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.
