Introduction

Intel last week debuted the 11th Gen Core “Rocket Lake” desktop processor family, and we had launch-day reviews of the Core i9-11900K flagship and the mid-range Core i5-11600K. Today we bring you the Core i5-11400F—probably the most interesting model in the whole stack. The often-ignored SKU among Intel desktop processors among the past many generations, the Core i5-xx400, is also its most popular among gamers. Popular chips of this kind included the i5-8400, the i5-9400F, and the i5-10400F.

These chips feature the entire Core i5 feature-set at prices below $200, albeit lower clock speeds and locked overclocking. Even within these, Intel introduced a sub-segment of chips that lack integrated graphics, denoted by “F” in the model number; which shave a further $15-20 off the price. The Core i5-11400F starts at just $160, which is an impressive value proposition for gamers who use graphics cards and don’t need the iGPU anyway.

The new “Rocket Lake” microarchitecture brings four key changes that make it the company’s first major innovation for client desktop in several years. First, Intel is introducing the new “Cypress Cove” CPU core that promises an IPC gain of up to 19% over the previous-generation. Next up, is the new UHD 750 integrated graphics powered by the Intel Xe LP graphics architecture, promising up to 50% performance uplift over the UHD 650 Gen9.5 iGPU of the previous generation. Thirdly, a much needed update to the processor’s I/O, including PCI-Express 4.0 for graphics and a CPU-attached NVMe slot; and lastly, an updated memory controller that allows much higher memory overclocking potential, thanks to the introduction of a Gear 2 mode.

The Core i5-11400F comes with a permanently disabled iGPU and a locked multiplier. Intel has still enabled support for memory frequencies of up to DDR4-3200, which is now possible on even the mid-tier H570 and B560 motherboard chipsets. The i5-11400F is a 6-core/12-thread processor clocked at 2.60 GHz, with up to 4.40 GHz Turbo Boost frequency. Each of the processor’s six “Cypress Cove” CPU cores include 512 KB dedicated L2 cache, and the cores share 12 MB of L3 cache. Intel is rating the processor’s TDP at 65 W, just like the other non-K SKUs, although it is possible to tweak these power limits—adjusting PL1 and PL2 is not considered “overclocking” by Intel, so it is not locked.

At $170, the Core i5-11400F has no real competitor from AMD. The Ryzen 5 3600 starts around $200, and the company didn’t bother (yet?) with cheaper Ryzen 5 SKUs based on “Zen 3”. In this review, we take the i5-11400F for a spin to show you if this is really all you need for a mid-priced contemporary gaming rig.

We present several data sets in our Core i5-11400F review: “Gear 1” and “Gear 2” show performance results for the processor operating at stock, with the default power limit setting active, respecting a 65 W TDP. Next up we have two runs with the power limit setting raised to maximum: “Max Power Limit / Gear 1” and “Max Power Limit / Gear 2”. Last but not least, signifying the maximum performance you can possible achieve on this CPU, we have a run “Max Power + Max BCLK”, which operates at 102.9 MHz BCLK—the maximum allowed by the processor, at Gear 1 DDR4-3733, the memory controller won’t run higher.