Intel i5 11400F Review – Best Budget Gaming CPU?
To say Intel’s 11th generation launch has gone overly well for them would be, well, a bare faced lie. Their higher end options, namely the i9 11900K, runs exceedingly hot and offers little in the way of an advantage over the last generation of Intel’s own chips, let alone AMD’s Ryzen offerings. The i5 11600K is better, although still a bit of a melting pot and when you pair it with a Z590 board you’ll need if you want to void your warranty – sorry I mean overclock – you’ll be out just as much as a Ryzen 5600X and a B550 board. But what about it’s little brother, the 11400F? Last generation, the 10400F offered stunning value and performance and with its price drop to just £130 right now, well it’s still a great shout. So how does the 11th gen version do? Let’s test it and find out.
In this video I’m going to be testing against last year’s 10400F, the bigger brother i5, the 11600K, and a Ryzen 3600 provided by AWD-IT (alongside an A520 motherboard I’ll be testing shortly!), and a 5600X. One other important caveat here is I’m using 3200MHz RAM at CL16 for all my testing here as that is considered “in spec” by Intel and anything higher also voids your warranty. Technically this counts as ‘overclocked’ on the 10400F, and is below the recommended 3600MHz for Ryzen, but for the sake of consistency that’s what I’m using. I’ll be doing a follow up video shortly on how much RAM speed affects your performance with both Intel and AMD CPUs, so make sure you are subscribed to see that! Lastly, I’m using the unlocked power level limits this MSI B560 Tomahawk board offers, this is considered “in spec” by Intel and it’s an option I expect most enthusiast buyers of these will enable so I’m testing all Intel chips with it enabled.
So, the 11400F. This is still a 6 core, 12 thread chip with 12MB of Intel ‘Smart Cache’, although now technically has a lower base clock at 2.6GHz rather than 2.9GHz on the 10th gen version, although it does now squeeze out 4.4GHz on boost rather than 4.3GHz. More importantly though, while it’s still manufactured on Intel’s 14nm process node, it now uses their backported Cypress Cove cores which come with a 19% IPC uplift.
What does that mean in the real world? Well, it’s 22% faster in the single thread run of Cinebench R20 and 24% faster in multi threaded. It obviously doesn’t keep up with the 11600K as that’s a further 8% faster, nor does it match AMD’s 5600X which is 4% faster too. It does beat the 3600 as that’s 6% slower.
The boost algorithms appear to have been turned up to 11 on 11th gen, as for shorter workloads where the CPU can stay up on boost it performs exceedingly well. In Blender and the BMW scene the 11400F bests the 5600X by 8 seconds, and the last gen 10400F by 45s. The 11600K still holds the lead here at a further 23 seconds faster, but to see the 11400F beat the 5600X – even if the 5600X is hampered by slower memory – is still impressive.
When it comes down off of boost though, it’s a lot more underwhelming. It goes from second fastest with the BMW scene, to second slowest in Gooseberry. It’s even 11 seconds slower than the 3600! It still has a sizeable 15% decrease in time from the 10400F, but this shows just how big a deal being up on boost is with these chips – and how you’ll need to keep them cool to get the most out of them too.
In that vein, you’ll want a pretty stout cooler for this chip if you want the most performance out of it. It chokes down 130W of power at max boost with power limits unlocked. That’s only 19W lower than the 11600K, and nearly double last gen’s 10400F which peaks at 75W, even with limits unlocked. Both Ryzen chips also perform significantly better, so while this is priced well you will need to spend some of your savings on a larger air cooler or a decent AIO.
Lastly for the productivity numbers, we have the Adobe CC suite apps. I’m using the Puget Bench Suite here as it offers an easily comparable performance figure based on not just rendering performance, but the overall usage experience when using the programs. Starting with Premiere, the 11400F sits in the middle of the pack, offering a slightly better score than the 3600, but falling short of the newer 5600X and 11600K. It does hold a 14% lead over the 10400F though, a welcomed upgrade.
In After Effects it’s much the same, although the margins between it and the 3600, and the 5600X are larger both ways. It does also hold a larger margin over the 10400F at 16%. In Photoshop the 5600X takes the overall lead, otherwise the order and margins generally remain the same. A healthy improvement over last gen and the 3600, but not overly close to matching the 11600K or 5600X.
So it’s better than last gen by a reasonable amount, at least for creative workloads although does draw almost double the power. What about gaming though? Starting with Watchdogs Legion, even at 1080p and testing with an RTX 3080, there isn’t a massive gap between the newer chips. The 10400F does drop 5FPS compared to the 11400F, and the 3600 falls behind with 9FPS less, but between the 11th gen chips and the 5600X? It’s pretty much within margin of error.
Since CSGO is normally a very CPU dependent game I thought I’d throw it in. The 5600X stomps the field with nearly 350FPS average, the 11600K comes in second at around 300FPS, then the 10 and 11400F pretty much match at 270FPS with the 3600 coming in a tad behind at 260 ish. I’m actually pretty surprised the gap isn’t bigger in the 11400F’s favour, but it’s still decent performance.
In Cyberpunk Intel jumps back to the top, with both 11th gen chips actually besting the 5600X if only by 0.1 FPS. The 3600 really struggled here, making me suspect there is a lot of optimisation CDPR needs to do for Ryzen before it’s a truly fair test, but if you are planning on playing it now this is what you’ll get. Again the gap between the 10th and 11th gen 400 chip really isn’t that big.
In Fortnite the gaps get remarkably large. The 11600K and 5600X are clear victors and relatively close, then a chasm to the 11400F in the middle, then a drop to the 10400F and trailing again is the 3600. Interestingly, despite the higher average FPS, the 1% low figure is slightly higher on the older i5 than the new one.
Lastly, in Microsoft Flight the 10400F technically pips the 11400F to the post here, although I’d call that within margin of error. It’s such a tough game to run that I’d definitely be turning the settings down on any of these chips to get some legitimately playable framerates rather than the jittery mess this was.
So for gaming it’s not all that much faster than last gen. There are some cases where you can see a more sizable advantage, but on average you won’t see a massive difference. The real difference comes with its price tag. It’s on pre-order for just £150. Bearing in mind the 10400F right now is £130, you get a decent bit more power (even if it draws a whole lot more power too), and the 11600K is £230. The 3600 is still listed for £170 which really doesn’t make much sense, and the 5600X is well out of discussion with its £300 sticker price.
So, if you want a cheap CPU for gaming… Get this. You still do have to pay a bit of a premium for a B560 board over Ryzen’s B550, but it’s much more reasonable compared to the Z590 you’d want for the 11600K. You will also need to budget in some cash for a decent cooler too, but all in you are still nowhere near the cost for a 5600X system and while the 3600 would likely end up cheaper overall with it’s wide selection of B450 boards available too and low power, it doesn’t offer close to the same in game performance as the 11400F making this your best option. Of course, prices change and new products come out, so my recommendation here is based on the figures I’ve quoted here. If the 5600X drops to £200 or so it would likely get a stronger recommendation, or if the 10400F drops to £100 flat that would take the win, but for now – the 11400F is a great buy.
-
TechteamGB Score
