Motherboard Recommendations

Best Entry Level B560 Motherboards

In our testing, the MSI MAG B560M Bazooka proves itself to be an excellent entry-level B560 motherboard. Or, if your budget is tighter, the MSI Pro VDH which is identical in specification and has VRM heatsinks, but loses the gamer aesthetic, but is also available with inbuilt WiFI.

ASUS has used a robust 8 phase VRM design across their affordable Prime Range, and also have heatsinking. The B560M-A or B560-PLUS are also good options at the entry-level price point.

Best Mid Range B560 Motherboards

The MSI MAG B560M Mortar and Asus TUF Gaming B560M-Plus WiFi both hit the sweet spot of solid VRM design and features and both have integrated WiFI 6 options available.

If you are looking for an ATX board the MSI MAG B560 Torpedo is a strong option with similar specification to the Mortar.

Best High End B560 Motherboard

Gigabyte has done a good job of VRM design since the ‘Coffee Lake’ era, and the VRM on the B560M Aorus Pro AX is no exception. The closely matched Aorus Elite and Aorus Pro are near identical in specification, with the Pro version having slightly stronger components in the VRM but retaining the same basic design. Either B560 motherboard will make a great choice for an i5 CPU. The Aorus Pro is our pick for the strongest VRM on test, it had no problems supplying power to the i9-11900K and its all-round specification matches the other motherboards on test.

Beyond $200 – Look to Z590 or AMD Zen 3

If you’re pushing towards $200 you perhaps look to a Z590 motherboard instead. Whilst the Asus Strix and MSI B560 Tomahawk are good offerings, you should look to gain the flexibility of a Z590 motherboard as you approach that price point. 

You could also consider the platform cost of a switch to a Ryzen Zen 3 CPU and a more cost-effective AMD B550 motherboard, where there’s a range of good options for around $100-$150 that offset the slightly higher CPU cost. There isn’t really a lot of sense in trying to get the value out of a CPU like the i5-11400 or i7-11700, but then overspending on motherboards to support them.

Best Mini ITX B560 Motherboard

If you’re looking for a mini ITX board, then the ASUS ROG Strix B560-I doesn’t disappoint. It allows both the i5-11500 and i9-11900K to perform to potential and has the same features as any other B560 ITX board on the market. You might want to consider the heat loading of an Intel Rocket Lake CPU in a small form factor build, especially when compared to a more efficient AMD Zen 3 CPU. That said, it’s a great looking and well-specified board and gets our recommendation from the handful of mITX B560 offerings.

That concludes our roundup. We hope you have this interesting, and perhaps it’s saved you from buying a part that would lead to the disappointing performance of your build. The B560 motherboards we’ve recommended will provide an excellent basis for your next PC, with a great blend of features, performance, ease of use and good value too. 

We also have produced a video companion to our B560 motherboard article, which we have linked below.

The post Best B560 Motherboards for Intel Rocket Lake Builds appeared first on PremiumBuilds.

Intel’s 11^th generation CPUs hit the market late last March. With data to back up their statistics and test their performance, it is time to consider how they shape up to one another. The 11^th generation saw Intel finally catch up to AMD in technology by including PCIe 4.0 support, expanded memory speeds, and updated hyperthreading capabilities. However, across all processors, sacrifices were made. Intel still uses 14nm architecture for their chips and retrofitted their 10nm productions to this size for the generation. This has resulted in a cutting of cores and threads from the previous generation, most notable on the new flagship Core i9-11900k. Was it worth it?

Meanwhile, the newest Core i5-11600k aims to take over the midrange CPU market once again. Targeted to take on AMD’s strong presence at this price point, Intel packed in a variety of features and speeds at an incredible price point. The i5 has always been a strong contender for the best value purchase for gamers, and that may hold true here again. On the enthusiast side of things, the Core i9-11900k sees Intel trying once again to push the envelope and prove their worth. It is certainly not a processor for everyone, and not one that most people will ever need. Upon release, it was lambasted as an overpriced option that served little purpose in the market. Has it gotten any better since then?

With both chips tested and ready to compare, it is time to take them on a fresh spin and see which is the value option for the average user.

Specifications

Processor	Core i5-11600k	Core i9-11900k
Design
Architecture	14nm Rocket Lake	14nm Rocket Lake
Cores	6	8
Threads	12	16
Base Clock	3.9 GHz	3.5 GHz
Boost Clock	4.9 GHz	5.30 GHz
Memory Types	DDR4 3200	DDR4 3200
L3 Cache	12 MB	16 MB
TDP	125W	125W
PCIe	4	4
Price	$262 - 272	$539 – 549
Availability	Amazon.com	Amazon.com

Intel Core i5-11600k

The Core i5-11600k is shaping up to be the best offering of Intel’s newest 11^th generation. It features six cores and twelve threads with a base clock speed of 3.9 GHz that can boost up to 4.9 GHz. A 12MB L3 cache and thermal design power of 125W complete the main package. Unfortunately, all of Intel’s chips continue to boast a high TDP, allowing AMD to dominate the power efficiency category.

The i5-11600k’s memory speed capacity officially supports DDR4 3200 and features a maximum memory bandwidth of 50 GB/s. This is a nice upgrade over the 10^th generation, which needed to overclock to reach these levels. It is also equal to higher-end models of the 11^th generation such as the Core i9-11900k, swinging value in favor of this cheaper processor. Intel has finally upgraded to PCIe 4.0 support, making any processor from this generation more future-proofed. Better data transfer speeds of 16 Gb/s allow the system to fully support the newest graphics cards and other additions.

Sadly, Intel has made some choices that make using the i5-11600k as a mid-range CPU more difficult. Because it is an unlocked processor – hence the “k” denomination – no stock cooler comes with the chip. While the high TDP suggests hotter performance anyway, making an aftermarket cooler a good idea, it still would have been nice for some builds.

Unlike most other offerings from Intel’s 11^th generation, the value on the i5-11600k is quite high. While it certainly does not offer the best statistics or performance, it is a respectable mid-range CPU that can more than keep up with modern demand. It may even be enough to challenge AMD’s hold over the budget gaming CPU market with their Ryzen 5 5600X. Notably, even now, a few months after release, prices on the i5 remain close to MSRP. In the current time of turbulent prices, that alone is notable.

The value packed into this offering makes it a great deal but also challenges the place of Intel’s other offerings. Combined with the lackluster stats of the Core i9-11900k, as we will see in a moment, it places Intel’s lineup in an awkward position.

Intel Core i9-11900k

As the flagship model for Intel’s 11^th generation, expectations were high for the Core i9-11900k. Unfortunately, the processor has taken a few too many steps back to represent what entries in the i9 series have in the past. Featuring fewer cores and similar speeds to the 10^th generation core i9, questions about why this processor even needed to exist come into view. Many of these changes are thanks to Intel retrofitting their 10nm mobile architecture to 14nm for this Rocket Lake adaptation. The cuts largely come in the form of fewer cores. The i9-11900k has eight cores and 16 threads – last generation’s 10850k has 10 cores and 20 threads for comparison. Clock speeds for the new offering are average to slightly below average for its price point with a 3.5 GHz base speed and a single-core boost of 5.3 GHz.

In exchange for these reduced and shifted numbers, Intel focused instead on optimization. The advanced technologies seen across the 11^th generation are astounding, and the i9 features all the best options. Most interesting among the improvements is Adaptive Boost Technology, a feature meant to increase raw speed through increased power consumption. It only activates when three or more cores are in use but should provide a nice boost to the processor. Another is Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0, which singles out the best performing core and increases performance when available.

These changes are nice and help keep the i9-11900k in the running but may not be enough to offset the high price point. However, power efficiency is a concern here. The Core i9-11900k has a TDP of 120 Watts, and across multiple tests rises well above that. Especially when compared to AMD’s offerings, thermal efficiency is an issue on this chip. Good aftermarket cooling is an absolute necessity for this chip, as it can throttle quickly.

General upgrades seen in the Core i5-11600k hold here as well. Memory speed support boosts up to DDR4 3200, and memory bandwidth ups to 50 GB/s. PCIe 4.0 support also hits this processor, upping transfer speeds to 16 Gb/s – double that of PCIe 3.0. While not essential for newer graphics cards, it is a welcome upgrade for the future. Still, with all the improvements made here, the Core i9-11900k is expensive and has underperformed across many tests. As the flagship for the next generation, this processor should be cleanly leading the pack across every test – it does not. Combined with the slight downgrade in paper specs and how killer the i5-11600k is, it is tough to find reasons why anyone but the most enthusiast builders should pay for the upgrade.

Intel Core i5-11600k vs Core i9-11900k: Gaming Benchmarks

Over the past few months, we have seen some proper gaming benchmarks come out on Intel’s 11^th generation. The Core i9-11900k especially received attention as Intel tried to take its throne back from AMD, making it an easy comparison. For more detailed reports on that processor, check out our article considering how it fits in the current CPU space. As for the i5-11600k, it has received praise and tested well across the mid-level CPU competition. Expect the i9 to outperform the i5 across all benchmarks; the true question is how closely the two perform to one another. At almost double the MSRP, and over double the price in real-world markets, the Core i9-11900k needs to blow the Core i5-11600k away to be worth the increase.

Unfortunately for Intel, that has not been the case across testing. UserBenchmark found that across most games in 1080p on Max settings, there was – at most – a 3% increase. Games tested include CSGO, which saw a 3% increase in FPS, GTA V with a 1% increase, Overwatch and PUBG with 3% increases each, and Fortnite with a 1% increase. As expected, all of these were in favor of the Core i9-11900k. While performance is inarguably better, the upgrade is less than expected.

Similarly, effective speed tests across over 1,000 user benchmarks saw only minor increases for the Core i9. These tests are particularly nice for comparison because they are user submitted and, by extension, cover a wide variety of system configurations. Across all of them, the Core i9-11900k saw an average increase of 8% performance over the Core i5-11600k. The only notable area where the Core i9 significantly outperformed the Core i5 was in octa-core speed tests – obvious, given that the i5 has only six. Testing in other games resulted in similar spreads. In Far Cry 5 in 1080p, Eurogamer found that the 11900k outperformed the 11600k by an average of 20 FPS: 158 to 138. In Cyberpunk 2077, they found only a three percent upgrade once again. Their testing used a 2080TI graphics card and the same rig across all testing.

Final Verdict – Core i5-11600k

Intel has nailed the value ratio for the 11^th generation Core i5-11600k. The higher price of the Core i9-11900k was already difficult to justify, and Intel overdelivering on the new i5 makes it even harder. For all but the most dedicated enthusiasts looking to wring out every drop of performance, the Core i5-11600k is more than enough. The i5 being available at or near MSRP is also a huge boon; its main competition is AMD’s offerings, which tend to be $100-$200 over MSRP currently. All things considered, it just may be the best value per dollar across all processors right now.

Of course, some common concerns still reside; The Ryzen 5 5600X found at MSRP is still likely a better option, for instance. Intel’s power consumption and, by extension, thermals, are still abnormally high for those looking to create small and lightweight builds. Some intense workstation builds may also prefer the performance of the i9-11900k or i7-11700k. However, the i5-11600k cuts through these downsides with great performance and pricing. Intel fans likely have AMD to thank for the i5-11600k’s great offering. AMD’s powerful midrange offerings are likely a strong reason why this processor packs so much in at a cheap price. With that said, intel has delivered an incredible processor for a fantastic price that is readily available. For all gaming and most workstation use, it is currently the Intel processor to beat – in both price and value.

Relevant Guides

Want to learn more about the Intel Core i5-11600k? We’ve created a guide on how to purchase one now that it has released. Or compare it to some more processors:

• Where to Buy Intel Core i5-11600K: Pre-Order, Release Date, Price
• Intel Core i5-11600k vs Core i7-11700k: What Are the Key Differences?
• Intel Core i5-11600K vs AMD Ryzen 5600X: What are the Key Differences?

The post Intel Core i5-11600k VS. Core i9-11900k: Which Is the Best Value? appeared first on PremiumBuilds.

If you’re a gamer or any productivity user, deciding on which CPU to buy is always a tough choice. Moreover, if you plan on building on a budget but still want the best performance for your money; you’d be asking yourself “Intel or AMD?”  

As it stands now, its Team Blue who offers cheaper options in their latest line-up. The surprisingly competent Core i5 11400F is a tiny beast of a CPU. Nonetheless, it’s only fair that we compare it to Team Red’s cheapest offering among their latest Zen 3 processors; the Ryzen 5 5600X. Read on to find out whether you really need to cough up more dough for AMD, or if you’ll be just fine sticking to Intel’s newly crowned budget champ.

Specifications

Model	Core i5 11400	Ryzen 5 5600x
Design
Cores/Threads	6/12	6/12
Base Clock	2.6GHz	3.7GHz
Boost Clock	4.4GHz	4.6GHz
TDP	65W	65W
Included Cooler	Intel Stock Cooler	Wraith Stealth
MSRP	$157	$299
Availability	Amazon.com	Amazon.com

At first glance, the specifications show that the Ryzen 5 5600X will vastly outperform the Core i5 11400F. However, it’s also clear why since Team Red’s cheapest Zen 3 offering costs nearly twice as much as the 11400F at its MSRP. The base clock speed of the Ryzen 5 is much higher than that of the Core i5 11400F, while its boost clock is another 200MHz higher than that of Team Blue.

Both have the same advertised thermal design power; however, this means little since in real use cases the power draw of both chips will be higher.

In order to see just how much these two processors differ in terms of performance, let’s turn to the benchmarks.

1080p Gaming- Mixed

*Benchmarks courtesy of Benchmark– YouTube

The 1080p gaming benchmarks show the Ryzen 5 5600X being mostly ahead of the Core i5 11400F. The only exceptions being Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Red Dead Redemption 2; two very GPU intensive games that both have equal average framerates on both processors. Cyberpunk 2077 sees a slightly higher framerate on the Core i5 11400F. But this difference is a tossup between either, so your mileage may vary. The largest variation in FPS is shown in Metro Exodus, with the Ryzen 5 gaining 12 frames per second over the Core i5.

All-in-all, the eight game averages for Team Blue and Team Red are 134 and 137.25 respectively. It goes without saying that for games, paying nearly double for an average 2% increase in framerate does not seem all that worth it.

Productivity Benchmarks- Ryzen 5 5600X

Moving onto CPU intensive productivity workloads, we can see how the $157 MSRP Core i5 11400F fares against the much more expensive Ryzen 5 5600X.

 Starting off with the Cinebench R20 Multi Core benchmark, the Core i5 11400F cores 3954, while the Ryzen 5 5600X scored 4462; an expected gain. Moving onto the Single Core workloads in Cinebench R20, Team Blue manages to obtain a score of 541 with Team Red blasting past with a score of 600.

The 7-Zip File Manager Compression test shows the Core i5 11400F achieve a score of 59002. The Ryzen 5 5600X again trumps Intel with a score of 72344. In the Decompression test, the 11400F scored 64461 while the 5600X was ahead by a good margin with 86940.

In the SiSoft Sandra Cryptography Multi Threaded performance test, the Core i5 11400F achieved a speed of 18.2 GB/s, and as usual the Ryzen 5 5600X was faster at 19.2 GB/s. Meanwhile the 11400F managed to complete the Chromium Code Compile test in 7995 seconds, while the faster Zen 3 5600X completed it in 7047 seconds. The DaVinci Resolve 4K benchmarks scores show that Team Blue and Team Red are quite close, with the former having a score of 969, though the latter outdoes it with a score of 1017.

The Adobe Premiere Pro 2020 benchmark results award the 11400F and 5600X with scores of 677 and 746 respectively. The two processors are again quite close in the Adobe Photoshop 2020 test, with the Core i5 having a score of 1017 and the Ryzen 5 having a score of 1076.

Finally, the Blender Open Data render times for both CPUs show that the Ryzen 5 5600X reached completion in 1122 seconds while the 11400F took longer at 1233 seconds.

Unlike the gaming benchmark, the productivity results for the two CPUs give a very binary result. The Zen 3 based Ryzen 5 5600X is clearly much faster than Intel’s Rocket Lake budget counterpart. Users primarily aiming for a workstation build would appreciate the added performance and faster render times provided by Team Red; even if it means it costs much more. However, it is impressive to see the results of the Core i5 11400F often surpassing last year’s Core i5 10600K; which was a much pricier processor at launch.

*Benchmarks courtesy of Hardware Unboxed– YouTube

Power Consumption- Ryzen 5 5600X

When it comes to total system power draw, there are no surprises here. Intel’s notoriously high power consumption is again evident here, as the Core i5 11400F equipped system had a total power draw of 181W during the Blender render. Meanwhile, the Ryzen 5 5600X consumed less power at 157W while outperforming the Team Blue variant during the same test. So, if you wish to build a cool Small Form Factor PC, it might be worth spending extra to get the less power-hungry CPU.

Compatibility- Both

In terms of motherboard inter-generational compatibility, both Intel and AMD are on their last legs. The long-supported socket AM4 ends its compatibility with the Ryzen 5000 series of processors. Similarly; as Intel only supports two generations of CPU per socket, the support for LGA 1200 ends with the Rocket Lake line-up of CPUs. So, if you ever wish to upgrade from either processor, you will need to spend extra on a newer motherboard as well.

Verdict

If you’re planning on solely gaming on your PC, there really is only one way to go: Intel. But this is not because they’ve got the most powerful gaming processors. In fact, it’s only because of the enormous demand and supply constraints that have affected the Ryzen 5000 series that you will be better off with the 11^th Gen Core i5 11400F. Currently, the Ryzen 5 5600X sells for $450 US Dollars on Amazon. In contrast, the street price of the Core i5 11400F is only $174. Since it’s simply dull-witted to spend $276 dollars more for a 10 FPS gain, gamers are better off with the newly crowned budget champ; the 11400F.

If you’re a workstation or productivity user on a budget however, you might need to consider ponying up the premium for a Ryzen 5 5600X. It outperforms the Intel counterpart in productivity workloads by quite a margin, and since time is money; you will probably be glad you chose AMD in the long run.

Check out some of our guides below to help you with your next Intel or AMD build:

Core i5 11400F Builds:

• Best Intel Core i5-11400(F) Build for 2021 (Gaming / All-Round Use)
• 6 Best Z590 Motherboards for Intel ‘Rocket Lake’ Builds

Ryzen 5 5600X builds:

• 4 Best CPU Coolers for the Ryzen 5 5600X
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This is a question which will not die until desktop gaming dies. It’s not a bad question by any means, but the typical answers are lacking and might even be bad advice. The consensus today is that AMD is the best for gaming, and before that it was Intel for many, many years. Now, to answer this question, I could just take all the Ryzen 5000 reviews and average out the results, but there’s a clear problem with that: the reviews aren’t consistent. They do consistently agree that Ryzen 5000 CPUs are in the lead, but they can’t agree by how much. Yet most reviewers were pretty consistent on RX 6000 vs. RTX 3000 around the same time, so what gives? Solving this conundrum is key to understanding which gaming CPU is best. Yes, I am going to get very technical in this article, so if you just want to know which one is better then feel free to skip to the end.

Why are gaming CPUs good at gaming?

Firstly, what even makes a CPU good at gaming? AMD’s last generation of Ryzen CPUs, the 3000 series, was well ahead of Intel in almost everything with the very notable exception of gaming. Games are, by nature, highly dependent on good latency, and they also tend to not use many actual resources. A long 4K video taking about an hour to render is pretty good, but gamers want a brand-new frame at least every 33 millisecond (which translates to 30 FPS) and most PC gamers want a new frame every 16 ms (60 FPS). There is very little time create a single frame, but thankfully game applications don’t ask very much of the CPU; to get the job done, all the CPU needs to do is handle a small amount of data, do a little math on it, and communicate that to the rest of the system.

Ryzen 3000, despite its beefy cores, suffered in gaming because of one of its key design features: the core complex (or CCX). One of the building blocks of modern AMD CPUs is the CCX, which from 2017 to 2020 was a group of 4 cores (or 2 cores in some very low-end CPUs). A CCX has components like cache which are normally shared across the entire CPU. To add more cores, AMD has to add more CCXs, which works very well for tasks which demanded large amounts of resources. However, the CCX has a fatal flaw; when a core within one CCX needs to communicate with a core in another CCX, there is a high amount of latency. Non-shared cache was better than having less cache (because asking the RAM for something takes forever), but shared cache would have been so much better.

This is the key reason why AMD struggled to catch up to Intel in gaming despite introducing new instructions, new features, bigger cores, and more cores. Though Intel did not change the design of its cores for 6 years, their CPUs were able to stay ahead because they had very low latency from core to core and from core to RAM, and they had sufficient amounts of resources. Any AMD CPU with more than 4 cores had to use multiple CCXs, which severely impacted gaming performance where more than 4 cores was needed. While Intel’s old Skylake cores could not match AMD’s modern Zen 2 cores in most applications, if latency was at all important, then Intel would be able to stay ahead or at least be competitive.

In 2020, AMD flipped the tables with Zen 3. They enlarged the size of the CCX to 8 cores, and consequently all Ryzen 5000 CPUs with 8 cores or less have just one CCX and a single block of cache. Now AMD is on top in gaming thanks to the combination of low latency and a massive amount of cache. Meanwhile, Intel’s new Rocket Lake based 11^th gen actually lost ground in some games compared to their previous 10^th gen, because their new cores increased latency by a significant amount.

Why are the benchmarks inconsistent?

A good gaming CPU has low latency and the right amount of resources for certain tasks. So why is the benchmarking data for this all over the place? Well, here’s the other piece of the puzzle: games aren’t demanding much if any more resources from the CPU in order to increase the framerate. You can test this yourself in any game of your choice. Open up MSI Afterburner or even Task Manager and monitor CPU usage and power consumption. Then, set a framerate cap using your driver suite or third party software (MSI Afterburner also comes with Rivatuner which can limit the framerate). If you steadily increase the framerate, CPU usage doesn’t go up very much and neither does power consumption. This is very much unlike GPUs, which would have to increase resource and power consumption to achieve higher framerates, assuming there’s still headroom for more frames without decreasing visual quality settings. If GPU Alpha is twice as fast as GPU Beta at “ultra quality”, it’ll probably be about twice as fast at “high quality”. But CPU Gamma and CPU Zeta might be the same performance at both presets, or maybe they’ll be the same performance at “ultra quality” but suddenly show a gap at “high quality”.

CPU gaming benchmarks are complicated by the fact that there is a limit to how many frames a CPU can create in each game. You can’t just keep tweaking settings to decrease the load on the CPU when there are few if any of those settings to tweak, and even if there were, reading and executing code is always going to take up some time because the code might be imperfect or because there’s no hardware acceleration. The basic rule for CPU benchmarking is that, as the framerate on the fastest CPU increases, the gap between it and slower CPUs will also increase. Let’s say CPU Gamma can do 240 FPS while CPU Zeta can only do 200 in a certain title. They can both do 200 FPS, however, and if the GPU isn’t fast enough to output more than 200 FPS, the two CPUs will appear to be equal. But if the GPU is fast enough for 240 FPS, then suddenly there’s a noticeable gap between CPU Gamma and CPU Zeta, and this is exactly what is happening with the Ryzen 5000 reviews. Most of the reviews which find little difference between AMD and Intel are only getting 200 FPS or less on the fastest CPU, while the reviews which find a big difference between AMD and Intel are seeing the fastest CPU reach at least 500 FPS.

In the most absolute sense, AMD is the clear winner for gaming. Even at its worst, Ryzen 5000 is tying Intel CPUs, and at its best it can be faster by 30% or more and approaches 1000 FPS in titles like Strange Brigade. I’ve linked to Anandtech’s review here because it gives such good insight into CPU performance and how it varies depending on test conditions. But here’s another question: does it matter? Gaming monitors only go up to 360Hz, and it’s unlikely that anyone but an esports professional can notice the difference between a frame coming every single ms vs. just every three ms. If you just want 120 FPS or even just 60, then plenty of recent CPUs can do just fine.

Pricing

If performance is pretty much fine across the board, then we need to find a different angle. Pricing is a much more interesting discussion for comparing AMD and Intel. In today’s market, when supply is good, CPU pricing for prior generations is pretty good. I would regard Ryzen 1000, 2000, and 3000 as generally being the best value (especially in the used market, Intel CPUs retain their value far too well), but Intel 8^th, 9^th, and 10^th gen can be worthwhile if you want a consistently higher framerate; previous Ryzen CPUs can struggle in certain games and only Ryzen 3000 is truly competitive most of the time with Intel. That being said, all of these CPUs should reliably do 60 FPS gaming but only if they have 6 cores. 4 core CPUs can perform well but newer games are starting to demand resources which few 4 core CPUs can muster. Even a cheap 6 core CPU is a good investment.

Platform

The platform differences between the two are also really important. I would again consider AMD to be the better choice here, because AMD offers more features, and the single most important feature here is the Ryzen upgrade path. A budget PC gamer might decide to go with a Ryzen 5 2600X and a B550 motherboard, and down the line they can upgrade to a 2700X, or any Ryzen 3000 or 5000 CPU. Intel’s upgrade path is more limited, as their 8^th and 9^th gen CPUs are limited to 200 and 300 series boards, and they’re both architecturally identical. 10^th gen is alongside 11^th gen on the 400 and 500 series boards, but 11^th gen isn’t much of an upgrade from 10^th. This, not pricing, is the most important reason to go with AMD, in my opinion.

Other things

Finally, we can’t forget about things that some users might care about even if they’re not related to gaming. Intel CPUs perform well enough but AMD is significantly ahead in several types of applications; thankfully, these are usually hobby or work oriented applications for things like rendering, so casual users won’t need to worry. Intel CPUs also consume quite a bit more power than Ryzen 3000 and 5000 CPUs and consequently require better power supplies and cooling. If you want to build a small form factor PC (or if you just want less heat in general), AMD is a better bet.

Verdict: AMD and Intel are both fine

Generally speaking, I think older AMD Ryzen CPUs are the most ideal for the budget-conscious gamer, but it’s not like buying Intel is a waste of money. In this market, Intel might be your only option depending on what the supply looks like, and if you’re just gaming, then it’s honestly not a bad choice. Really, choosing between AMD and Intel is like choosing between different kinds of pizza; they’re both pizza at the end of the day and they’ll taste pretty much the same. Buy a Ryzen 5000 CPU if you need every single frame possible. Buy Intel or Ryzen 3000 if you want more than 120 FPS reliably. Buy Ryzen 1000 or 2000 if you’re comfortable with 60-120 FPS. Finally, make sure whatever CPU you buy has 6 cores. That’s really all you need to worry about, and if you follow these simple guidelines, you should have little issue gaming the way you want to.

Sources:

• “AMD Ryzen 9 5950X Review”, Techspot.
• “AMD Zen 3 Ryzen Deep Dive Review: 5950X, 5900X, 5800X and 5600X Tested”, Anandtech.

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