| Date First Available | 6 July 2020 |
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| Packer | HP |
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| Importer | HP India |
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| Item Dimensions LxWxH | 37 x 26.3 x 2.4 Centimeters |
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| Generic Name | Laptop |
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Laptop Description
The Intel Core i5 10600K isn't the world's fastest gaming processor, but this six-core, 12-thread chip will arguably be a better CPU pick than the Core i9 10900K for most humans and human analogues reading this right now. And, in the interests of ensuring there are no unwelcome shocks in these turbulent times, I feel it only fair to tell you that I am indeed going to make that exact argument as we move together through this review.
The 10900K is the flagship 10th Gen Comet Lake CPU, and the proud owner of that 'world's fastest gaming processor' badge. It's also the first mainstream ten-core processor Intel has ever produced, taking the 14nm architecture essentially as far as it can go, and demanding a huge amount of power and cooling in order to get there.
But it really does smash through gaming benchmarks, even if it lacks the core-count of similarly priced CPUs from the house of AMD Ryzen.
That means the Core i5 and Core i3 chips are now able to stand toe-to-toe with their Ryzen competition in terms of both cores and threads, and with a certain levelling out of pricing that almost entirely takes away the draw of AMD's mid-range CPUs.
I say 'almost' because there are still platform specific reasons why the Ryzen 3000-series processors are tempting, most especially because of the imminent release of the B550 motherboards, with budget pricing, competitive performance, and PCIe 4.0 support.
Intel is, however, still the gamer's choice. And Comet Lake has certainly cemented that position, despite using both an ageing production process and geriatric CPU architecture. Imagine what things would have been like if Intel hadn't totally screwed its 10nm design, eh?
The key spec for the 10600K is the core and thread count. With the number of CPU cores in mainstream processors having skyrocketed since AMD got gud, the Core i5 range has seen its own rise, though not necessarily in kind. To compete with the six-core, 12-thread Ryzen 5 range Intel chose to drop six cores into the Core i5 lineup with the first Coffee Lake release, but it's only with Comet Lake that those chips have been able to fully match the AMD processors on all counts.
That's because of that Hyper Threading switch being left on for all Intel CPUs, and suddenly the Core i5 range is no longer just a pure gaming solution, but something that can offer a whole lot of multi-threaded performance too. That was previously the mid-range Ryzen claim to fame, a sort of panacea for its comparatively lacking in-game performance.
With six cores and 12 threads running at 4.5GHz on all cores, and up to 4.8GHz on a single core the Core i5 10600K has a great deal of potential on all counts. That means you're looking at another 300MHz on top of the base clock of the last-gen 9600K, and another 200MHz on top of the max turbo frequency. Like the other K-series CPUs of the Comet Lake generation, the 10600K has a 125W TDP, up from the 95W of the previous six-core i5 chips. So yeah, moar power for moar speeds.
Outside of the rarified air of the Core i9 chips there is no Thermal Velocity Boost, so no matter what your cooling solution is atop the 10600K you're not going to suddenly get 5.3GHz. But hey, you're rarely going to see it on a 10900K either so that's not a big miss…
But it's a K-series CPU so overclocking is most definitely on the cards, and absolutely worthwhile thanks to the changed thermal profiles of the Comet Lake chips. The 10600K is based on the same 10-core die as the 10900K, but with four cores disabled. That means it comes with the thin die and soldered thermal interface material (STIM). Without the super high power demands of the enabled ten-core CPUs, the 10600K is impressively chilled.
This is still an LGA 1200 chip, however, so you're going to need a new 400-series Intel motherboard and right now that means a pricey Z490. There will be H470 and B460 boards eventually, but like the lower order Comet Lake chips we're probably not going to see them for a short while.
That does kinda negate some of the value proposition of the Core i5 range, but if you want the overclocking then you needs the power delivery of the Z490s.
