Question I5 12600k or 13600k for gaming in 2024.

[silverz]

Upgrade time coming soon for me, I have already got a new 4070 for the GPU and I just need to decide on a CPU.

I'm not going to bother looking at the 14th gen as I heard they get quite hot and I have a small case so I'd probably run into heat issues there so it's between a 13600k or a 12600k with the older CPU being a lot cheaper to buy.

I'm only interested in gaming performance and nothing else. Am I going to see any real world difference between the two? I have no desire to spend 25% more money for an extra 5 or 10 fps for example and I'll only be doing mild overclocking.

I play a wide variety of games at 1440p 120/144/170hz with occasional 4k 60fps TV gaming and I use ddr4 for the memory which I wish to continue using.

I also have to take account of it lasting me a few more years as I don't upgrade very often.

What's do you all suggest?
Are there any big considerations to account for if I went for the cheaper older CPU?

 

[jnjnilson6]

Upgrade time coming soon for me, I have already got a new 4070 for the GPU and I just need to decide on a CPU.

I'm not going to bother looking at the 14th gen as I heard they get quite hot and I have a small case so I'd probably run into heat issues there so it's between a 13600k or a 12600k with the older CPU being a lot cheaper to buy.

I'm only interested in gaming performance and nothing else. Am I going to see any real world difference between the two? I have no desire to spend 25% more money for an extra 5 or 10 fps for example and I'll only be doing mild overclocking.

I play a wide variety of games at 1440p 120/144/170hz with occasional 4k 60fps TV gaming and I use ddr4 for the memory which I wish to continue using.

I also have to take account of it lasting me a few more years as I don't upgrade very often.

What's do you all suggest?
Are there any big considerations to account for if I went for the cheaper older CPU?

I would say that going with 14 Cores and 20 Threads really does present a benefit over 10 Cores and 16 Threads. That would really be a distinction down the line.

You should definitely consider the i5-13600K, despite going with the 12600K would be all well and fine too. But the former ought to last at least 3 years longer and in the big picture kick in some extra frames.

 

[geofelt]

What is the make/model of your case?
What is the fan arrangement?
A small case can actually cool better than a large one.
This is particularly true for air coolers.

Gaming gets better with stronger processors. Particularly in single thread performance.
Modern processors can run hot, but they are built to tolerate heat.
Modern motherboards will ignore intel restrictions and try to run their processors to give the best performance possible.
You can turn this off, but the defaults work very well.
Heat becomes an issue only if you are a competitive overclocker, or you run multithreaded aps.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNFgswzTvyc

Nobody overclocks a cpu for gaming any more.
The default turbo mechanism boosts a couple of cores past what an all core overclock can do. This is exactly what you want for gaming.
If your budget permits a 13600K buy it.
Better yet would be the 14600K. It costs marginally more but also performs marginally better.

When deciding between price and good, I have found that my pain from a higher price for the good is much shorter than the second guessing from picking the lesser product.

 

[silverz]

The case is a corsair 400d airflow currently with three 120mm fans on the front and one on the back and its aircooled but I was thinking of getting one of the aio watercoolers (more for looks than anything) which would add a couple more fans onto the top of the case.
I don't have a budget I just don't want to waste money for extra performance that you can only really see in a benchmark.

 

[Nexus713]

I might have other opinion, but I was debating as well if would be worth to spend more money on 13600k vs 12600k when I was upgrading my PC few months ago. I got 12600k for around 180$ and couldn’t be happier! Paired with 32GB of DDR5 and RX6750XT does amazing job in 1080p/1440p, consistent 60+ fps in all games I play without Ray Tracing (Cyberpunk, Elden Ring, Forza Horizon 5, Starfield, Hogwarts Legacy)

I would say 12600k is still great processor for gaming, as not all games use so many cores.


Another question is - do you already have LGA1700 motherboard or you are buying new system? Did you consider going AMD Ryzen? Their CPUs are great value for gaming and AM5 socket might be more future proof