Intel Core i5-8400 Review: Six Cores On A Budget

[PaulAlcorn]

"... the 8400's multi-core Turbo Boost bins get a lot more aggressive than Core i5-7400's."

Just curious, if the CPU can handle all six cores at 3.8 anyway, why is the base clock so much lower? Why not just set the base clock to 3.8 anyway? Or is it because it could only sustain 3.6 if the cooler was up to the task? If so, then Turbo has morphed into a sort of pseudo-Intel-sanctioned auto oc'ing.

Also, since the 6-core turbo level starts off from a higher frequency, the percentage gain of the higher levels vs. the 6-core turbo level is lower than the inter-level gains for the old 4-core, which is if anything IMO somewhat less imppressive.

Ian.

 

[TJ Hooker]

Spoiler

I have looked at Tom's coverage of both Ryzen and Coffee Lake.
From what I could see, there is a strong preference to show intel products in a better light.

1. Pricing. THG chooses platform/processor alone costs as they see fit; any sane choice would include at least the cooling solution and, perhaps, motherboard into this. Not at THG though; I expect this to change when cheap intel mobos arrive.
2. Cooling. You guys here seem to use good cooling (as in: expensive and performing), yet you do not inculde the costs into the equation. Combined with better thermals of competitive AMD offerings, this is smelly.
3. Hand-picked benchmarks - blender and lux-what? included, POV-ray and Cinebench excluded. You guessed it, AMD hardware tends to have upper hand in the latter (excluded ones).
4. Looking thru fingers at contest rules. RX 480 was over the TDP, you named and shamed it. i9s were over their respective TDPs, you failed to clearly state so.

I no longer find this website serving just information for me to make educated purchasing decision.
I am fed up. From a regular reader back in '90 thru early this decade, I decided to leave this site for good.

1. We mention the cost of motherboards and coolers in the text, In addition, we have two dedicated charts in the conclusion that specifically list performance and platform costs combined. That includes price adjustments for motherboards and coolers.

2. see response 1.

Eh, I really don't think either of those points truly address his concerns. In those charts, you only add price adjustments for:
a) overclocked platforms that require a premium chipset mobo
b) platforms that don't come with a stock cooler
On paper, neither of those things apply to the 8400, so the platform cost listed for the 8400 the same as the CPU cost. In reality, the 8400 does require a premium chipset, simply because that's all that's available right now. Additionally, all the performance data you have for the 8400 is with a high end liquid cooler, but in the perf/dollar analysis you assume you're using a stock cooler. Given the wide gap between base and boost clocks, and the fact that the CPU must exceed TDP (and therefore possibly the capabilities of the stock cooler), it's entirely possible that the 8400 would perform worse than you give it credit for.

 

[gjbaker003]

So to get this straight, if you can find a i5 8400 the price will most likely be near the Ryzen 1600 range - plus you would have to buy an expensive overclocking Z motherboard for a chip that does not overclock?

It's a great time to be a PC builder with AMD finally competing with Intel again, but it seems as though the mid-range budget builder is suffering quite a bit due to limited supplies of Coffe Lake chips/no B or H motherboards and AMD/1060 GPUs being bought up by miners.

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

To be fair, it seems par for the course these days. When was the last major CPU/GPU release that was widely available, in quantity, at MSRP during launch month? Not Pascal, or Vega, or Polaris, or Coffee Lake, or Skylake, or Ryzen etc. And not counting Kaby Lake of course.

 

[Draco Shanks]

i5 8400 has higher power consumption vs r5 1600x 4ghz?