[SOLVED] i5-11600K or i9-10900

[Wicket Fot]

There I was, starting a thread about quiet PC cases. I thought I had the rest of the configuration figured out. The next day, I'm doubting my CPU choices.

i9-10900 costs the absolute maximum amount I'm willing to spend on the CPU. I came here planning to get it.

i5-11600K has a better single thread rating. The i9 has a better Turbo Boost.

I don't know if I need the extra cores and it's a thankless task to guess. I'm not gaming nor doing any video editing, Photoshopping and stuff. I suppose that most of the apps I use are single threaded. I want my scripts to execute faster over 10 GB and larger textual files. My scripts are single threaded and without parallelism, FOR NOW. This tells me that I would be throwing money away if I bought the i9.

On the other hand, I don't ever want to be forced to close windows, tabs, apps because the performance is dropping. I want everything to run smoothly even if I open up a stupid amount of programs and instances. Now, I don't want to say I want to run dozens of expensive tasks at one time, most of this clutter would be more or less passive. Also, if I start incorporating threading and parallelism in my code in the near future, more cores can save me time.

I'm not sure I want to get the i5, see how it goes and sell it to buy an i9 later. I want to make a choice for the long run.

Any thoughts?

 

[FoxyZey]

i'd personally go with the i5.

 

[Karadjgne]

I5.

Tabs etc are pretty much ram bound, not core bound, so a i5 with 16Gb will behave the same as a i9 with 16Gb.

Photoshop is highly single threaded, as is Adobe for the most part, it's only things like Arnold that get any real leverage from higher core count cpus.

Unless you have a Z rated or 5 series motherboard, you can't take advantage of higher speed ram. OC is OC for 10th Gen cpu/ram, but 11th Gen that's changed, you can use OC ram speeds such as 3200+ on a B560 mobo with 11th Gen cpu. So the i5 gets benefits the i9 won't unless you budget extra for a Z mobo.

 

[Wicket Fot]

I was planning to get a Z590 either way. You make B560 look kind of tempting, but I don't think that Z590 is that much more expensive.

 

[punkncat]

I have an i5 11600K in one of my builds. It is FAR faster than my 2700X for single thread tasks. It equals it, sometime little better, sometimes a little worse, in multi thread benchmarks. That is saying a lot with 4 less threads running...

They run HOT. I mean like good cooler and great airflow case kind of hot. Do not cheap out on getting a cooler, be it air or water/AIO.

According to when your z590 mobo was manufactured, consider doing the BIOS update(s) right away. Mine had issue with sound, and a few other nagging issues that rectified mostly on the first BIOS update and seems to have polished some things in the second.

DO NOT try to load a Windows build older than the 2Hxx IMO. I used an older install of 1804 IIRC and it gave me crazy issue until I ran a new USB installer that was up to the minute.

Personally, in spite of minor performance difference single thread, IF I were going to go more core/thread I would strongly consider the 10850K for it's current price.

 

[Bazzy 505]

If your main workload is Photoshop, 11600K is the better choice. Main bottle neck in PS workloads is ram bandwidth and scratchdisk performance.

With 11600K you can take advantage of gen4 nvme SSDs which will double your scratchdisk performance and rocket lake supports much higher memory bandwidths.
Neither of those are an option with 10900K.

In regards to actual cpu performance with Photoshop, most 2D filters are very lightly threaded and 3D filters rely heavily on GPU acceleration whenever available so 10900K 's additional cores won't get to do much if anything at all. 11600K is plenty enough and while all core boost on 10900K is indeed much higher, per core performance uplift on the newer 11600K more than makes up for it.

 

[Why_Me]

I was planning to get a Z590 either way. You make B560 look kind of tempting, but I don't think that Z590 is that much more expensive.

https://www.amazon.com/Intel-i7-11700F-Desktop-Processor-LGA1200/dp/B08X6V4WTF/
Intel Core i7-11700F $329.99

or if you want the integrated graphics ...

Amazon.com: Intel Core i7-11700 Desktop Processor 8 Cores up to 4.9 GHz LGA1200 (Intel 500 Series & Select 400 Series Chipset) 65W : Everything Else

Amazon.com: Intel Core i7-11700 Desktop Processor 8 Cores up to 4.9 GHz LGA1200 (Intel 500 Series & Select 400 Series Chipset) 65W : Everything Else

www.amazon.com

Intel Core i7-11700 $339.99

It doesn't get any quieter than this cpu cooler.

Amazon.com: Scythe Fuma 2 CPU Air Cooler, Intel LGA1151, AMD AM4/Ryzen, 120mm Dual Towers, Black Top Cover: Computers & Accessories

Buy Scythe Fuma 2 CPU Air Cooler, Intel LGA1151, AMD AM4/Ryzen, 120mm Dual Towers, Black Top Cover: CPU Cooling Fans - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases

www.amazon.com

Scythe Fuma 2 CPU Air Cooler $59.99

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813144396
MSI MAG B560M BAZOOKA $139.99

https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/MAG-B560M-BAZOOKA