Intel Core i5-9600K Coffee Lake CPU Review

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

The Intel Core i5-9600K is clearly aimed at mainstream users that are looking for a solid performing processor with overclocking capabilities at a good price. The Intel Core i5-9600K includes the same number of cores as its predecessor, but they come at higher clock frequencies and with the latest architecture tweaks. That makes the Core i5-9600K ($247.00) a decent performing chip for those that don’t need a ton of threads for multi-threaded applications.

The 9600K ‘Coffee Lake’ processor also showed that it is still a good choice for gamers. It bested the much more expensive AMD Ryzen 7 3700X ($329.00) and Ryzen 7 2700X ($251.89) processors as shown in our 1080P gaming benchmarks. The 9600K also managed to hold its gaming lead when we streamed to Twitch while gaming, so it just shows that you can most certainly get away with a 6-core processor for gaming.

When we overclocked the Intel Core i7-9600K this processor was flat out impressive. It managed to reach 5.1 GHz with full stability on all cores. This is a solid 500 MHz overclock over its default boost clocks and resulted in significant performance increases! Our chip was able to run at 5.2 GHz, but it wasn’t 100% stable at these settings. You could get in a run of Cinebench or wPrime, but it wasn’t stable enough to run benchmarks or a stress test on it overnight. Hitting 5.1 GHz on this 6-core chip was super simple and it is always fun to have that much overclocking headroom! Just remember that you’ll need to be running an Intel Z-series motherboard to overclock this processor.

Pricing on the Intel Core i5-9600K is currently $247.00 shipped on Amazon. It was down to $219 just a few weeks back, so you might be able to snag it for around that price if you are lucky. The 9600K has come down in price from $265 where it was selling at just a few months ago and we expect it to decrease a bit in the months ahead.

At the end of the day the Intel Core i5-9600K is a good choice for gamers on a budget. It’s performance is solid across the board and it overclocks like a champ. The only downside of this processor is that is doesn’t come bundled with a CPU cooler. So, you will factor in the price of HSF or AIO liquid cooler when you go to pick one of these processors up for a new system build.