Today nosotros're taking a look at the new Cadre i5-11400F together with the MSI Tomahawk B560 motherboard. These two brand for an interesting build configuration, every bit information technology'southward significantly cheaper than the Core i5-11600K/Z590 combo Intel sent us for our twenty-four hour period-i Rocket Lake review. Although the 11600K fared well, I wasn't peculiarly enthusiastic about that combo equally it failed to crush AMD's Ryzen v 5600X in terms of operation nor value.

The Cadre i5-11600K is priced at $270, while a decent Z590 motherboard can be had for around $200, resulting in a full price of $470. The Ryzen v 5600X is overpriced at $300, just you can pair information technology with a decent B550 lath for a total cost of $440, making it not only faster, but also cheaper. As we discussed in our review not and then long ago, even cheaper is the previous-gen Core i5-10600K for $220, which can exist paired with a decent Z490 board for $180, resulting in a total cost of $400, though I'd argue for $40 more the Ryzen option remains a better deal. Just so, if you shoot for the tenth-gen 10400F for just $155 and stick that on a lower cease Z490 motherboard like the MSI Z490-A Pro, the total toll is just $330.

Bearing that in mind, the new i5-11400F might be the get-to value option in the Rocket Lake series. Nosotros bought one for $175 ($xx more than than the 10th-gen), but it does offer a few bully features such as 20 PCI Express 4.0 lanes, faster DDR4 retention and USB 3.ii xx Gbps back up. The B560 motherboards also back up retention overclocking, something that wasn't bachelor on B460 boards.

Now, the MSI B560 Tomahawk is non cheap. While there are B560 boards that cost every bit trivial as $100, they're very light on features. The well-equipped boards kickoff at around $180 and the Tomahawk currently comes in at $200. At that signal, information technology might be best to just buy a Z590 board. Though be aware in order to receive the aforementioned level of features offered by the B560 Tomahawk, you generally need to spend around $240 or more when going Z590.

Core i5
11400		 Cadre i5
11400F		 Core i5
11500		 Core i5
11600		 Core i5
11600K		 Core i5
11600KF
Price MSRP $182 $157 $192 $213 $262 $237
Current Retail $185 $175 $220 $290 $270 $300
Cores / Threads vi / 12
Base Frequency 2.half dozen GHz ii.7 GHz ii.viii GHz 3.9 GHz
Max Turbo 4.4 GHz 4.half dozen GHz 4.eight GHz 4.9 GHz
L3 Cache 12 MB
iGPU UHD 730 N/A UHD 750 N/A
TDP 65 watts 125 watts

So while the Z590 chipset supports twice as many PCI Express lanes and more USB 3.2 ports, you generally have to spend more on a motherboard to have advantage of those actress features. In short, there isn't a $200 Z590 motherboard that offers what the B560 Tomahawk does.

It'south likewise worth noting that overclocking is typically deemed equally a fundamental reward of Z-serial motherboards, merely I feel that's no longer a valuable feature. That'southward considering the K SKU parts are clocked so aggressively out of the box that there'south basically no overclocking headroom left, and squeezing a few percent more than out of them just makes an already hot CPU fifty-fifty hotter. Faster memory tin help, just as I mentioned, that'southward no longer an sectional feature of Z-series boards equally the B560 chipset now fully supports memory overclocking.

Pairing a premium Intel B560 board like the Tomahawk with the Core i5-11400F volition ready you lot dorsum effectually $375, or $45 more the 10400F/Z490 combo, but the motherboard is far better equipped. If y'all went with a more entry-level pick like the MSI B560M Pro-VDH WiFi for $140, the combo would set you back simply $315, so depending on what kind of features you require it's possible to snap up an 11400F with B560 motherboard for a trivial over $300, about the toll of a Ryzen v 5600X.

Those are some of the options, and today we want to explore how competitive the Cadre i5-11400F and B560 combo is.

The Core i5-11400F is a six-cadre/12-thread CPU featuring a 12MB L3 enshroud. It clocks as high equally 4.4 GHz which is a ten% reduction in turbo frequency when compared to the 11600K, though information technology's the base of operations clock where we find the biggest departure. Whereas the 11600K clocks no lower than iii.ix GHz, the 11400F tin drop every bit low as 2.6 GHz as the TDP has been reduced to 65 watts.

That said, this limitation doesn't apply to our testing equally the MSI B560 Tomahawk runs without the TDP limits in place, as do almost all the Z590 motherboards. And so rather than manually enforce the ability limits nosotros'll be testing out of the box performance as that's what you'll come across when using this hardware combo.

Our exam systems were all configured with 32GB of dual-rank, dual-channel DDR4-3200 CL14 retentiveness. Our B560 setup was powered by the MSI B560 Tomahawk and for the Z590 setup, the Gigabyte Aorus Z590 Master. Nosotros used the Corsair RM850x PSU and cooling was provided by the Corsair iCUE H150i for comparison purposes, though nosotros did run some tests with the box cooler on the 11400F as well. Finally, a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti was used for productivity benchmarks, while gaming tests were conducted with the newer and faster GeForce RTX 3090.

Benchmarks

As usual we'll start with Cinebench R20, and before nosotros discuss these results, I'll merely mention that the 11400F ran at an all-core frequency of iv.ii GHz, and this aforementioned frequency was achieved on both the MSI B560 Tomahawk and Gigabyte Aorus Z590 Master. In comparing, the 11600K runs at an all-core frequency of four.6 GHz, or 10% higher.

Here nosotros come across that those frequencies translate into similar performance margins every bit the 11600K was ~9% faster than the 11400F. The 11400F was also 6% faster than the Ryzen 5 3600, suggesting that the new Intel Core i5 processor will be faster for most productivity tasks when compared to the Zen 2-based Ryzen five processor. That's an important step forward for Intel as the 10400F was quite a bit slower than the R5 3600.

When compared to the 10400F, we're looking at a 24% performance uplift for the 11400F, so quite an impressive improvement there. The single core margins are much the same, here the 11600K was 11% faster than the 11400F while the new 11th gen Core i5 was 25% faster than the 10th gen version, the 10400F.

Moving on to 7-zip, we run across that the 11600K is merely 8% faster than the 11400F when comparing pinch performance. That's a nifty result for the new Core i5 processor as information technology meant it was faster than both the 10600K and R5 3600, while improving upon the 10400F'due south performance by a fifteen% margin.

The decompression margins relative to the Intel CPUs remain much the aforementioned, the 11400F was viii% slower than the 10600K simply 17% faster than the 10400F. It does lose out to the R5 3600 here, and that's a issue of AMD's SMT implementation being more efficient for this workload.

The AES encryption operation is what yous'd look it to exist based on what we saw with the 11600K, hither the 11400F was 11% slower placing it alee of even the 10900K and that means nosotros're looking at a massive 46% operation uplift from the 10400F.

We're looking at a 10% reduction relative to the 11600K for code compilation functioning and while that makes the 11400F slightly slower than the Ryzen 5 3600, it was faster than the previous generation 10600K and fifteen% faster than the 10400F.

The performance deviation between the 11600K and 11400F is well-nigh not-existent when testing with DaVinci Resolve Studio, here the locked Core i5 part was just 3% slower. Again that meant information technology wasn't merely faster than the previous generation 10400F, but as well the 10600K.

Premiere Pro tends to leverage the CPU more than Resolve and as a result the 11400F was viii% slower than the 11600K. Still, given information technology's ~35% cheaper, that'due south a great result for the locked i5 part.

In Adobe Photoshop nosotros encounter similar margins to previous tests. The 11400F is vii% slower than the 11600K, meaning information technology'southward faster than non merely the 10400F, but also the 10600K and even the 10700K.

The final application test is Blender where the 11400F is just 9% slower than the 11600K and again that's an impressive result as it meant this new sub $200 processor is faster than the previous generation 10600K and Ryzen 5 3600.

Power Consumption

The 11400F reduces total organisation consumption past eighteen% when compared to the 11600K, which is a great result given considering it'southward just 9% slower in this test. When compared to AMD'south latest and greatest, that'southward not particularly impressive given the 11400F pushes total system usage to the same level as the 5800X, but relative to Intel's own lineup information technology'southward good.

Gaming Performance

We'll commencement with Watch Dogs Legion for our gaming benchmarks, where the 11400F is 3% slower than the 11600K, making it slightly faster than the 10600K and just a fraction slower than the 5600X.

We're looking at just a 5% reduction in performance for the 11400F when compared to the 11600K in F1 2022 when comparing the average frame rate and a 3% reduction for the i% low. The newer 11th gen processors actually perform worse than the previous 10th gen parts, then the 11400F came in slightly slower than the 10400F.

Moving on to Horizon Zero Dawn, we're looking at nearly identical performance betwixt the 11600K and 11400F. The 11400F was 5% faster than the 10th gen version, not a huge functioning increase, just at least it was faster in this title.

We're looking at identical operation between the 11th-gen Core i5 processors in Borderlands three. This time the 11400F was just 3% faster than the 10400F, and given that nosotros're using an RTX 3090 at 1080p, it goes without maxim that nether more than realistic atmospheric condition there will be no divergence betwixt these two CPUs.

Interestingly, Death Stranding scales with frequency and as a result the 11400F was 10% slower than the 11600K, and then a reasonably large difference, but even then the locked 11th gen Core i5 processor was still 7% faster than the previous generation model.

Nosotros're dorsum to virtually no performance difference between the 11400F and 11600K with Hitman 2. The 11400F was 8% faster than the 10400F, too, and then a reasonable performance uplift.

The 11400F was half dozen% slower than the 11600K in Star Wars Squadrons and that saw information technology autumn behind the Ryzen 5 3600 and 7% behind the 10400F. Like F1 2022, Star Wars Squadrons is another game where the newer 11th gen Core processors are really slower than the 10th gen models.

There's very little difference betwixt the ii 11th gen Core i5 processors in Serious Sam 4 and the 11400F was just 5% faster than the 10400F. When compared to the AMD processors, it was 11% faster than the R5 3600 only xv% slower than the R5 5600X.

Rainbow Six Siege scales quite well with frequency and as a upshot the 11400F was x% slower than the 11600K, and disappointingly nine% slower than the 10400F. This is another game where the 11th gen models are slower than the older tenth gen.

Nosotros're dorsum to virtually no performance difference in Shadow of the Tomb Raider between the 11600K and 11400F and that meant the F-SKU part was 9% faster than the 10600K and xiii% faster than the 10400F.

Average Gaming Functioning

Hither's a wait at our 10 game average. Given what we just saw information technology won't surprise you to learn that on average the 11400F was simply 4.5% slower than the 11600K, when testing with an RTX 3090 at 1080p. On average, we're looking at 10600K-like performance and that means the 11400F is well-nigh two.5% faster than the 10400F.

Information technology's interesting to note that the 10th-gen 10600K was just 2.5% faster than the 10400F, whereas that margin basically doubled between the 11600K and 11400F. The reason for this is down to the much larger margins in Rainbow 6 Siege and Expiry Stranding. For some reason these games are more than clock sensitive with the 11th-gen models than they were with 10th-gen, likely down to architectural differences.

When compared to competing AMD parts, the 11400F is about 13% faster than the Ryzen five 3600 and 11% slower than the 5600X, essentially slotting in between the two.

Avoid the Box Cooler

A few words about the shiny new box cooler in the Core i5, which is simply the old box cooler with a new coat of blackness paint. Although this model features a copper slug, it'due south still woefully inadequate for apply on boards that don't adhere to the TDP limits.

Installed on the MSI B560 Tomahawk using the default BIOS configuration, the 11400F peaked at just 52C using our Corsair iCUE H150i, a $220 cooler that we don't await anyone to pair with an 11400F.

That said, a basic $20 tower cooler will work nicely. The box cooler chop-chop hit 100C and as a result the CPU started to throttle. Truth exist told, this cooler is merely designed to handle the 65 watt TDP configuration, and past enforcing the TDP limits it peaked at 70C, though even here it was even so very loud. Our advice is to ignore the box libation and budget an additional $20 for a bones tower-style libation that volition provide much meliorate performance.

What We Learned

The new Core i5-11400F is marginally faster than the 10400F for gaming, but often much faster for productivity tasks with margins equally large every bit 25% in certain tasks. For gamers, the 11400F isn't exactly a crazy good deal, at around $20 more than than the 10400F, it'south an insignificant cost increase and yous can pair it with even so motherboards, and then nosotros feel for the upgraded features solitary the premium is worth it.

At present, for those of you more than focused on productivity tasks, the 11400F is a no brainer. You'd always selection it over the older 10400F and actually even the 11600K. In fact, in that location'southward no point in buying the 11600K at $270 regardless of your utilize case: you're faced with paying a 54% premium for at best ~eleven% improved performance, though it's oft more like 5%. If we include the cost of a quality motherboard, the 11600K/Z590 combo is ~40% more plush, and over again, you're not getting anywhere near that kind of functioning comeback.

It appears that with mounting pressure from AMD, Intel'due south had to squeeze every last flake of functioning out of their processors. That's left about no overclocking headroom, and and then their premium G-SKU processors are rather pointless. Moreover, with retention overclocking supported on B-series motherboards, the Z-series range has also go a bit redundant.

So at that place you take it, Intel on a new position as the budget rex. For Intel that's no doubt less than a desirable event, but for usa it'due south non bad news equally they're forced to offer parts similar the Core i5-11400F and enable memory overclocking on budget motherboards.

As it stands correct now, the Core i5-11400F on a B560 motherboard should be the go-to selection for budget builders. Substantially you lot can snag this processor with an entry-level motherboard for less than the cost of the Ryzen 5 5600X. Also, the 11400F is in stock and should exist easy to purchase for the foreseeable future, which is non something we tin say about any of AMD's Zen 3 processors. What a crazy fourth dimension nosotros're living in.

Shopping Shortcuts:
  • Intel Core i5-11400F on Amazon
  • Intel B560 Motherboards on Amazon
  • Intel Cadre i5-11600K on Amazon
  • Intel Cadre i7-11700K on Amazon
  • AMD Ryzen 5 5600X on Amazon
  • AMD Ryzen 7 5800X on Amazon