Intel BX80684I58400 8th Gen Core i5-8400 Processor and Corsair CW-9060025-WW Hydro Series, H100i v2, 240mm Radiator, Dual 120mm PWM fans

For a long time I had reservations about upgrading from my i5-4690k since most games wouldn't take advantage of the i7-4790k's hyperthreading, and upgrading to 6th or 7th gen i5's would include the cost of a new motherboard and DDR4 ram for barely any performance difference. This was a sentiment of many Haswell-quad core owners. However, things change when it comes to the 8th-gen i5's. These things have 6 threads and 6 cores. So the i5-8600k I purchased is technically more practical than any previous i7 since the hyperthreading doesn't compare to having a real core.Even then my only expectation was that it would prevent any CPU bottleneck for when I upgrade my graphics card beyond the GTX 1070 I owned now. I ran some benchmarks of the Batman Arkham games and the average fps for each at 1440p at max detail ( minus the interactive fog and debris for Arkham Knight) and this CPU raised the minimum framerates across the board. It turned out I was already bottlenecked and the 8600k alleviated it.I should clarify that I was already able to achieve 70+ fps in these games before, but the streaming issues with the UE3 engine would cause many drops below 60 and occasionally in the 40's when gliding in the games at max detail especially Arkham Knight), which was disparaging for a GTX 1070. Even overclocking didn't work, and now I know it was due to the 4690k. Before, Arkham Knight used to dip into 50's and 40's when gliding over certain parts of the city and while driving. I just went over those areas again and those dips are gone ( I guess since the game was mostly optimized for the PS4, it preferred having more cores). I was actually struggling to find ways to lower the FPS outside of enabling more of the gameworks features. Certain stress points in the older games have also had less dips.Lesson learned, even though a lot of sources may say the previous Intel quad-cores may be enough to give you a good amount of frames, the extra cores from the eighth gen can certainly raise the minimums.

I went from a first generation Intel Core i7-920 to this eight generation Intel Core i5-8600 and the difference is like night and day. I use my PC for software development, not gaming, but am very pleased with how fast it runs. I used to have constant slowdowns and pauses, though I'm not sure if that was caused by the HDD or the CPU or a combo of the two, but now that I'm using this new CPU along with a 1TB SSD there is no slowdown anywhere, on any program. I have a three monitor setup without a dedicated video card so I'm sure the CPU is having to handle much of the GPU work, and for software I use various versions Visual Studio along with image editing software (and to a lesser extent video editing software), font editing software, and many other miscellaneous other development tools.At idle the CPU seems to hover around 36-40 degrees Celcius and when working it can get into the high 50s, low 60s. Because I bought the 8600 version and not the 8600K version which is meant for overclocking, mine came with a stock CPU heatsink and fan with pre-applied thermal paste. The heatsink is fairly small and the fan points straight up which blows the air away from the CPU and toward the case's side panel. I used this briefly but quickly got annoyed by the sound of the fan spinning up faster whenever the temperature got into the 40s so I purchased a larger 3rd party heatsink that has heatpipes and a fan that's aimed toward the back of the PC case where the ventilation holes are. I also bought a graphite thermal pad so I wouldn't have to deal with thermal paste. This combo didn't seem to reduce the CPU temperature at all but it did make the fan much quieter, and that was the whole point.Whatever you are using your PC for I don't think you'll be disappointed with the CPU but if the noise of a fan constantly increasing and decreasing speed would bother you then you'll certainly want to purchase a better CPU cooler.If you found my review helpful please let me know by hitting that button below otherwise please leave me a comment letting me know what I can do to improve. Thanks a bunch!

Built new system and cpu was part of the upgrade. Replaced a I7 3770k with this I5 8600k. A couple of generations newer with newer tech. Could have got an I7 for almost a hundred bucks more but decided this time an I5 should be fine for me. Turns out it was. For me and what I do, an I7 is kind of overkill. Nice to have the top dog but not really practical if you actually don't need it, and this dog still hunts plenty good. Paired this with a GTX 1070 my gaming experience puts a smile on my face. I am not overclocking anything as I've not had a need to do so. The performance is so good I doubt if I'm going to be noticing any difference overclocking other than getting higher numbers running benchmarks but that's not my thing. Overclocking is going to get me more heat and more power consumption but probably nothing I can 'feel' so I'm going to leave it as it is unless later I have a need to do so.

This CPU. Is just THE BEST super fast. I can play any game out right now without issue. Runs cool with my Cooler Master hyper 212 evo. about 30c idle. 50c while in the latest games. Couldn't recommend enough.

Sonic fast! Everything came as expected, Keep in mine you need your own cooler though. Just wanna make sure no one forgets that this one doesn't come with a stock fan. I just need a good gpu for frames now!

came in time for the build! awesome Processor can't really go wrong with an i5.... if your looking to render Massive video files or major editing i wouldn't upgrade to a i7