It’s got great performance, a great price tag, and acceptable though second-place efficiency.
That left Intel with one option for its 14th-generation CPUs: refresh its 13th-generation Raptor Lake chips.
TheCore i5-14600Kisn’t so much a successor to the 13600K, but a 13600K with a new name.
Even at $320 though, this is a fairly expensive CPU.
Still, there’s a pretty big difference between now and 2017: AMD isn’t all that competitive.
My methodology for testing games is pretty simple.
I then tested the 14600K and 7900X at those same graphics options.
With all that out of the way, let’s get to the results.
In Blender, the performance margins are largely the same as the multi-threaded tests in Cinebench R23 and 2024.
Hannah Stryker / How-To Geek
The 14600K is still right in the middle, which is again a good result considering its price.
I tested in Novigrad, which is the most CPU-intensive area in the game due to all its NPCs.
Interestingly, all CPUs had roughly the same 99th percentile framerate but differed quite noticeably in average framerate.
Intel’s Core i5-14600K is a refresh of its popular Core i5-13600K, featuring the same cores and architecture but also higher clock speeds.
The 14600K is ahead of the 7900X here but couldn’t quite catch the 7800X3D.
Both AMD CPUs offer a somewhat smoother experience.
That being said, the 14600K was only slightly behind the 7900X, which is an okay result.
Hannah Stryker / How-To Geek
The overall picture for the 14600K is positive when it comes to performance.
By contrast, the 14600K had superb power consumption when not under heavy load.
Ever since AMD switched to chiplets for its desktop CPUs, Ryzen has been extremely difficult to cool.
Hannah Stryker / How-To Geek
Additionally, the 14600K’s temperature at idle or low loads is also much better.
Should You Buy the Intel Core i5-14600K?
But would it have been priced as competitively as 13th- or even 14th-generation Raptor Lake chips?
Eventually, the 14600K will cost as much as the 13600K does right now.
If you’re in the market for a great midrange CPU, the 13600K is what you’ll want.
The 14600K is just too expensive and too similar to make sense at its current price.
Hannah Stryker / How-To Geek
