Intel Core i5-14400 Review: Intel's value gaming chip falls behind AMD

Intel Core i5-14400 Power Consumption and Efficiency 

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The Ryzen 5 7600X consumes ~10% more power than the Core i5-14400 in several of these workloads, but it delivers higher performance in many of them. As you can see in the HandBrake power efficiency chart, that translates to a minor difference in efficiency between the two.

The Core i5-14400 draws significantly more power than the previous-gen Core i5-13400 across the board but for limited performance gains. The Ryzen 7 5800X3D and Ryzen 7 5700X3D deliver exceptional performance efficiency despite their prior-gen Zen 3 architecture.

None of these chips suffer from significant cooling challenges — many of these models come with bundled coolers, and we've found slight performance deltas compared to using beefier coolers. As always, we recommend stepping up to at least a ~$25 tower air cooler to ensure full performance in heavy extended workloads. 

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The final image takes a slightly different look at power consumption by calculating the cumulative energy required to execute an x264 and x265 HandBrake workload. We plot this 'task energy' value in Kilojoules on the left side of the chart.

These workloads consist of a fixed amount of work, so we can plot the task energy against the time required to finish the job (bottom axis), thus generating a really useful power chart. Faster compute times and lower task energy requirements are ideal. That means processors that fall the closest to the bottom left corner of the chart are the best.

The takeaway is clear — Intel's slight increases in the Core i5-14400's frequency have come at a disproportionate cost of higher power, thus yielding significantly higher power consumption for a slim increase in performance. That results in a step backward on the power efficiency front. 

Intel Core i5-14400 Overclocking, and Test Setup

Intel doesn't allow overclocking of the CPU cores for the Core i5-14400. Still, as usual, we followed our policy of allowing the motherboard to exceed Intel's recommended power limits as long as the chip remains within warrantied operating conditions. Almost all enthusiast-class motherboards have similar default settings, reflecting the out-of-the-box experience. These lifted power limits equate to more power consumption and heat, but you get faster performance in exchange.

Intel allows memory overclocking with the Core i5 models, and as denoted in the charts, we added test configurations with both DDR4 and DDR5 memory. Intel has finally unlocked the System Agent (SA) voltage for its multiplier-locked models, which could enable higher DDR4 memory frequencies in Gear 1. We experimented with higher DDR4 frequencies in Gear 1 but encountered instability issues. It's possible that further tuning could rectify the issue, but we stuck with DDR4-3600 as it represents an easily attainable memory overclock that any enthusiast could dial in with minimal effort. In contrast, we simply used XMP profiles for our DDR5 memory overclocks.

As noted in the charts, we used the DDR5-6400 EXPO profile for the overclocked Ryzen 5 7600X configuration. We also used Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) with the 'motherboard' power presets for our overclocked Ryzen 5 7600X configuration. We then enabled a 10X scalar, a 200 MHz extra boost for the CPU, and a -20 undervolt using the Curve Optimizer for the CPU cores.

The Ryzen 7 5700X3D and Ryzen 7 5800X3D don't officially support CPU core overclocking, but motherboard vendors have enabled multiple workarounds to offer additional performance boosts. These chips are thought to be more sensitive to higher thermal output, so proceed at your own risk. For the sake of science, we threw in a few tuned X3D configurations using the PBO Auto setting. We also dialed up the memory frequency for the tuned configs.

Microsoft has advised gamers to turn off several security features to boost gaming performance. For maximum performance, we disabled secure boot, virtualization support, and fTPM/PTT on all systems. The table below provides further hardware details.