i5 11600K vs Ryzen 5600X – Streaming, Gaming, Editing
If you watched my i9 11900K review, you’ll know that Intel’s new 11th generation lineup is… difficult to justify, to say the least. The i9 is, as hardware canucks put it, a dumpster fire drawing over 310W in my testing from an 8 core. But, this is the i5 11600K and it’s much more reasonable. I mean, it’s power draw is still insane, but it’s price to performance especially compared to the 5600X is much easier to justify. Since you’ve likely already seen regular reviews of the 11600K, I’m going to be including streaming numbers here too, alongside productivity and gaming results so you’ll see how they compare. Ready? Lets go.
The 11600K is currently listed for around £250, making it a full £100 cheaper than the 5600X – that’s a big deal as on paper they are a decent match. Both sport a 19% IPC improvement over their last generation, both are 6 core, 12 thread chips, although the i5 has the distinction of being a lot more restrictive in what you can and can’t do with it. All of my testing was done with 3200MHz memory, as while the Ryzen chip supports any speed you like, namely 3600MHz, the Intel chip only “officially” supports up to 3200MHz as anything higher technically voids your warranty. Also, you’ll need a Z590 motherboard if you want to overclock, which again voids the warranty and if you want PCIe Gen 4 you’ll need a 500 series board instead of last year’s 400 series.
I should note one of the few things that won’t void your warranty is adjusting the PL1 and PL2 profiles, something many motherboard makers have enabled by default. For my testing on an ASRock Z590 Steel Legend, I enabled the ‘unlocked’ profile, as you have likely already seen the bare stock numbers, and because it’s free performance that is still “in-spec”.
So, how do they stack up? Lets start with straight up gaming. I normally test Cyberpunk 2077 here, but my testing started right as the new update came out which made it crash on startup on both CPUs. I’ve read “Cyberpunk Flatlined” too many times to count, and “thanks choomba” a lot more than I’d like too. So, I can’t include any results for that, but otherwise lets jump into Watchdogs Legion.
Much like the i9 video, even at 1080p on ultra settings, there really isn’t much of a difference here. Technically, the i5 does lead the Ryzen 5 although only by 3 FPS. I’d consider that close enough to call even – and the 1% lows are the same with only 1FPS between them.
In COD Modern Warfare, again at ultra settings 1080p, this time it’s the Ryzen chip that gets an FPS or two faster, although the 1% lows are pretty much identical. As you might expect, there will not be a big difference in gameplay experience between these two.
And in Fortnite, the 11600K takes the lead again… by 1 FPS. The 1% lows are a few more higher this time though, although both are above 100FPS so I wouldn’t say you would notice.
Just gaming then, they are pretty much a tie. What about streaming? Well, I’m testing just streaming to twitch at 1080p 30, 6000Kbps, using the veryfast x264 encoder. The results were.. Interesting.
In Watchdogs Legion both chips drop around 10FPS, both on average and their 1% lows. It’s still plenty playable, although the 11600K does drop a hair more. Again, not something you would notice. The stream performance was the same for both, in fact it was the same for all my runs so I’ll show you these graphs then leave this out. And the stream quality between them looks the same too. No frame drops or major quality losses between them which is great.
In COD the difference is a little more obvious. The 5600X loses 20FPS average and 30FPS on the 1% lows, whereas the i5 drops a little over 30FPS average and 40FPS in the 1% lows. It’s still over 170FPS average, so you still are very unlikely to notice, but if you wanted to swap the encoder options this shows the Ryzen chip will have a bit more headroom for both streaming and gaming – at least in COD.
But in Fortnite it’s the other way around. The i5 drops 10FPS average, whereas the Ryzen drops just over 15FPS – much like COD you are unlikely to notice, although if you are streaming Fortnite it technically looks like the i5 is a better choice.
So, they trade blows both playing and streaming games. What about editing those tasty highlight reels? Or 3D modelling? Well, you aren’t going to believe this but… they trade blows. In Cinebench R20 single threaded the 5600X – again with 3200MHz memory – hits just shy of 600 points, whereas the i5 is closer to 590. In multithreaded, thanks to its unlocked power settings the i5 actually pulls ahead by 150 points, or a little over 3%.
In Blender the i5 holds onto that all core advantage rendering the BMW scene 30 seconds quicker, although in longer workloads like Gooseberry where the i5 will drop down off it’s maximum turbo, the Ryzen chip catches up only ending up 15 seconds slower, or 1%.
In the PugetBench suite for the Adobe CC apps, the i5 bests Ryzen by a few points in both Premiere and After effects, although Ryzen takes the minute lead in photoshop. All in? They are going to offer pretty much the same performance.
The only downside is power. The i5 draws literally double that of the Ryzen chip, meaning you’ll need to splash out on a larger cooler or AIO whereas the 5600X can technically be run from the cooler that comes in the box – or a cheap option like the ARCTIC Freezer 34 eSports DUO. When you combine that with the more expensive Z590 motherboard you’ll need, the i5 stops being quite as good a value. I picked the same branded board for both Z590 and B550 and added a Freezer 34 to the Ryzen basket and a Liquid Freezer II to the i5 basket and.. The i5 becomes more expensive. Even speccing faster 3600MHz RAM for Ryzen it’s still a tenner cheaper.
All in all, the i5 is a much, much more competitive chip than the i9, and one that I wouldn’t feel bad about recommending. While the 5600X is more power efficient and less restrictive, the i5 offers good performance and if you can get a good deal on a Z590 board and cooler cooler it offers reasonable value. If AMD were to drop the price of the 5600X though, even by £25-50, it might be harder to justify the i5 but as it stands it’s not bad.
