The 10-core i9-10900K running at 5.3GHz may be the main attraction of Intel’s 10th Gen Comet Lake-S lineup, but it looks like a different part may steal the spotlight: The Core i5-10600K. According to benchmarks, the 10th Gen i5 processor is nearly as fast as the Core i9 in gaming despite costing half as much ($250 vs $500). Let’s have a look:







As you can see, the Core i5-10600K not only manages to make the Core i7-9700K obsolete, it also comes within a hair’s distance of the Core i9-9900K as well as the 10th Gen flagship, the Core i9-10900K. All this while costing markedly less than all these chips. It’s worth noting that the Core i5-10600K is the only Comet Lake-S part that offers notably better gaming performance than AMD’s high-end Ryzen 3000 chips despite costing less. Rendering is another matter altogether, with the 10600K sitting between the Ryzen 5 3600X and the 3700X both in terms of price while offering marginally better performance than the former.