{"id":246506,"date":"2026-05-22T05:46:41","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T05:46:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/article.php?article_id=2150596"},"modified":"2026-05-22T05:46:41","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T05:46:41","slug":"intel-core-i5-11400f-review-the-best-mainstream-gaming-cpu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/intel-core-i5-11400f-review-the-best-mainstream-gaming-cpu\/","title":{"rendered":"Intel Core i5 11400F review: the best mainstream gaming CPU"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/intel-core-i5-11400f-review-the-best-mainstream-gaming-cpu.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The Core i5 11400F has emerged as something of an unlikely champion in the wake of Intel&#8217;s Rocket Lake S launch. The upper end of Intel&#8217;s new lineup is certainly performant, but for many buyers the value simply isn&#8217;t there while discounted 10th-gen equivalents are still available (especially when the 10900K&#8217;s extra cores give it an outright lead over its successor for content creation workloads). So it&#8217;s been the low and mid-range part of the stack that has garnered the most positive press, where Intel&#8217;s roughly 20 percent gen-on-gen performance gains and more feature-rich B560 motherboards have created some pretty unreal value.<\/p>\n<p>The pitch here is pretty simple: the Core i5 11400F costs around <a href=\"https:\/\/www.awin1.com\/cread.php?awinmid=15473&amp;awinaffid=256133&amp;clickref=dfart&amp;ued=https:\/\/www.scan.co.uk\/products\/intel-core-i5-11400f-s-1200-rocket-lake-6-cores-12-threads-26ghz-44ghz-turbo-12mb-cache-65w-retail\" rel=\"sponsored noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u00a3150<\/a>\/<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/B08X6SZ184?tag=eurgam-df-us-20\" rel=\"sponsored noopener\" target=\"_blank\">$175<\/a>, yet its six core and twelve thread design still hits the current sweet spot for gaming and occasional content creation. It&#8217;s clocked just 400MHz slower than the Core i5 11600K (4.2GHz vs 4.6GHz for max all-core turbo), and each of its cores ought to be quite powerful, given its modern Cypress Cove design. In the best case scenario, it wouldn&#8217;t be outrageous to hope for performance in line with the Ryzen 5000 series &#8211; but at a considerably lower asking price than AMD&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.overclockers.co.uk\/amd-ryzen-5-5600x-six-core-4.6ghz-socket-am4-processor-retail-cp-3cc-am.html\" rel=\"sponsored noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u00a3260<\/a>\/<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/B08166SLDF?tag=eurgam-df-us-20\" rel=\"sponsored noopener\" target=\"_blank\">$300<\/a> entry-level Ryzen 5 5600X. That sounds like the recipe for a value champion, so we were keen to get testing.<\/p>\n<p>As we&#8217;re only adding one CPU to our charts, we&#8217;ll keep this introductory page brief &#8211; after all, you can read our <a href=\"\/articles\/digitalfoundry-2021-intel-core-i9-11900k-i5-11600k-review\">full 11900K and 11600K review<\/a> for a more detailed write-up of the new features arriving with Intel&#8217;s 11th-gen desktop chips and 500-series motherboards. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/articles\/digitalfoundry-2021-intel-core-i5-11400f-review\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/articles\/digitalfoundry-2021-intel-core-i5-11400f-review\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Core i5 11400F has emerged as something of an unlikely champion in the wake of Intel&#8217;s Rocket Lake S launch. The upper end of Intel&#8217;s new lineup is certainly performant, but for many buyers the value simply isn&#8217;t there while discounted 10th-gen equivalents are still available (especially when the 10900K&#8217;s extra cores give it an outright lead over its successor for content creation workloads). So it&#8217;s been the low and mid-range part of the stack that has garnered the most positive press, where Intel&#8217;s roughly 20 percent gen-on-gen performance gains and more feature-rich B560 motherboards have created some pretty unreal value. The pitch here is pretty simple: the Core i5 11400F costs around \u00a3150\/$175, yet its six core and twelve thread design still hits&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"excerpt-more\"><a class=\"blog-excerpt button\" href=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/intel-core-i5-11400f-review-the-best-mainstream-gaming-cpu\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":246507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[230],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eurogamer"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Intel Core i5 11400F review: the best mainstream gaming CPU | Arcader News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Core i5 11400F has emerged as something of an unlikely champion in the wake of Intel&#039;s Rocket Lake S launch. 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