Intel Core i5-13600KF drops to $149 – excellent mid-range gaming CPU returns to its lowest-ever price

Intel Core i5-13600KF box — (Image credit: Intel)

A great mid-range gaming CPU, the Intel 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.

Keep in mind this chip doesn't have integrated graphics. But for a gaming PC, you'll want one of the best graphics cards anyway.

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, make sure 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 our full 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.

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 @FreedmanAE and BlueSky @andrewfreedman.net. You can send him tips on Signal: andrewfreedman.01

8 Comments Comment from the forums

Pierce2623

This is the best gaming CPU Intel has made in the last decade, easily. It still beats the $175 9600x in multithreaded performance and it’s still really close in gaming performance. Overall though, I’d probably still go 9600x unless you’re already sitting on a z690/z790 mobo, since it’s a total dead-end socket.
Reply
elforeign

Here's the real question, i'm on a 12600KF - Do I buy this?
Reply
rluker5

Pierce2623 said:
This is the best gaming CPU Intel has made in the last decade, easily. It still beats the $175 9600x in multithreaded performance and it’s still really close in gaming performance. Overall though, I’d probably still go 9600x unless you’re already sitting on a z690/z790 mobo, since it’s a total dead-end socket.
I'd go with the dead socket over the chip that will need to be replaced sooner. 6c12t is the new 4c8t: just barely enough.
If you have to replace your CPU in one Gen you made the wrong choice.
Reply
rluker5

elforeign said:
Here's the real question, i'm on a 12600KF - Do I buy this?
Only if that CPU is holding you back. CPUs look to be getting a lot better in the near future so that $150 could be saved towards that or a GPU upgrade.
I went from a 12700k that could only do 4.9/4.0 to a 13900kf that runs 5.5/4.5 and the main difference is benchmarks.

Edit: It is a great deal. I upgraded my office PC and my daughters from Haswells to 13600ks because of W10 going away.
Reply
logainofhades

elforeign said:
Here's the real question, i'm on a 12600KF - Do I buy this?

I wouldn't recommend buying any 13th or 14th gen chip. Regardless the 13600kf isn't a massive jump from the 12600kf anyway.

https://tpucdn.com/review/intel-core-i5-13600k/images/relative-performance-games-1920-1080.png
Reply
Amdlova

elforeign said:
Here's the real question, i'm on a 12600KF - Do I buy this?
If you want or have a RTX 4080/4090 5080/5090 maybe a new cpu Will be good...
Wait for the next gen for an upgrade Zen 6 and new intel cpus are months away
Reply
elforeign

I appreciate all the responses. I think best advice has been to wait - maybe Prime day next year i'll do 9800X3D or equivalent.
Reply
thaddy716

Im still running a 9700k clocked at 5.0ghz🤣
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