A great mid-range gaming CPU, theIntel Core i5-13600KF, has matched its lowest-ever price.At Woot,the CPU has fallen to $149.99, which, according to CamelCamelCamel and PCPartPicker, is as good as it gets through online retail.
A strong mid-range gaming processor, the Intel Core i5-13600KF includes 6 P-cores, 8 E-cores, and supports 16 lanes of PCIe 5.0 and an extra four PCIe 4.0 lanes.
Keep in mind this chip doesn’t have integrated graphics. But for a gaming PC, you’ll want one of thebest graphics cardsanyway.In our testing, we’ve found that the Core i5-13600KF is effectively equivalent to the newer Core i5-14600KF. The 13th Gen chip came within single-digit frame counts against the 14th Gen Core option at both 1080p and 1440p in our review. And that 14th Gen chip currently costs $50 more.
The 13th Gen Core i5 packs 6 P-cores at up to 5.1 GHz boost (3.5 GHz base) and 8 E-cores (2.6 GHz base and 3.9 GHz boost), for a total of 20 threads. The chip supports 16 lanes of PCIe 5.0 and four PCIe 4.0 lanes.If you’re looking to buy a motherboard to go with the 13600KF, ensure it has an LGA 1700 socket.We found that you can push this chip to the same level as the Ryzen 7 5800X3D when overclocked, and even bring it close to the Core i9-13900K. That’s not bad if you’re willing to buy a board with an overclockable chipset and play with BIOS settings.You can read ourfull review of the Core i5-13600K, where we called it “class-leading performance at its price point,” — and that was at a higher price, albeit a few years ago. Newer CPUs have, of course, hit the market since then, but at $149, the 13600K is a great gaming or mid-range productivity chip.
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Andrew E. Freedman is a senior editor at Tom’s Hardware focusing on laptops, desktops and gaming. He also keeps up with the latest news. A lover of all things gaming and tech, his previous work has shown up in Tom’s Guide, Laptop Mag, Kotaku, PCMag and Complex, among others. Follow him on Threads@FreedmanAEand BlueSky@andrewfreedman.net.you’re able to send him tips on Signal: andrewfreedman.01