Intel Core i5-11400 Review: Unseating Ryzen's Budget Gaming Dominance

Intel exploits the obvious hole in the Ryzen product stack

Intel Core i5-11400
(Image: © Tom's Hardware)

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It's no secret that Intel has dialed up the power with Rocket Lake to compete with AMD's vastly more efficient chips, so you'll have to ignore the higher power consumption if you choose to go with an 11th-gen Intel chip. As such, there are no real surprises here — the Core i5-11400 draws more power in every measurement than either the Zen 2 or Zen 3 chips.

However, it does fall into a lower power envelope than the Core i5-11600K at stock settings, which takes some of the sting off of Rocket Lake's generally excessive power consumption. Naturally, that changed when you remove the power limits. As you can see in our renders-per-day measurements, Intel's Rocket Lake isn't in the same league in terms of efficiency. 

Here we take a slightly different look at power consumption by calculating the cumulative amount of energy required to perform Blender and x264 and x265 HandBrake workloads, respectively. We plot this 'task energy' value in Kilojoules on the left side of the chart. 

These workloads are comprised 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. 

Bear in mind that 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 best. That distinction still belongs to Ryzen. 

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Paul Alcorn
Managing Editor: News and Emerging Tech

Paul Alcorn is the Managing Editor: News and Emerging Tech for Tom's Hardware US. He also writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage, and enterprise hardware.

  • punkncat
    This feels much like a replay of 2017, in reverse....
    Reply
  • Why_Me
    The Ryzen 3600 is dead man walking.
    Reply
  • caromero1965
    Better to let Intel have lower margin sales and focus on servers and to some degree laptops. Follow the money.
    Reply
  • sosofm
    Why_Me said:
    The Ryzen 3600 is dead man walking.
    I don't think that. The power consumption is double in comparison with 3600 and 5600x . More power consumption = more heat =better cooling = more money.
    Reply
  • punkncat
    sosofm said:
    I don't think that. The power consumption is double in comparison with 3600 and 5600x . More power consumption = more heat =better cooling = more money.

    Under the most predominant use these will see a stock cooler should be (mostly) fine. A "gamer" would (probably not really be looking at) budget in a better cooling option anyway, IMO.
    The energy cost difference is on the level of a candy bar and a soda level for the year.
    Reply
  • octavecode
    2x Ryzen 3600 less power consumption than a single i5 11400, but intel gets the crown?
    No thanks...
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    punkncat said:
    This feels much like a replay of 2017, in reverse....
    except AMD likely will release a lower tier cpu as it took a bit for that to happen even last gen. (and when your CPU are selling out basically immediately no need to release a cheaper one yet)
    Reply
  • Why_Me
    sosofm said:
    I don't think that. The power consumption is double in comparison with 3600 and 5600x . More power consumption = more heat =better cooling = more money.
    octavecode said:
    2x Ryzen 3600 less power consumption than a single i5 11400, but intel gets the crown?
    No thanks...
    The 11400F w/stock cooler mops the floor with the 3600 . Add a $30 - $40 aftermarket cooler, remove the power limits in the bios and it gets even worse for the 3600. There's multiple reviews on the net to back that up.

    https://overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/intel_core_i5_11400f_and_asus_b560_plus_prime_review/1Intel Core i5 11400F and ASUS B560 Plus Prime Review
    https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-core-i5-11400-reviewIntel Core i5-11400 Review
    https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/intel_core_i5_11400f_processor_review,1.htmlIntel Core i5-11400F Review
    https://www.techspot.com/review/2232-intel-core-i5-11400f/Intel Core i5-11400F Review
    https://www.profesionalreview.com/2021/04/26/intel-core-i5-11400f-review/Intel Core i5-11400F Review

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    Reply
  • JediWombat
    Utter nonsense. Intel's brand new processor outperforms AMD's almost-two-year-old chip? So it should! It's two years newer!

    Tom's Hardware is so blatantly biased towards Intel these days, you should be embarrassed.
    Reply
  • helper800
    JediWombat said:
    Tom's Hardware is so blatantly biased towards Intel these days, you should be embarrassed.
    If you see bias its because you are imagining things. Toms called it when AMD released the 3000 and 5000 series processors that they were better than intel's offerings at the time in their own respective ways. Though AMD costs more than this particular Intel processor, it took Intel breaking years of its own norms by adding so many features that AMD has had standard for over a decade that Intel effectively priced out its own top tier parts. It used to be that you had to pay the K tax to get overclocking on a 4 core 4-8 thread processor for almost 8 years. This is just one major norm intel had to break to remain relevant. Competition is good, and if AMD does not provide a compelling product at every price range Intel will come in with something good, and they did. Who cares about brand loyalty? We all win in these circumstances...
    Reply