The new Intel Core i5 13400F appears to be a powerful processor for the price, 10 cores and 16 threads, and I'm actually wondering why I should spend any more on my next CPU upgrade than the relatively low $196 Intel is asking for this chip. One has to wonder: based solely on the specs announced at CES 2023, this could be a budget gamer's dream.

Let's get right to the impressive specs of this chip. As mentioned above, the Core i5 13400 has 10 cores, which consist of 6 performance cores (P-cores) and 4 efficient cores (E-cores).

These six P-cores are speed types designed to accelerate the gaming experience; the maximum turbo speed of the Core i5 13400F is 4.6 GHz, which is lower than the 5.8 GHz maximum turbo speed of the Core i9 13900K, but fast enough for fast-paced gaming. This represents a significant increase in P-core clock speed over the previous generation Core i5 12400F

. The 12th generation chip runs at a more modest 4.4 GHz, but in his Core i5 12400 review (opens in new tab), this level of speed was enough to convince Dave.

The Core i5 13400F's four E-cores focus on background tasks and take some of the burden off the P-cores; the Core i5 12400F did not have them; the Core i5 12400F does not have them; the Core i5 13400F has them; the Core i5 13400F has them.

The Core i5 13400 has a chip with 16 threads overall. This is a very large amount for this kind of amount and should be useful for CPU-intensive tasks besides gaming.

As for cache, the Core i5 13400F has 20MB L3 and 9.5MB L2, again an improvement over the 12th generation. both the 600 and 700 series motherboards support both DDR4 and DDR5. Right now, you can also buy them as cheap as ASRock's B660M Pro RS for only $120 at Newegg (opens in new tab).

In other words, the Core i5 13400F comes in at a similar recommended price to the Core i5 12400F, but with four additional cores, all the benefits of Intel's hybrid architecture, and up to 200 MHz faster. Other Raptor Lake-based upgrades are detailed in our Core i9 13900K review (opens in new tab). The only downside is a slight increase in power consumption.

The "F" at the end of the Core i5 13400F indicates that this chip does not have integrated graphics; we would not miss the Intel UHD Graphics 730 chip in the Core i5 13400, but this processor is more readily available, it is only slightly more expensive at $221.

Just remember that this is Intel's customer recommended price. Once the first-day-of-launch frenzy dies down, chips tend to be priced like this, but for now the 13th generation is a bit more expensive than we would like. These chips may also take a little longer to come to market, so watch for the lowest priced chips to come in.

Neither the Core i5 13400 nor the 13400F can be overclocked in the conventional way; as was the case with some of Intel's 12th generation processors (we loved the Core i5 12400), some motherboard manufacturers are using these locked There is a slight chance that they will secretly allow BCLK overclocking on their chips. For now, however, BCLK overclocking in this manner does not seem to work well with the 13th generation.

For PC gamers still running Intel Core i7 6700K or similar 4-core design chips (I still have a build with such a chip), it is hard to deny that the Core i5 13400F is a significant upgrade. Even if you have a more recent CPU than that, it's still a pretty great upgrade.

There's no denying that CPUs have come on leaps and bounds in recent years, spurred on by fierce competition between Intel and AMD, and I can think of no better example of this than the Core i5 13400F's impressive specs. [The Core i5 13400F is considerably cheaper than AMD's latest Ryzen 5 7600X, which sells for around $299. However, AMD is scheduled to give a keynote at CES 2023 tomorrow, and rumor has it that we may hear more about its plans for a more entry-level desktop CPU then or later this month.

In the meantime, I'm going to do my best to get this chip on the PC Gamer test bench and see what it can really do. But I don't foresee it being anything other than great.