Today nosotros're checking out the most affordable six-core processor e'er released, and this time it'south not from AMD. With an MSRP of $182, the Cadre i5-8400 is even more affordable than the $215 Ryzen 5 1600, though it tin't be overclocked and lacks HyperThreading, so in that location aren't 12 threads on tap as with the Ryzen flake.

Intel'south vi-core solution should nonetheless be ample for gamers and may even be the new get-to solution for budget builders. Those folks would do best to avoid the Z370 chipset considering it's typically more expensive and only enables overclocking for unlocked parts, though in that location is not much choice every bit the moment.

As you may realize, AMD was a flake cheeky and somewhat abrasive by using B350 and X399 for its Ryzen chipset names. Intel has B250 motherboards as well as those with an X299 chipset, then the motion was bound to cause confusion among shoppers.

Intel has decided to i upwards the buggers this time around with 'B360' boards. Bigger is always improve and consumers know this, and then that'due south a win for Intel.

The one consequence for those later on an Intel B360 board is the fact that they won't exist available until next year -- only the Z370 chipset will be released in 2022. Also call up that Intel's Coffee Lake CPUs aren't a drib-in upgrade for Z170 and Z270 platforms, since Intel "inverse the alignment of the design."

For at present, Core i5-8400 shoppers will have to go with the cheapest Z370 board they can dig up, which means spending near $120 currently. Bold you can pair the 8400 with a relatively inexpensive motherboard, it seems to have exposed a hole in the Ryzen lineup.

Intel has priced the i5-8400 alongside AMD'due south $190 Ryzen 5 1500X, which only features iv cores, though it does have eight threads and that might identify them on par in terms of resources.

This should be an interesting battle and given the price and spec differences between the two parts, we're curious to see where they stand in terms of value at the stop.

Benchmark Time

Memory and Application Performance

Total disclaimer: we have tested the Cadre i5-8400 on a Z370 motherboard using DDR4-3200 memory but it'southward very likely that when paired with a B360 lath adjacent yr yous will exist limited to DDR4-2666 or 2400 retentiveness speeds, and then keep that in heed.

For those using a Z370 board it's possible to install DDR4-3200 memory and doing so enables a bandwidth of 36GB/due south, placing the Cadre i5-8400 on par with the Core i7-8700K.

Moving on nosotros have some Cinebench R15 results and here the i5-8400 was good for a multi-threaded score of 869pts, 9% faster than the Ryzen v 1500X and just 13% slower than the previous Intel flagship office, the Core i7-7700K. It was also 23% slower than the Ryzen 5 1600, though the single thread score was near 20% higher, then information technology will exist interesting to run into how the Core i5-8400 and Ryzen CPUs compare in existent-world applications.

Before we get to that though here is a quick wait at the PCMark 10 results. This test actually likes clock speed, certainly more so than cores. As a result the new Core i7-8700K does very well, as does the Core i5-8400 which proved to be 12% faster than the Ryzen 5 1600.

The Excel Monte Carlo simulation makes good apply of many cores and threads. Every bit a result the Cadre i5-8400 was 22% slower than the Ryzen 5 1600 and 5% slower than the 1500X. That said, it was a decent step up from the previous generation's Core i5-7600K, completing the workload 12% faster.

The Cadre i5-8400 also comes in well behind the Ryzen competition in the VeraCrypt criterion. Here information technology was almost 40% slower than the Ryzen 5 1600 and 12% slower than the 1500X. That said, it was once again much faster than the 7600K, offering around 36% greater throughput.

Moving to 7-Zip the Cadre i5-8400 is able to only edge out the Ryzen v 1500X in the decompression test, while crushing it for the compression work. However, information technology was slower than the Ryzen 5 1600 for both pinch and decompression work.