Intel Core i5-8400

After months of endless AMD praise, Jarred Walton finally has some good news for Intel and the Blue processor team.

- Jarred Walton

Coffee Lake is the biggest generational improvement in Intel’s mainstream CPU line since the mainstream/enthusiast split, which occurred with the first generation Core i7 in 2010. Core i7 and Core i5 both get 50 per cent more cores/threads, without a drop in clock speeds, and Core i3 basically takes the previous generation Core i5’s place as a 4C4T part.

Before rushing out and buying a Core i5-8400 be aware that Coffee Lake processors require a new motherboard and a 300-series chipset. Right now, that means the high-end Z370. This is because of modified power requirements on Coffee Lake. As for the Z370 chipset, in terms of features and functionality it appears to be identical to Z270 – just with some updated microcode that only recognises Coffee Lake processors.

Take your existing Core i5 processors and add 50 per cent more cores, and what does that give you? For games that already hit maximum performance on an i5-7600K, it won’t do much, but there are an increasing number of games that will show small to moderate gains with more cores and/or threads.