Intel Core i5-8400 6-Core 6-Thread CPU Review

Intel Core i5-8400 The new Intel Core i5-8400 Coffee Lake CPU is here at last. Of course, we're not expecting it to keep up with the 6 core 12 thread performance of the lovely i7-8700K. However, with its own 6 core (non-threaded) design, the i5-8400 looks set to be strong competition for the Ryzen 5 CPUs, at least in terms of price. Can it deliver performance on par with the similar priced Ryzen chips, or even beat them? Let's find out! As you may already know, 6 cores are the new 4 for Intel. Sure, they've made higher core count CPUs for years now, but not on their main consumer CPUs, and that's especially true of their i5 series, which have been quad-core seemingly since time began. With a base clock of 2.8 GHz and a Max Turbo of 4.7 GHz, this CPU is already running faster than a Ryzen chip straight out of the box, at least on paper. Specifications Cores: 6 Threads: 6 Base Clock: 2.8 GHz Max Turbo: 4.7 GHz Cache: 9 MB Max Memory Size: 64 GB Memory Types: DDR4 2666 PCIe Lanes: 16 TDP: 65W Optane Ready: Yes Lithography: 14 nm Additional Our Z370 reviews all feature this lovely stick of Optane Memory from Intel. This is a feature that's still limited to the Intel platform, but one we hope to see expand into other parts of the market over the next few years. "Intel Optane memory is a smart, adaptable system accelerator for PCs. It provides uncompromising system responsiveness for large capacity storage drives, making everything you do fast, smooth and easy." - Intel Testing and Methodology Test Procedure Here at eTeknix, we endeavour to disclose vital information regarding the benchmarking process so that readers can quantify the results and attempt to replicate them using their hardware. When it comes to CPU reviews, the benchmarks are pretty self-explanatory although there are a few exceptions. Rember that your choice of motherboard, the silicon lottery, and other factors can yield different numbers, and there's always a margin for error when using the software. Therefore, your experience may vary. Each benchmark runs three times, and the average figure is taken to try to reduce the effect of hardware variation. Of course, any relevant details regarding the parameters will be listed below. Test Systems Z370 Motherboard - Gigabyte AORUS Ultra Gaming RAM - Crucial DDR4 2400MHz Quad-Channel 32GB + Optane CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive - Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit X399 Motherboard – MSI X399 Gaming Pro Carbon AC RAM – Crucial Ballistix 32GB (4x8GB) 2400MHz CPU Cooler – CM Master Liquid 120mm (will be retested with Noctua D15S with dual fans in coming weeks) Graphics Card – Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit X299 Motherboard - Gigabyte AORUS Gaming 9 RAM - Crucial DDR4 2400MHz Quad-Channel 32GB CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive - Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit AM4 Ryzen R3, R5 and R7 Motherboard - MSI XPower Titanium X370 RAM - GeIL DDR4 2977MHz Dual Channel 16GB CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive - Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit X99 - Our GPU Review Test Bench Motherboard – Asus Rampage V Extreme X99 RAM – Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) 2666 MHz CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Open Air Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 64-bit Games Used All games are tested at both 1920 x 1080 and 2160 x 3840 (4K) on a 60 Hz display with V-Sync off for all tests. Previously we would use "extreme" presets, but these have now been adjusted to "Medium" or equivalent to better test the capabilities of the CPU, not the GPU. Rise of the Tomb Raider (Steam) DX12 Medium Preset Pure Hair Off Deus Ex (Steam) DX12 Medium Preset Ghost Recon: Wildlands (Uplay) Medium Preset Turf Effects Off Far Cry Primal (Uplay) Normal Preset Software Used 3DMark Fire Strike (download) FireStrike (1080p) Benchmark Unigine Superposition (download) 1080p Extreme Benchmark PCMark 10 Professional (download) Express Benchmark WPrime (download) 32M and 1024M Power usage recorded at 1024M 50% complete, thermals recorded at 75% CineBench R15 (download) CPU Multi CPU Single Handbrake (download) Custom MP4 to MKV 4K conversion (details below) AIDA64 Engineer (download) CPU-Z (download) HWMonitor (download) Handbrake To stress processors to their absolute limit and accurately judge their performance in video editing workloads, we transcode a 7.7GB compilation of gaming footage; this particular file is freely available from here. The captured footage is 22 minutes and 12 seconds long, it has a bit rate of 50.1 Mbps and it uses the Advanced Video Codec. Additionally, the video runs at a constant 30 frames-per-second and opts for a 3820 x 2140 (4K) resolution. Once loaded into Handbrake, we then transcode the 4K MP4 to an MKV file using the "normal" profile. Other Notes A rest period of 2-5 minutes is observed between each piece of software allowing the system to return to its idle power usage and temperatures. Background services like Windows Update are checked to not be running during the testing period by setting WiFi to Metered Connection. Thanks Thank you to Noctua, Crucial, ASUS, Gigabyte, Lian-Li, be quiet!, OCZ, for providing the hardware that helps makes these tests possible! Synthetic Benchmarks 3DMark Firestrike The Intel Core i5-8400 gets off to a good start for one of the mid-range CPUs, beating out the Ryzen offerings at stock, and setting a reasonable score while overclocked. Stock Overclocked Unigine Superposition 1080p Extreme PCIe throughput is good, showing no signs of slow down in Unigine at stock clocks, and a small boost in performance while overclocked. Not that we were expecting the i5 to "bottleneck" a 1080 Ti, but it's good to see what it really doesn't slow things down. Stock Overclocked PCMark 10 Express Productivity is a big deal at home and in the office, and the 8400 certainly helps pick up the pace with its 6 core design, setting a score that pulled ahead of the Ryzen chips. Overclocking helped a lot too, putting the CPU in third place and almost as fast as the two Intel i7's. Stock Overclocked WPrime 32M and 1024M This is where this CPU was always going to struggle to compete, as it doesn't support hyper threading. More threads and more cores bring faster WPrime scores. That being said, it's on par with the Ryzen 5 CPUs, give or take, which is where it's priced too, so no big surprise there. Stock Overclocked Cinebench R15 Cinebench performance is decent enough, but nothing amazing either. Overclocking certainly helped improve the score, but it helped every other CPU too, so the Ryzen chips are still looking more productive here. That being said, i5 isn't designed for heavy video editing tasks, it'll do it, but that's the realm of the i7. Stock Overclocked Handbrake MP4 to MKV Conversion 4K The same is true of Handbrake, it certainly benefits from the 6 core design and sets a respectable score that's competitive with the 1600X. Overclocking really brought it some nice performance boosts though, managing to beat out the full range of Ryzen 7 CPUs. Stock Overclocked AIDA 64 Memory Bandwidth and Latency The memory performance is where it should be for the memory kit we used, and there were no issues at all. What is pleasant to see is that the increased core count hasn't increased latency, something that has been a trend with other higher than quad-core CPUs this year. Gaming Performance Deus Ex: Mankind Divided The Intel Core i5-8400 is designed to be a straight-up gaming CPU, or at least that's going to be the market that has the largest demand for it. It may lack hyperthreading, but 6 powerful CPU cores will help performance in demanding gaming tasks. Fortunately, we can see that's true right away, as the CPU set our second fastest score in Deus Ex at stock clocks, and it held onto second place while overclocked, which is very impressive. It scored great at 4K too, and is one of three CPUs on our charts to beat 60fps at 4K while overclocked! 1080p Stock 1080p Overclocked 2160p Stock 2160p Overclocked Rise of the Tomb Raider In a complete shocker, it set our fastest ever score at stock for Tomb Raider! It lost that lead while overclocked, albeit to much more expensive CPUs. Of course, 205.7 fps is mighty impressive. 4K performance wasn't as impressive as Deus Ex, but still well over that 60fps golden number. 1080p Stock 1080p Overclocked 2160p Stock 2160p Overclocked Ghost Recon: Wildlands Again, absolutely fantastic 1080p performance, with some very high scores overall at stock and overclocked settings. 4K didn't do badly either, with great frame rates throughout, and while it doesn't overclock as high as other CPUs, the scores are very competitive. 1080p Stock 1080p Overclocked 2160p Stock 2160p Overclocked Far Cry Primal Far Cry Primal loves the new Intel CPUs! The new i5 set the highest score yet... somehow, even beating out the new i7. Don't ask me how, we re-tested as we always do, and there it is. The i5 did drop down a few places while overclocked, but just look at that i7-8700K, scoring 162! Even more amazing, is that the i5 scored some of our best ever scores at 4K too. This CPU is shaping up to be a killer option for any gamer. 1080p Stock 1080p Overclocked 2160p Stock 2160p Overclocked Power Consumption and Temperatures Power Consumption The power consumption is reasonable, nothing too crazy at full load and about where we would expect. It's idle use was quite high though, using as much power as the i7-8700K and I'm hoping a few BIOS updates will bring that down a little over the next few weeks. It's not an issue, but it would be nice if it were improved. Stock Overclocked Temperatures The increased core count does mean more heat. However, at just 33c idle and 50c load, even the cheapest of CPU cooler will keep a stock i5-8400 in check. Overclocking didn't exactly cause much of an increase in thermals either, and I wouldn't be surprised if you could overclock this a little on the stock cooler. Stock Overclocked Final Thoughts Pricing The Intel Core i5-8400 is priced to be a mainstream processor for those building a new Z370 based system. It should be in retail stores both online and in-store from today for around £200. Of course, we expect retailers to battle it out with each other and demand and stock availability could see the prices fluctuate up and down at these early stages. However, for around the same money as a Ryzen 5 CPU, it looks like Intel are coming out fighting for the mid-to-high-end market. Overview Having tested the Intel Core i7-8700K CPU this week, I wasn't expecting the i5-8400 to come anywhere near that CPU in terms of performance. They're pretty much the same CPU at the heart of it, but the i5 doesn't have hyper-threading and isn't a K series CPU, so doesn't overclock like the i7 we tested. That being said, it's still no slouch when it comes to straight up per-core performance, and with 6 cores rather than the dowdy old 4 cores of the i5 range, it really pulls out a lead. Z370... Why tho! Admittedly, I'm a little confused by the whole Z370 launch. It doesn't appear to offer much of anything over Z270 and that's honestly a damn shame as it's no incentive to upgrade for those on the last/current gen. That being said, while the socket may be almost identical, the pin layout is changed and it gives us support for the new Coffee Lake CPUs. As both you and I have seen from the benchmarks, these new CPUs are rather fantastic. Should you upgrade from something like the 7700K? I don't think it's worth it right now, especially if you've got it around 5 GHz. If you're rocking two generations or older, then buying a Z270/7700K now is madness short of finding a bargain somewhere. The X299 7740X is the same performance as the 7700K but runs cooler and uses a lot less power, and the i5-8400 and the i7-8700K set a blazing trail for PC gaming performance. More Cores, More Performance A six-core mass market CPU is no bad thing. Sure, AMD got theirs to market first, but in my opinion, the Ryzen and Intel offerings are both very competitive. Each has their strong points and to have multiple 6 cores+ CPUs on the market for little over £200, and more competitively priced motherboards are really good for the PC system building market. The new i5 isn't too expensive, and when it comes to productivity, it's going to be great at home and in the office. From running extensive photoshop actions to having lots of Chrome tabs open, those extra cores will come in handy. For gaming, it set some of our fastest ever scores, and that's honestly something we didn't expect to see. If the i7 is a little out of your budget range, the new i5's are waving their arms in the air to get your attention. Pros 6 core design Great for productivity tasks Exceptional 1080p gaming performance Great for 4K gaming Runs surprisingly cool for a 6-core CPU Very competitive price Cons Higher than expected idle power consumption Neutral New CPUs require Z370 motherboard "The latest i5 is competitively priced for a 6 core CPU, and while it does lack Hyper-Threading, it doesn't lack raw gaming performance. An ideal choice for any gaming build without the added cost of the i7 series."