News Intel Core i9-11900K and i5-11600K Review

watzupken

Reputable
Mar 16, 2020
1,007
507
6,070
I feel Anandtech's review have mostly pointed to a disappointing product. Its improved over its predecessor for sure, but given the price delta now, Comet Lake chips may still be a better deal for people on a budget and focus only on gaming.

Frankly if Intel can't pull out 10nm chips for their desktop this year, they are going to be in deep trouble because I don't think they can squeeze anything out of 14nm now. With the 8 core chips pulling this much power and running close to 100 degs with a 280mm AIO, it is not going to be cheap running a high end Intel setup since one will need a very high end board, along with a high end cooler.
 
  • Like
Reactions: phenomiix6

spongiemaster

Admirable
Dec 12, 2019
2,273
1,277
7,560
Epic yawn. I really was hoping for more but expected pretty much what we got with 11th gen.
Every model except the 11900k is still available at major retailers for MSRP. That is noteworthy and good for consumers. The 11600k looks pretty good for the mainstream at $270. The 5600x is unavailable as usual from major vendors, if you want to go though 3rd party vendors, it's $350 at Newegg. That's a significant win for Intel. The 11500 is $218. What does AMD have to compete with that? At the top, AMD still has the lead, but you can't buy them. From mid on down, where most people buy, Intel has taken the lead and you can actually buy them.
 

Math Geek

Titan
Ambassador
not sure what anyone was expecting. to have to drop cores and still hit those same huge power levels shows just how desperate they are right now.

i don't care if it costs $50 less than the comparable amd chip. the top end mobo and cooling will more than eat up that cost savings. i see nothing to justify buying one of these other than settling big time simply due to being able to find one.

that's the only reason i can see and then i'd be upset knowing i did not get the best for my money due to shortages.
 
Waiting for all the people who said that microcode, BIOS, etc.. updates would help the performance from anandtech's review at the beginning of the month to give other excuses for 11th Gen not being good.
 

Lorien Silmaril

Distinguished
Jul 18, 2014
36
32
18,570
Every model except the 11900k is still available at major retailers for MSRP. That is noteworthy and good for consumers. The 11600k looks pretty good for the mainstream at $270. The 5600x is unavailable as usual from major vendors, if you want to go though 3rd party vendors, it's $350 at Newegg. That's a significant win for Intel. The 11500 is $218. What does AMD have to compete with that? At the top, AMD still has the lead, but you can't buy them. From mid on down, where most people buy, Intel has taken the lead and you can actually buy them.
they are "available" because people aren't buying them nearly as much as AMD chips. :p

and don't forget new mobo and massive cooler for pricing calculations.
 
  • Like
Reactions: atomicWAR

InvalidError

Titan
Moderator
i don't care if it costs $50 less than the comparable amd chip. the top end mobo and cooling will more than eat up that cost savings.
That's ok, you aren't the target market. For every i9-11900k that Intel sells through the retail channel, it likely sells thousands of lesser SKUs through OEMs and SIs and most of those lesser SKUs in OEM/SI systems don't need gilded motherboards and cooling. The i9-11900k is only for people who don't care much about anything besides having a flagship product.
 
  • Like
Reactions: King_V and Why_Me

Math Geek

Titan
Ambassador
even the lower model was 200w+ with simple boost. even a crappy oem system gonna have to cool that or disable all boosting of any kind.

it is true many simple buyers won't know the difference but that does not excuse the level of fanboy we still see on an "enthusiast" site like this. :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: Conahl

Phaaze88

Titan
Ambassador
11600K: is a worthwhile buy Vs the 5600X, if you DON'T overclock it. 'Gamers' might not care about power consumption, but they should.
I would care about lower room temps in the summer, as well as saving some money by not having to run A/C as often.
There seems to be an upward trend of people buying these chips and not spending enough on the cooler; like, how many bloody 9700K, 9900K, 10700K 10900K cooling threads are here and elsewhere, and one of the first flags you'll see is the bloody cooler.
Adhering to Intel's guidelines, most of these chips are fine thermally.

11700K: That 'waste of sand' quote fits well here... just skip this thing and go for an 11900K. You know you have the money for it...

11900K: ABT. Period.
Yep. Intel killed overclocking with this chip. Definitely, do NOT cheap out on the cooling here...
IMO, and just looking at Intel cpus, this is the chip I would personally go for because of ABT + TVB. If all I have to do is put a strong cooler on it, screw it. Yes, I know I contradicted my 2nd line here - I was theoretically speaking here.
I've had my fun with overclocking - it's dead to me now.
 

PCWarrior

Distinguished
May 20, 2013
199
81
18,670
they are "available" because people aren't buying them nearly as much as AMD chips. :p

and don't forget new mobo and massive cooler for pricing calculations.
I guess you said the same about the 8700K at launch, the 9900K at launch, the 9900KS, the 10900K at launch, etc while the 2700X or the 3600, 3900X were super available. I suppose there was far more demand for the Intel chips back then (retailing as a result for far higher prices than MSRP) than there was for the AMD cpus at or below MSRP. The truth is that there is always enough demand to keep the price high (or a product unavailable) if the quantity available for said product is very small. Availability doesn’t correlate with actual sales if we don't know the quanity produced. AMD's quote about a million chips is nothing. It doesn't specify to who they were sold or what skus they were. Plus 1 million is a small number to begin with. And we neither know what the yield rate for these 5000 series chips really is. The simple truth is that AMD as a fabless company was allocated a certain number of wafer starts in a shared factory in Twain and can only produce a small number of DIY cpu chips while they are also satisfying their other obligations (servers, consoles, OEMs, etc).
 

spongiemaster

Admirable
Dec 12, 2019
2,273
1,277
7,560
they are "available" because people aren't buying them nearly as much as AMD chips. :p

and don't forget new mobo and massive cooler for pricing calculations.
That would certainly explain why Intel has been gaining back market share recently, because no one is buying their CPU's. The reason 5000 series CPU's are in such low supply is because AMD couldn't careless about enthusiasts. The money is in enterprise so that is where they are funneling most of their wafers. With no mining demand for CPU's, AMD shouldn't be struggling to meet demand if the desktop market was a priority to them.

With Intel transitioning their Xeon's to 10nm Ice Lake right now, they've probably freed up more 14nm capacity for Rocket Lake, than total 7nm capacity AMD gets from TSMC.
 

larkspur

Distinguished
The way I see it, 6 cores, 12 threads is the place to start for a good overall machine in 2021 (at least one that can game well). Without seeing actual benchies yet, I am wondering is what AMD's response will be to the 6 core, 12 thread i5-11400F. Couple that $160 CPU with a ~$135 motherboard and you have a excellent value base for a gaming machine. The Ryzen 5 3600 costs more and the 3300X is only 4c/8t... Intel's pricing on their lower-end i5 CPUs not only undercuts AMD's inflated current market prices, it also undercuts their MSRPs... Sadly it appears other folks have the same idea as the 11400F is out of stock at Newegg and is already above MSRP at Amazon.
 

atomicWAR

Glorious
Ambassador
Every model except the 11900k is still available at major retailers for MSRP. That is noteworthy and good for consumers. The 11600k looks pretty good for the mainstream at $270. The 5600x is unavailable as usual from major vendors, if you want to go though 3rd party vendors, it's $350 at Newegg. That's a significant win for Intel. The 11500 is $218. What does AMD have to compete with that? At the top, AMD still has the lead, but you can't buy them. From mid on down, where most people buy, Intel has taken the lead and you can actually buy them.

No argument on AMD availability. I actually could have grabbed a 11900K on newegg this morning at launch. After reading the reviews though, I had zero urge to pick up this power hungry hog up. I agree that availability is a huge win for those wanting to build a new PC...or at least upgrade their CPU platform. Because getting GPUs, regardless of vendor, is even worse off than CPUs. Anyways your argument is valid but so is mine. Between the power consumption, the heat output that comes with it, loss of cores, and an ancient node, these CPUs are a poor outing for Intel. Regardless I'll be sitting on my CPU platform until AM5 or Alder Lake launches.
 
The way I see it, 6 cores, 12 threads is the place to start for a good overall machine in 2021 (at least one that can game well). Without seeing actual benchies yet, I am wondering is what AMD's response will be to the 6 core, 12 thread i5-11400F. Couple that $160 CPU with a ~$135 motherboard and you have a excellent value base for a gaming machine. The Ryzen 5 3600 costs more and the 3300X is only 4c/8t... Intel's pricing on their lower-end i5 CPUs not only undercuts AMD's inflated current market prices, it also undercuts their MSRPs... Sadly it appears other folks have the same idea as the 11400F is out of stock at Newegg and is already above MSRP at Amazon.
The 11400F hasn't hit the US yet as far as stock. That cpu along with the 11700F paired with a B560 board will be the smart buys imo.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1621133-REG/intel_bx8070811400f_core_i5_11400f_2_6_ghz.html/
Intel Core i5-11400F $167.95 New Item - Coming Soon

https://www.newegg.com/intel-core-i7-11700-core-i7-11th-gen/p/N82E16819118237
Intel Core i7-11700F $365.49
 
11600k and under from Intel make decent sense as budget chips as long as you're smart about rest of the parts (ram, motherboard, overclocking/not oc, cooling). Everything above the i5 suffers from irrelevance due to competition from AMD or their own product stack.
 

anonymousdude

Distinguished
11600k and under from Intel make decent sense as budget chips as long as you're smart about rest of the parts (ram, motherboard, overclocking/not oc, cooling). Everything above the i5 suffers from irrelevance due to competition from AMD or their own product stack.

I'd argue the 11700 is still a decent buy if you're not going to oc. It's going for $350, so it actually sits at a price that makes sense.
 

Awev

Reputable
Jun 4, 2020
89
19
4,535
Just one question, did Rocket Lake blast off or blast to pieces?

I think it was in the lake to long for the rockets.