Intel Core i5 10600K and Core i9 10900K Review

Test Setup

Intel Core i5-10600K
Intel Core i9-10900K
ASUS Z490 Maximus XII Extreme – 0509 BIOS
Corsair LPX 4000 MHz
Corsair MP500 M.2 – OS Drive
Samsung 970 Pro
Corsair AX1600i
Nvidia RTX 2080Ti
Corsair HX1000i
Corsair H150i
Corsair ML Fans
Fractal Define 7

Overclocking

If you’ve been following the GPU world you’ll know that all current graphics cards come with very aggressive automatic overclocking, to the point that manually overclocking doesn’t bring the same “next model up in the range” benefits it once did. Processors have been overclocking themselves, or Turbo boosting, for far longer, but have always been very cautious in doing so, leaving plenty of headroom for us to have a fettle and really push the CPU to its limits.

With the white hot competition between AMD and Intel, both companies have dispensed with the gentle touch and gone all out to push their processors as hard as possible out of the box. There almost is no such thing as stock speeds any more. Nonetheless there is always a little more to squeeze from a manual overclock and the Comet Lake processors are no exception. We saw 5.2 GHz from the Core i5-10600K – a six core CPU at 5.2 GHz is massively impressive.

The Core i9-10900K lives up to its place at the top of the Intel LGA1200 range though, making the i5 overclock look feeble by stretching its ten core legs all the way up to 5.4 GHz. Absolute insanity.

Intel Core i5-10600K

  

Intel Core i9-10900K