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The Core i5-13400 is the new entry-level CPU out of Intel. It’s designed to be a power-efficient and fast CPU for productivity and gaming. As such, the Core i5-13400 is a nice budget gaming option for PC enthusiasts. If you’re looking for a low-cost CPU that can help your rig run modern games, you would be quite happy with this chip.
However, it’s important to keep in mind that this is a low-core CPU with fairly low cache memory. Thus, it will run the vast majority of games but it will need a strong GPU to do so. Do not expect the same or nearly the same performance as more expensive CPUs.
This chip features 10 cores and 16 threads, being a nice improvement over the previous 12400 iterations but not as good for a gaming environment as the entry-level competition out of AMD, Ryzen 5 7600. Intel’s hybrid architecture will help this CPU run games, but it will especially perform at its best in more multithreaded activities like content creation. The boosted core clock speed of 4.6 GHz seems pretty high but can hardly do that much with the low L3 cache of 20 MB.
In conclusion, if you’re looking for a budget-friendly gaming CPU, this will be the best option considering that Intel integrated it with backward compatibility that will let you connect the CPU to any 600-series Intel board with DDR4 or DDR5 RAM. This means the overall building costs can get really low and you can have a solid gaming PC for quite a low price. Other budget options, like the Ryzen 5 7600, are AM5 based and can’t get used on older motherboards, which will increase prices by a lot.
How much does the Core i5-13400 cost?
The Intel Core i5-13400 has an MSRP of $221. That is around $30 more than the launch price of the 12400. This price increase is understandable when we keep in mind the improvements Team Blue did to the architecture. The price gets even more attractive when we compare it to the $229 of the Ryzen 5 and its AM5-only compatibility. So, you can get a fairly strong gaming CPU that won’t leave you stranded.
