Best Intel i5 13600K Gaming PC Build 2023 | DDR4 vs DDR5, Motherboards & More!

you want the best I5 13600k PC build for gaming but what's best memory motherboard cooler and more don't worry you've come to the right place hi welcome back to PC Builder I'm Jason now the reviews are in and the Intel i5 13600k and 13600 KF deliver amazing gaming performance on par with the best gaming CPU in 2022 so today we'll go over exactly what you need for your 13600k gaming PC build and we'll take our build head to head against its Rising competition remember if you get value out of the video please give it a like because it really helps out the channel and of course subscribe and click that Bell icon that way you get notified when we release cool content with that let's jump into it before that this video is sponsored by nordpass with an exclusive offer by going to norpass.com PC Builder password hackers want your stuff don't be a victim get nordpass nordpass makes logging in easy and secure across multiple devices stop forgetting passwords normally stores them all in one place allowing you to easily log in with their autofill feature quickly generate unique secure passwords for every site store credit card and even personal details in your encrypted Vault get an exclusive Nord pass deal plus four additional months for free by using the link in the video description or use code PC builder at checkout the I5 13600k and I5 13600kf are Intel's 1310 raptor-like processors at the time of this video both the I5 13600k and KF they're selling for right around 300 U.S you can use the links in the video description to check out current pricing and availability the I5 13600k and KF are unlocked Parts meaning they can be overclocked using a compatible z-series motherboard which is the z690 and z790 motherboards and the 13600k and KF can either use ddr4 or ddr5 Ram which is locked in when you choose the motherboard more on the best motherboard for I5 13600k later in the video the 13600k and KF have six performance cores and a deficiency cores an increase of four efficiency cores over the 12 600k each of the performance cores provides two threads while each of the efficiency cores provides one thread and the 13600k runs these cores slightly faster than the 12600k increasing the Boost frequency on the p-core is about four percent and the e-core is around 10 percent now in order to accomplish this the 13600k it drives quite a bit more power with a 184 watt TDP boost which is 34 Watts higher than the 12 600k of course we'll discuss more about PSU considerations later in the video but what about performance the great news is that the I5 13600k does extremely well in multi-threaded production workloads often training blows with the more expensive ryzen 7700x while easily besting the ryzen 7600x and the ryzen 5800x 3D now compared to Intel's own 12th generation K CPUs the 13600k often performs between the 12700k and 12900k and it sometimes beats both in certain production benchmarks but the reality is that any of the CPUs I just mentioned are pretty incredible compared to anything that came before them so unless you're doing production tasks professionally it's unlikely you'll ever notice the difference between them but what about gaming performance the great news is that using ddr5 Ram the I5 13600k and KF are among the world's fastest gaming CPUs using the RTX 4090 now depending on the test Suite the 13600k clocks in about as fast as the 12700k or 12900k very slightly behind the 5800x 3D and just a bit further behind the rython 7000 CPUs with ddr4 ram that performance falls off about six percent but remember at the time of filming there's still a massive gap between ddr4 and ddr5 prices it's also good to note that as we go up in resolution to 1440p and even 4K the that the difference drop substantially as we become more GPU bound so the 13600k offers world-class performance to value-minded Gamers looking to maximize price to Performance or those who are looking to build a hybrid gaming and production system so should you buy the I5 13600k versus the I5 13600 KF now the only difference is that the I5 13600k has an integrated GPU while the 13600 KF it doesn't so since you should be pairing either CPU with a dedicated GPU this essentially does not matter for anyone other than professional level video editors for those doing heavy video encoding workloads in the overall video editing process Intel's quick sync technology allows the integrated GPU to work with your dedicated GPU to encode video faster than simply using the dedicated GPU alone so if you're a professional level video editor make sure to get the 13600k for anyone else just get whichever one is cheaper at the time of purchase what's the best GPU for the I5 13600k now typically when we're building a gaming PC we're looking to get the fastest GPU possible while getting a CPU that just won't bottleneck our GPU now given how fast CPUs have become the minimum GPU I would pair with a 13600k for gaming is an RTX 3070 or 3080 on the Nvidia side or a Radeon RX 6800 or faster GPU on the AMD side anything less than that and we're probably overspending on the CPU and should be investing that money on the GPU instead from that point there's really no maximum GPU as a 13600k is very very fast in particular the 13600k will be great with any of the new Radeon rx7000 gpus or the RTX 4080 16 gigabyte or even the RTX 4090 of course if you max out the GPU and you still have money left to spend then I'd consider moving up to an even faster CPU well let's talk about ddr4 versus ddr5 and the best RAM for the I5 13600k now this is important because motherboards either come in ddr4 versions or ddr5 versions as we saw earlier there's only about a six percent performance difference between 3600 speed ddr4 and 6400 speed ddr5 at 1080p using RTX 4090 and even less of a difference at 1440p right now the cost gap between those kits is very large a 2x8 gigabyte ddr4 3600 cl16 kit it's only about 70 right now well the ddr5 6400 kits are still up around 250 or more and you can use the links in the video description to check check out the current pricing so right now it just doesn't make any sense to go ddr5 unless you've already maxed out everything else use that extra 180 to get faster graphics card a better cooler jump up to a faster CPU or do any number of other upgrades of course we do expect at some point in the future that ddr5 prices will come down far enough and possibly ddr4 prices will start going up as production shifts to ddr5 to the point that ddr5 starts to make sense that being said don't fall for the future-proofing argument that's spending a huge amount on ddr5 makes sense because you can use it in a future build because realistically by the time you go to upgrade ddr560 400 Ram will almost certainly be considered slow so my advice as usual is just to focus on what you need right now and remember of course when installing the ram kit it will run at its negative speed until you go into the BIOS and activate the XMP profile which will allow it to run at its full rated speed now let's talk about the best motherboards for I5 13600k while 13th gen Intel raptor-like processors can use any of the 600 or 700 series boards including the cheaper b660 motherboards there are a couple reasons why I recommend getting a z690 motherboard possibly a z790 if their prices come down the first reason is that z690 and z790 motherboards will allow you to get the most out of your I5 13600k including overclocking which can only be done on z-series motherboards the second reason is that while you can use a b660 motherboard several the b660 motherboards were tested with 12th gen higher core count CPUs and they didn't properly run them at the full Boost frequency furthermore many of the more budget b660 motherboards have weaker vrms and with the power hungry I5 13600k I'd recommend using something more robust the final reason is price z690 motherboards are available at almost the same price as b660 model reports and offer much better features so they make a lot of sense we do go through the best z690 and best z790 motherboards in our best motherboard for 13 gen Intel video so check that out for a full listing do remember that if you get a 600 series motherboard z690 or b660 it needs to have bios flashback on it so you can update the BIOS to one that will actually run the 13600k now the difference is between z690 and z790 they just boil down to slightly better ddr5 compatibility on some boards but since most of you will be likely getting ddr4 then effectively there's no difference looking at the current market our favorite picks continue to be cheaper z690 motherboards with robust gaming features like upgraded ALC 1200 ALC 1220 or ALC 4080 audio codecs as well as solid vrms bios flashback and a number of m.2 slots and Good Rear panel i o in particular we recommend the gigabyte gaming X 690 ddr4 currently going for at 170 us or the ASRock z690 extreme ddr4 going for around 185 dollars now if you don't care about the audio any of the budget z690 or z790 motherboards will do and models like the ASRock Phantom gaming z690 are available for as little as 140 or the MSI Pro z690-a for 159 dollars we'll have a full list of motherboards with links in the video description so you can check out current pricing and availability in your region now let's talk about the best CPU Cooler for the I5 13600k out of the box the I5 13600k is designed to run at the thermal throttle limit of 100 degrees Celsius in testing most reviewers use a 360 millimeter all-in liquid cooler and they still hit the thermal throttle limit that's because this CPU is designed to eat any available cooling under load in order to increase frequency and increase performance so the more cooling we give it the more performance we get at a minimum we want to at least run a 240 millimeter all-in-one liquid cooler or a high performance air cooler like the Deep cool ak620 Scythe fuma 2 or similar style coolers now the good news is that cooling has gotten really cheap in the last year with the coolers I just mentioned giving the same performance in the 60 range as older 100 high performance air coolers like the noctua nhd15 now one thing to note with coolers is that with the CPU running at the thermal throttle limit your CPU Cooler it might run kind of loud however most coolers deliver about the same performance at 8 fan speed as they do at 100 fan speed and with lower noise so consider adjusting the fan curve to limit the overall system noise at the thermal throttle limit finally let's talk about psus because at least right now this is a bit of a sore Point given how much power the I5 13600k consumes at Peak load and how power hungry the gpus are that we will be pairing with it it's important to consider exactly how much power you will need now refer back to our best power supply 2022 video for information on how to size your PSU what I am finding is I put together I5 13600k builds is it if we use our usual sizing rule of 1.5 times the Max draw we often end up needing 1200 watts or greater on the PSU which can get really expensive really fast I'd also make sure to get at least a PSU rated on the B tier or better on the PSU cultures list which again we do go through in our PSU video Let's jump into the builds now note I've zeroed out the item items in the build that are going to be the same across all the builds we're going to compare we'll look at a budget level build ddr4 we'll look at a more premium ddr4 version and we'll look at ddr5 and we'll compare to the 5800x 3D as well as the 7600x we've got prices in for the CPU the cooler the motherboard the ram as well as the power supply the power supply can be a little bit of an issue with the 13 600k just because it draws quite a bit more power than the 5800 x3d or the 7600x jumping into the build we went with a budget a dual Tower air cooler this is pretty much the kind of style you're looking for Two Towers six heat pipes great two fans on it thermal right Peerless assassin for forty dollars obviously more cooling we can get more performance but this is the minimum I would go for the motherboard ASRock z690 Phantom gaming for 140 do not get a b660 I know some people are recommending that just you don't need to do that b660s have power limitations on the motherboards you don't need to do that when you can get a z694 literally almost the same price just make sure you get one with bioslashback for the memory just standard 2x8 gigabyte dr4 3600 CL 16 70 this stuff is super cheap you can go a little bit faster here just don't overspend on your memory you're not going to get that much more performance you really want to keep investing in that graphics card getting motherboard with better audio on it those kind of features first now this particular build we went with a Radeon RX 6800 XT this is about the car that you want if you're going to buy a 13 600k and invest in that platform if you're going to get a much cheaper graphics card you should be looking at the 12 400 or a ryzen 5600 instead you'll get a lot more bang for your buck that way this platform is really designed for a Radeon 6800 or higher an RTX 3070 or higher and I really like the 6800 XT 500 GPU right now as I'm filming this I expect these to continue to go down especially with all the new fancy graphics cards launching very soon and finally for the power supply we went with a thousand watt power supply you're gonna end up tending need somewhere between a thousand and twelve hundred Watts depending on your kind of safety factor in there so you're looking to spend you know about a hundred and sixty dollars maybe up to 240 if you need 1200 watts that's if you got like a 490 or 30 90 TI something with a huge amount of power draw overall 728 dollars for the total platform cost subtracted out all the parts that are the same not bad for a higher end build even though this lacks some of the more premium features so how does our build stack up against budget builds with the 7600x and 5800x 3D well you can see with the similar level of cut down features slower memory ddr5 5600 CL 40 in this case but less power draw so we went with a cheaper power supply even that 741 dollars against our 13 600k build 13 600k probably gonna come out about tied with the 7600x here in terms of gaming with this slower memory here the slower ddr5 memory and obviously it's going to brutally destroy it in terms of productivity against the 5800 X 3D the 5800x3d for gaming only does come out ahead it's just 647 dollars is really tough to beat why again less energy smaller power supply cheaper power supply and then on the motherboard and four has been out forever and you can get b550 motherboards with pretty good features for about a hundred dollars this one is a more cut down motherboard similar to the ASRock z690 board that we use for the 13600k similar cooler and the 5800x 3D itself has had a huge price cut so overall I would expect the 5800 X 3D maybe slightly outperform it here in terms of gaming with the 6800 XT mostly at 1080p if you turn this to 1440p with this level of graphics card I don't think you'd see that much of a difference between them obviously the 13600k is going to destroy this in productivity that being said the 5800x 3D not bad in terms of productivity either so if you only do that stuff occasionally this thing is going to seem like a monster so if we're looking up make our build a little bit more premium the first thing I would do obviously just spend a little bit more on our motherboard and get a board with upgraded audio on it ALC 1220 audio codec better vrms overall better feature set again just as long as it's got bios flashback that's what I would be looking for here we've got the ASRock z690 extreme this is a ddr4 only board so don't look for it for ddr5 again we'll have links down in the video description check those out the other thing I would do is I definitely upgrade the cooler deepcool ak620 here for 65 dollars this is a super high performance air cooler it beats the knock to a nhd-15 in certain tests or I would go to liquid cooling that would be my other alternative route you could possibly go slightly faster speed memory here maybe ddr4 4000 cl16 you just don't want to go so fast that you overcome the memory controller on the CPU itself and end up running what's called asynchronously where the memory controller is running at a different speed than the memory itself so I think 3600 CL 16 is likely the sweet spot but if you do want to push it you could go to 4 thousand cl-16 4000cl18 then of course the other thing we want to do is invest more in our graphics card I've dumped in an RTX 3090 here just for the power draw just so you can see that even with the 3090 on here it's not terrible we can probably get away with a thousand watt unit I might feel compelled to go to 1200 watts just for safety reasons with a 30 90 or a 3090 TI for sure 4090 actually uses less energy than the 3090 TI which is good and it looks like the transient power spikes are a lot less frequent and a lot less pronounced so that's a good thing if you want to go 40 80 or 40 90 or maybe go with one of the new RX 7900 XTX or XT cards so for more premium 13600k build we end up 790 not too bad and again it doesn't take much to premiumize the 13600k build that's one of the nice things about it if we look compared to the 7600x more premium the ddr5 is a killer once the speed gets up to something that AMD would recommend for it again when we're using a motherboard with better audio on it when we're using a slightly better cooler for it 902 dollars for the 7600x yikes that gets expensive really quick but for the 5800x 3D again because cheaper b550 motherboards have great features and only about 150 this is a sue strix board for 147 dollars right now that's how cheap some of these boards are and of course the 5800 x380 doesn't really need that much more cooling so we can continue to go with that dual Tower style cooler for only forty dollars great and the lower end power supply 700 again not a huge Gulf between the two especially when you throw in the cost of the graphics card and the overall system you know a 70 difference between the two is not bad especially if you're looking at the 13600k to do any kind of productivity work let's briefly go over with a ddr5 build would look like more Ultra Premium if we're using ddr5 memory that would actually justify using it and getting the platform that would be something like this kit here of G scale Trident Z5 32 gigabytes now there's no 16 gigabyte kits at the time of filming at this speed 6400 cl32 this is what all the reviewers are using in fact I believe they're using this exact kit right here so when you see those benchmarks this is the kit of memory that they're using for the ddr5 testing now the good news is for z690 because ddr5 memory was Bonkers when 12th gen Intel came out there's a lot of z690 ddr5 motherboards out there that you can get at quite a price discount because they didn't sell very well z690 AOS Ultra this is a high-end motherboard you can get for 199 dollars right now and certainly there are other types of ddr5 motherboards out there with more premium features so you do get a slight discount on that but overall as you can see for almost a thousand dollars it quickly inflates the overall cost of our build that being said I do expect these builds to become relevant once these ddr5 prices come down if this comes down closer to a hundred and forty dollars then it's all of a sudden hey that's maybe a good place to invest my money remember if you got value out of the video give it a like because it makes a huge difference to the channel and of course subscribe and click that Bell icon that way you get notified when we release cool content of course remember to check out all the links down in the video description motherboards coolers everything else pricing and availability in your region and if you didn't see our best z690 and z790 motherboard guide for 13 gen Intel I'll put the video right here check it out we go through all the features that you need for your 13600k and we'll catch you on the next one

Channel: PC Builder

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Id: SEftEnSpjOU

Length: 20min 44sec (1244 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 06 2022