Introducing the Intel® Core™ i5-13400F Processor, a powerhouse of performance and efficiency designed to elevate your computing experience. With its impressive 20M Cache and maximum clock speed of up to 4.60 GHz, this processor delivers lightning-fast responsiveness and exceptional multitasking capabilities.

Built on the cutting-edge 12th generation architecture, the Intel® Core™ i5- offers unmatched performance for a variety of tasks. Whether you’re gaming, content creation, or running resource-intensive applications, this processor delivers outstanding power and efficiency.

Equipped with 6 cores and 12 threads, the Intel® Core™ i5-13400F excels in both single-threaded and multi-threaded workloads, ensuring optimal performance across a wide range of applications. From intense gaming sessions to content creation tasks, this processor provides the speed and efficiency you need.

With its generous 20M Cache, this processor optimizes data access and retrieval speeds, resulting in faster application loading times and seamless multitasking.

The Intel® Core™ i5 supports DDR4 memory, high-speed RAM modules for efficient data handling. or running demanding software, this processor delivers the power and speed required for smooth performance.

While the Intel® Core™ i5-13400F does not come with graphics, it is an excellent choice for gamers and enthusiasts who prefer a dedicated graphics card. Paired with a high-performance GPU, this processor unlocks its full potential,

Designed with energy efficiency in mind, the Intel® Core™ i5-13400F at low power  on performance.

Upgrade your system with the Intel® Core™  Processor

For a gaming PC, there’s no better value CPU than a Core i5. For most of 2022, we recommended the Core i5 12600K for the best gaming CPU and the Core i5 12400 as the best gaming CPU on a budget. Last year, the Core i5 13600K took over the top spot. And today, the Core i5 13400F pushes Alder Lake out of the runnings with an even more impressive specification for the money.

The Intel Core i5 13400F is a processor I’ve been waiting patiently to test since I first heard wind of it last year. You’ll understand why once you read these specs: A 10-core processor made up of six Performance-cores (P-cores) and four Efficient-cores (E-cores), the Core i5 13400F has a total of 16 threads. Its fastest cores will run up to 4.6GHz out of the box, a clock speed that wouldn’t have seemed out of place on the box of a Core i7 only a few years back.

For that impressive spec, the Core i5 has been given an Intel-recommended price tag of $196. Consider the other options: that’s a handful of dollars more than the Core i5 12400 from last year, or $33 cheaper than AMD’s Ryzen 5 7600.

It really is seriously impressive on paper. And in the test bench it continues to impress.

The Core i5 13400F is only a handful of frames shy of the Core i9 13900K in Total War: Three Kingdoms, Metro Exodus, and F1 2021. In Far Cry 6, this chip is significantly slower than Intel’s high-end processors, however, showing Far Cry 6 to be a more CPU-limited game than the others. To a lesser extent, the same is true for Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

Yet even in these two games where the Core i5 13400F falls off the pace of the faster 13th Gen processors, it remains quicker than last year’s best gaming CPU, the Core i5 12600K. It’s also significantly faster than the Core i5 12400, though is more power-hungry for it.

The Core i5 13400F doesn’t support BCLK overclocking, however, and that was something we absolutely adored about the Core i5 12400. Intel blocks multiplier overclocks with all but its K-series chips, meaning neither the Core i5 13400F or Core i5 12400 should have been able to do it, but a few motherboard manufacturers made BCLK overclocking available to non-K 12th Gen processors. With one such overclock in place, at 4.8GHz, the Core i5 12400 actually manages to top the Core i5 13400F in some games.

That said, I’d still take the Core i5 13400F for the extra cores any day, even if it meant giving up the illicit overclocking capabilities of its predecessor.

AMD has a competitive stack of Zen 4 chips to compete with Raptor Lake today. While its 3D V-Cache chips look set to be the most competitive versus Intel, they’re far too pricey for comparison with this Core i5. Instead, the i5 13400F is going head-to-head with the Ryzen 5 7600X, chip that’s more like $250 in today’s market,  Ryzen 5 7600.