Intel already sent a venerable successor of the Alder Lake generation into the race with Raptor Lake. The mid-range and entry-level models on the same basis are now gradually arriving. Nevertheless, you have to take a closer look and pay attention to the CPU stepping because it is not always a Raptor Lake CPU. In our case, we have the Intel Core i5-13400F in C0-stepping, which indicates that it is an Alder Lake CPU at the core. Only the B0-stepping indicates a native Raptor-Lake CPU. Both versions are supposed to be available, and we assume that they perform equally well.
Meanwhile, Intel offers a frugal 10-core with the Intel Core i5-13400F, which also has 4 E-cores besides the P-cores. With up to 148 watts, the model is relatively frugal under full load. Furthermore, the temperatures are easy to handle and do not require complex and expensive cooling. In the test, the Intel Core i5-13400F can keep up very well with an Intel Core i5-12600K, the match in terms of energy efficiency is clearly in favor of the more frugal model. AMD’s Zen 4 processors cannot be kept up with. Here, the native 10-core of our test rather ranks with an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X, which also has a total of 16 threads.
The Intel Core i5-13400F offers solid performance for everyday use and also masters the latest games. Due to the low TDP, the frugal processor can also be cooled in small cases without any problems.
A motherboard with a 600-series chipset can still be used for the base unit. This does not put too much strain on the wallet when upgrading. Nevertheless, it has to be considered that there won’t be a new Intel generation for the socket 1700 anymore. The current rumor mill says that socket 1851 will be introduced with Meteor Lake. This means that a new motherboard will be mandatory again.
.