Looking to upgrade from a 10850K to a 14600K in a gaming machine, as I want some more FPS and gen 5 gooodness. Worth the upgrade? Already have a NZXT Z790 + 64GB Corsair Dominator Titanium on order so looking for a CPU.
Considering how badly the Intel 14th Gen CPUs were reviewed, you might as well get a 13600K and save a few bucks, because there is a very tiny (and probably not very noticeable) performance boost.
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Unless the Gen14 i5K, gets near to parity pricing, go for Gen13 variant
As-is, the uber majority of Gen14, is a slightly better end binning… bigg whoop
No? Basically upgrading an a still good platform into an already dead-end platform, the “14th” gen was its last hurrah, and it was only a 200Mhz bump over 13th-gen stuff.
PCIe 5.0 isn’t going to matter, there’s no 5.0 GPUs out yet. And Z790 is still PCIe 4.0 for the SSD M.2 slot, so you don’t get that either.
Since you bought it all anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’d recommend a 14700K though for 8 performance cores, no point buying a 14600K then upgrading it later.
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I’ve gotten myself a 13700K this year, so I’d recommend a 13600K. They’re both very good in gaming.
The upgrade makes sense, when you’re aiming to go to max. FPS, otherwise a 10th gen chip would suffice.
You’d be looking at anywhere from a 30-50% increase in computing power going from the 10850k to 13600k. A 14600k would probably raise that to a 35-60% increase. Price difference according to PCPartPicker is $20 and I would absolutely go for the more expensive CPU here. Also worth noting is that 60% extra compute does not necessarily translate to 60% extra FPS, it will most probably be more like 20% extra or so for most games.
It is a nice upgrade, but, considering gen 15 is coming out within a year with a completely new architecture, and considering Zen 5 is coming this spring, it is kind of a tough sell. You’d need to buy a new motherboard and RAM sticks when upgrading to your next machine regardless.
Would recommend this upgrade package, if this is what you want. Is it worth a modest 30% increase in gaming though? Also note that you will need to upgrade to Windows 11 or the latest Linux distro.
| Type | Item | Price |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i5-14600K | $328.00 |
| CPU Cooler | Thermaltake UX200 SE ARGB | $23.99 |
| Motherboard | ASRock Z690 Steel Legend | $139.99 |
| Total | $491.98 |
Equivalent AM5 package is more expensive but you will be able to do a 5 minute swap to Zen 5, possibly Zen 6 in three years. So pay a little more now for only CPU upgrade in 3 years.
| Type | Item | Price |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 9 7900 | $405.99 |
| Motherboard | MSI PRO B650M-A WIFI | $149.99 |
| Memory | TEAMGROUP T-Force Delta RGB 2x16 GB DDR5-6000 CL30 | $99.99 |
| Total | $655.97 |
Or slightly higher default power setting. 14600k has 0.1Ghz more clock speed and 5-10W higher power draw.
So you can just tweak some numbers in BIOS and make a 14600k out of your 13600k.
14th gen is a marketing blunder. From the benchmarks I’ve seen, I don’t see any better binning. Thermals/Watts would reflect this, but they don’t.
If 14600k is cheaper or equal in price…probably doesn’t hurt. But if the 13600k is 10€ cheaper, I’d get the 13600k
It’s something I’ve been looking at since I already now own 64GB DDR5 6000 + a Z790 board so my plan was Intel for some unknown reason aside from it’s something I’ve always used for my gaming machines. And I just want something to keep up with my 3090TI
WTH locally, the i5-14600KF is about 9 USD cheaper than the i5-13600KF i5-13600K
Advice from Li1 Tube Channel, If you’re creating a bunch of content, and subsequently need many more cores, then buy an intel CPU.
If you play games then spend less money on RAM/Mobo, and buy a 7800x3d to get the same performance as a premium RAM/14900k build.
Advice from me,
Intel doesn’t really have more cores. 14900k has 16 E-cores, each half as good as any Ryzen Core. Cores themselves aren’t a useful figure to compare if we live in a world of heterogeneous cores. Both have 32 threads which is the more accurate approach of seeing things right now. Test data backs this up. Intel and AMD is a wash because their products are deliberately placed so there is little difference.
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