Well, with 6 real cores, the argument for spending extra on the i7 for gaming has been massively reduced with the 8600K. In quite a few games there was a real, tangible difference in framerates between the 7600K & 7700K, but that's no longer the case with the 8600K & 8700K. If all your after is a CPU for gaming, then the $100 saved and put towards a better GPU, is by far the more sensible option this time.

Thank you very for lower reso benchmarks, clearly shows how well this CPU can push frames compared to ryzen. This is indeed very nice CPU to get for gaming with high refreshrate panels. Shame games cant properly utilize cores and still rely heavily on IPC.

Well since the availability is still close to null, this product is borderline vaporware.

Wow, really impressive results. I pre-ordered this CPU week ago in Czech (for +- 260 Euro), officialy prize is 273 euro, soooooo Im OK with it 🙂

no i5 7600k in the benchmark is mistake in my opinion as it is it's predecessor and was (is ) very popular CPU. Also the prices here a not that terrible , you can get i5 8600k for 300euros. I would take it tomorrow if not the fact i have to replace motherboard, i wish intel would change that ... Overall it seems like a king CPU for gaming vs price ?

Nice review, it's interesting that the 8600K is so close to the 8700K in the low resolution gaming tests, makes me wonder how well the non-K CPUs would do (i5 8400/i7 8700).

kapu:

no i5 7600k in the benchmark is mistake in my opinion as it is it's predecessor and was (is ) very popular CPU.

Yeah I might purchase one as I really wanted that SKU in there as well. As stated, Intel does not supply these procs and all procs that we have had our hands on where returned to Intel at the time.

Ziggymac:

Well, with 6 real cores, the argument for spending extra on the i7 for gaming has been massively reduced with the 8600K. In quite a few games there was a real, tangible difference in framerates between the 7600K & 7700K, but that's no longer the case with the 8600K & 8700K. If all your after is a CPU for gaming, then the $100 saved and put towards a better GPU, is by far the more sensible option this time.

Agreed, this is makes more sense than the 8700K. It's just a shame the platform will probably be another dead end again.

Hi all! Nice review HH! Well... times are different nowadays. AMD really did very well with Ryzen. This i5 8600K was SPANKED by a US 200 RYZEN 1600?!?! I really dont understand that people come with this story "its a gaming processors"... what is for gaming is GPU.. at this point of level any good processor will play very well. Intel is falling every day... this processor is 30% more expensive and WORST the R5 1600. Only who not like his money to buy INTEL today!

Well with the ryzen, coffeelake, threadripper and skylake x lineups all released. Looks like we'll have another long cpu drought ahead. An exciting time for someone building a new pc from scratch but not much for me. Good to see that mainstream quads are basically dead now. Everyone who isn't a laptop user shouldn't even be considering a 4 core cpu anymore. Fingers crossed that the next full cycle of cpu come with more enhancements them just more of what we had before, and come with pcie 4.0, usb 3.2, ddr5...something to make upgrading worth it in the long term.

Looks pretty good for enthousiast gamers, beats the 1600x performance-wise. Any chance we'll be seeing a 1900x review soon Hilbert?

Borys:

Hi all! Nice review HH! Well... times are different nowadays. AMD really did very well with Ryzen. This i5 8600K was SPANKED by a US 200 RYZEN 1600?!?! I really dont understand that people come with this story "its a gaming processors"... what is for gaming is GPU.. at this point of level any good processor will play very well. Intel is falling every day... this processor is 30% more expensive and WORST the R5 1600. Only who not like his money to buy INTEL today!

Question, where do you see the 8600k being spanked by the 1600? They're pretty even(a few points ahead for the 1600 in synthetic, and a few points ahead for the 8600k in gaming, but not enough to make a difference) in synthetic and gaming tests. What I will say about the 8600k versus the 1600, for minimum performance difference you pay $80. That's a lot to pay for considering very marginal difference.

Very nice CPU but i can´t use it on my MB so Intel can keep it. Great review as always!!!

I really want to jump, but I don't see any reason to get the 8600K over 8400 ( 80€; difference! ). The problem is, the 8400 comes only locked. I don't mind at all being locked, but, right now, no options for a completely suitable motherboard... The Asrock Extreme 4 is all I want ( Intel l219V lan, 1220 Realtek audio, M2 slots and USB 3.1 future-proof af ), but it comes only with Z chipset. I don't see H370 Extreme 4 being available. I don't want to give more money for something I won't ever use ( motherboard being unlocked whilst CPU locked ). So, let's say I get the 8400 over 8600K and if there was H370 over Z370 chipset... I could spend ~110€ less for both of them.

This is why I like guru3d so much. We can see the big picture differences or lack thereof when you're looking for, primarily, CPU only performance differences or gaming performance differences. A lot of sites won't even post the 1440p gaming performance because it reveals little difference in gaming performance between the 2012 and the 2017 processor or the $200 and the $500+ processor. I'm sure this is not necessarily something Intel wants you to know. It's kind of funny when other sites formerly used the argument for Sandy Bridge that 1080p was where they would focus their reviews because that's what most users had in their setup and now the argument for Coffee Lake and not showing higher-than-1080p resolutions while sticking to 1080p to reveal the performance when the gaming performance is bottlenecked by the processor. If that's your argument, why bother showing gaming performance at all if you just want to exhibit CPU performance? What's funny is we can see on guru3d, given the same GPU and higher resolutions (1440p+), there's little difference in the gaming performance between the older processors (circa 2012) and the newer processors. In practical terms, I want to see reviews showing setups close to mine. Take the thinking out of it for me and if I want to dig, I'll look at the specifics. A big thanks to guru3d for continuing to do this.

Probably the best all-around CPU Intel has released since the 2700K. The real stupid thing is how they could've released this product over 2 years ago (with Skylake, or maybe even Haswell). If I had a 144Hz+ monitor, this would definitely be the CPU I'd get. But since I have no interest in that and probably never will, I don't regret having a Ryzen 5. Intel is in a bit of a sticky situation with this model. The 8600K needs to outperform the 1600(X), but it shouldn't ever do better than the 8700K, and it wouldn't look good on Intel if it did better than the 7700K. They can't adjust the price too much because that would make the 7700K look like more of total rip-off than it already is and annoy KL owners more than they already have. Despite this being a great product, Intel's sandbagging with KL has finally caught up with them.

Great in deep review Hilbert with all the informations needed to make a sensible purchase. I'm building a new computer soon for my work (with some casual gaming) at home and i'll probably buy the Ryzen 5 1600x and hope games will be more optimized for multi cores in the future.

Non-game benchmarks were a bit lackluster to be brutally honest, but all in all it looks like a pretty nice CPU, especially for gaming. I might have been tempted to upgrade to this if Intel had made Coffee Lake compatible with the previous generation mobos with the same socket. But no way I'd buy a whole new mobo for this. It was Intel's choice for their own reasons, so they won't see my money.

Borys:

I really dont understand that people come with this story "its a gaming processors"... what is for gaming is GPU.. at this point of level any good processor will play very well. Intel is falling every day... this processor is 30% more expensive and WORST the R5 1600. Only who not like his money to buy INTEL today!

As someone who values gaming performance over anything else, when I buy a CPU I want something that will handle well not just games that take advantage of multiple cores but also games that want fast cores. I also want something that is more likely to handle future more demanding games better, especially since once I get a coffee lake based system, I don't intend to upgrade CPU again for at least 5+ years, while I intend to upgrade GPU in just 2 or 3 years. Though, for myself, I'm not interested in the i5 8600K. I'm finding the i5 8400 and i7 8700 alot more interesting, both price and specs wise (I'm very likely to get both, i5 for my sister's PC, i7 for myself, though I'll be using the i5 while I save up money for the i7).

I think the inclusion of the new low res 720p CPU bound testing was a good step Hilbert, thanks for including those. People with 144Hz 1080p monitors like myself sometimes turn down game details to achieve 144 fps while still gaming at 1080p, which is effectively the same for the CPU as the tests you're doing at 720p, so it's a useful inclusion to see how different CPUs will perform in the 144Hz zone. It looks like Intel is dominating in that zone, even some of the older generations of Intel too. 8600K looks like a good gaming CPU right now, although if I were building a system now I'd go the extra for the 8700K to get more threads, which is useful now but also increasingly in the future - 8700K would be a more solid platform for upcoming future GPU generation upgrades.