Intel 11th Gen Core i5-11600K and Core i9-11900K Review
Features
Whenever we’re reading through the documentation that accompanies a new release we’re always swamped with page upon page about tiny refinements that will only be useful to people way above the level at which we operate. Features that improve enterprise users or very specific use case. That’s all well and good but we, like you, want to know how many cores we have, how fast those cores go, and how quick we can get our storage to perform. Regular readers will remember how we all expected the Z490 to come equipped with PCI Express 4.0, but thankfully the Z590 has that as its headline feature.
At the top end of the Rocket Lake range the processors have got a whole host of new elements to bring even greater performance. If you’ve been following the hardware world you’ll know that these will soon drip down to the lower models. Like most people we use discrete graphics cards instead of the integrated option so we won’t be testing that out, although we’re pleased to see that HDMI 2.0 has made its way to the 11th gen for those of you who do.
Although the architecture itself has been designed to push the boost clock speed of the processors to new heights, Intel have also introduced even more overclocking options for those of you who prefer to speed your system up manually like the old days. Such is the reliability of the automatic overclocking these days that these are more about fine tuning those last few percent than getting wholesale improvements, but it’s nice to know that the hardcore haven’t been overlooked.
If you’ve reached this review via our front page then you’ll know we’ve also reviewed all the major motherboards that are being released alongside the 11th Gen processors, and therefore a lot of this we’re going to cover in those. If anyone has got any spare fingers that would be great because mine will be worn to the nub by the time I’m finished. Anyway, as you can see the 500 series chipset brings all of the benefits of PCI Express 4.0 and the many extra lanes available. There are faster USB options, Thunderbolt 4 support and a host of high bandwidth options.
We’ll be testing the performance of the Intel 11th Gen processors as we always do, but checking out the official Intel performance comparison is a good starting point to get a feel for how it will go. Hopefully. Only one way to find out.
Whilst we have the two CPUs that should form the biggest selling parts of the new Rocket Lake range of processors from Intel, should you need something slightly faster, or cheaper, then the full range is below and you can peruse it at your leisure. The thing we’re still slightly confused about is how the 10th Gen i9-10900K has 10/20 core/thread but the 11th Gen i9-11900K is merely 8/16.
