Intel 11th Gen i5-11600K & i9-11900K Review

How Much Does it Cost?

When looking at the MSRP price side of things, which basically means nothing at the moment, the 11600k is coming in at $262 compared to its rival, the 5600X from AMD which comes in at $299 though currently, I’ve seen it more around the $350 to $399 marker. The 11900k is coming in at $539, while its competitor, the Ryzen 9 5900X comes in at $549 so basically on par, but maybe Intel is hoping to capitalize by being that smidge cheaper.

Overview

Starting with the i5-11600K and I must say, I am actually quite disappointed in it overall. When compared to the 5600X is just doesn’t stack up and AMD took the cake in most of our testing. It didn’t matter if it was synthetic, gaming or what, AMD was the clear winner. The only real thing in comparison the 11600K has going for it is the fact Intel have their own Fabs so it may be more readily available and easier to buy than a 5600X and, it is a bit cheaper as well.

Then Intel Core i9-11900K was an interesting one for sure. It has fewer but better cores than the previous i9-10900K and stacks up quite well against AMDs 5900X. In our testing, the 11900K outperformed the 10900K in almost all tasks and was on par with the 5900X. When I say on par, I mean it all depends which test you are running as we ran a total of 48 tests and the 11900K won 24 of those! So yes, it trades blows on a test for test basis with the 5900X which is exactly as it should do.

Cores

Looking at the 11900k, which comes with 8 cores and 16 threads with a base clock of 3.5GHz and a max turbo of 5.3GHz thanks to boosting and TVB. It’s a tough thing to understand, so I’ll just tell you to go visit the Intel website to find out more. Compared to the 10900k, this chip has kinda gone a bit backwards. It now has 2 fewer cores and 4 fewer threads and the base frequency has dropped by 200MHz. However the cores are now somehow better so it performs better than the 10900K and if it wasn’t for our testing, I am not sure I would believe it.

Gaming & Beyond

When it comes to the 11600K, as mentioned, I was a bit disappointed. It does outperform its predecessor the 10600K, but when compared to AMD’s 5600X it just falls behind, and quick!

Now, the 11900K, well, that is a whole different story. Coming with 2 fewer cores than the 10900K and still offering better performance, it also goes head to head with AMD’s 5900X. In our synthetic tests, it seems like almost every other result either goes to Intel or AMD. However, when it comes to Gaming, the 11900K does take the lead in more of our gaming tests and offers us a few more of those all glorious frames per second when it really matters. When it comes to power and temps, the 11900K has a higher TDP by 20 watts. This translate to higher temps and more power being used at load, which is fine as this is what you would expect from a higher TDP CPU. However, the idle temps and power consumption of the 11900K when idling were less than that of the 5900X. This tells me that Intel’s default power and C-State settings really are aggressively set and it has paid off massively.

It’s also worth noting that the 11th Gen CPUs are still based on a 14nm architecture while AMD’s 5000 series is base on 7nm. If Intel can trade blows with the top consumer CPUs now, what does it say about their upcoming Alder Lake which will be 12nm? Well, we can’t be 100% sure but it could help give Intel the one-up on AMD again if all goes to plan!

Should I Buy One?

The new Intel 11th Gen CPUs have launched alongside the new Z590 motherboards. Pairing the two together, we finally have features like PCIe 4.0 available on Intel-based systems. There is also an obvious per-core performance increase which is quite amazing. Being able to offer fewer cores with a 200MHz less clock speed but somehow having better performance doesn’t sound like it should be possible but Intel has proven that it is as the 11900K takes the performance crown away from the 10900K.

On average the price difference of the 11900K and 5900X should be around $10, so not a whole lot. This means it may come down to whichever one you can actually get ahold of should you want to buy one. Intel has really done some impressive things with the performance side of their 11900K and all I can say is, bring on Alder Lake and 12nm!