Intel Core i5-7600K Review

The Core i5-7600K is one of Intel's mid-range Desktop processors. It was released in 2017 with 4 cores and 4 threads. With base clock at 3.8GHz, max speed at 4.2GHz, and a 91W power rating. The Core i5-7600K is based on the Kaby Lake-S 14nm family and is part of the Core i5 series.

Core i5-7600K is also the successor of Intel's last gen Core i5-6600K processor that was based on the Skylake-S and 14nm process and was released in 2015.

In our mind, the best processors are the ones that deliver outstanding performance at a reasonable price point. And, the Core i5-7600K absolutely nails this concept.

That something is the Core i5-7600K. Intel cranks the TDP dial up to 91W on this 4-core 4-thread chip, making it the high-performance counterpart to the 65W Core i5-7500, which is basically the same 14nm chip built with the Kaby Lake-S microarchitecture, but with a lower TDP rating. That chip came away from our first look at the Kaby Lake-S series with an Editor's Choice award, going toe-to-toe with AMD's Ryzen 5 1600X, so it's fair to say we have high hopes for the higher-performance model. Intel still hasn't sampled the chip to the press, so we bought one at retail to put it under the microscope.

But we've also found that, after simple push-button overclocking, the Core i5-7500 offers similar performance to the Core i5-7600K, even when it is also overclocked. But for $70 less. The Core i5-7600K is an impressive chip and offers a better mixture of performance than AMD's Ryzen 5 1600X, no doubt, but in this case, value seekers might opt for its less expensive sibling.

As the higher-priced version of the Core i5-7500, the Core i5-7600K has higher base and Boost frequencies of 3.8 and 4.2 GHz, respectively. That's an increase in base frequency and a bump to boost clocks, but the real advantage should lay in the higher Package Power Tracking (PPT) envelope, which is a measurement of the maximum amount of power delivered to the socket. The Core i5-7500's PPT tops out at 65W, while the motherboard can pump up to 142W to the Core i5-7600K at peak performance. That opens up much more aggressive boost behavior, on both single and multiple cores, that could widen the performance gap beyond what we see on the spec sheet.

The Intel Core i5-7600K was rolled out on Jan 2017 for $242, which puts it in the same general price range as the last-generation Core i5-6600K. This means that at least we're not seeing any considerable price jumps from generation to generation.

The Intel Core i5-7600K is another impressive release from Intel and its 7 Generation of Core i5 chips. With it, you’re getting 4-cores and 4-threads, with a boost clock of 4.2GHz. It may not be the strongest contender ever made on paper, but when you see and feel the actual performance gains it offers, you’re certainly getting a lot of bang for your $242 buck.

Intel has been having some trouble as of late which has made it even harder to compete with the incoming wave of Ryzen 5 processors. That has forced the chip maker to be a little more creative and make do with their current product lines. Today we have the Intel Core i5-7600K on hand, which in itself isn’t anything new. It’s basically a refreshed Core i5-6600K with a clock speed boost. We say basically because it’s not a straight refresh however, there’s another change.

So which should you buy? Let's get that out of the way. Before this comparison review we updated our Best CPU feature and we said you should go with the Ryzen 5 1600X as it comes with a better stock cooler, can be overclocked, and the AM4 platform offers a significantly better upgrade path.

If you're mostly playing games on your PC, you will be happy buying either processor. Both proved to be solid options and are evenly matched with a slight advantage to the AMD chip if you don't tune up the Ryzen 5 processor. The base performance we showed for the Core i5-7600K can be achieved with $90 memory, while the Ryzen 5 1600X will require $110 - $120 memory in order to enable the frame rates shown here. It’s not a big cost difference and right now with anything less than an RTX 2070 or Vega 64 you’ll more than likely become GPU limited.

Our look today at the Intel Core i5-7600K showed that it is a very capable processor. A 4-core processor sounds like it would be really under-powered these days, but we were pleasantly surprised with a snappy and very capable system. Having just 4 cores had this processor coming in at the back of the pack for heavily threaded workloads, but it performed better than some of its more expensive siblings in lightly threaded workloads where it shined thanks to its high base clocks.

If extended overclocking and boost frequencies are trivial matters to you, Intel also offers the Core i5-7500 at $202. It’s still outfitted with 4-cores and 4-threads, but clocks in at a slower 3.4GHz and maxes out at only 3.8GHz.

Now the biggest question is can Intel’s Core i5 processor play games? The answer is simply yes as it got a respectable gaming score of 83% in our benchmarks.

Fresh from a successful roll-out of mainstream Core i5 CPUs, Intel's attack on AMD now extends down into the mid-range with its Core i5-7600K processors, which the company is making available as of Jan 2017.