Intel Core i5-9600K 6 Core/6 Thread CPU Overclocking Performance Benchmarks Leak Out – Achieves 5.2 GHz on High-End Air Cooler

The latest performance benchmarks of Intel's Core i5-9600K mainstream unlocked processor have leaked out. The benchmarks were posted over at a Chinese video streaming portal and show both, the stock and overclocked performance of the soon to be released chip in various CPU intensive workloads.

Intel Core i5-9600K 6 Core CPU Tested At Both Stock and Overclocked Configurations - Achieves 5.2 GHz on Air Cooling

The performance benchmarks posted are from CPU-specific workloads and not game benchmarks which most people are looking forward to seeing. Still, the results give us a good idea of what is to be expected from the new 9th Gen Core i5 processors. We know that Intel has already announced their 9th Generation Core lineup which would be available on 19th October.

The Intel Core i5-9600K is a 6 core and 6 thread part with 9 MB of L3 cache. This makes it very similar to the Core i5-8600K. The difference is that it features higher clock speeds of 3.7 GHz base, 4.6 GHz boost (1 core), 4.5 GHz (2 core), 4.4 GHz (4 core) and 4.3 GHz (6 core). All of this is done at the same TDP of 95W. The processor will retail at a price of $262 US when it's available next week.

As for the performance testing, the chip was tested on the MSI Z390 MEG Godlike motherboard with 16 GB of DDR4 memory and a high-end Thermalright Silver Arrow Extreme air cooler. The processor was first tested at stock clocks and showed that it was able to maintain a frequency of 4.60 GHz in single and around 4.3 GHz across all cores when running multi-thread intensive workloads. It should be noted that the chip has 6 lower threads compared to the Core i7-8700K and a 100 MHz lower boost clock. It still managed to deliver some really good numbers.

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Coming to the overclocked performance benchmarks, we see that the chip was overclocked to 5.2 GHz on air cooling with a voltage of 1.507V which is quite high. It's not known whether this was a manual overclock or an auto overclock using the built-in BIOS tuner. The Core i5-9600K uses the new STIM (Soldered Thermal Interface Material) and even still, the temperatures were going past 90C (Degrees) at full load across all cores. The culprit probably being the high voltage. The entire system power consumption was 240W in the CPU only workloads which are standard for all CPUs in the mainstream department.

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Following are a few performance differences at stock and overclocked configurations:

Cinebench R15

• Core i5-9600K @ Stock: 1034 CB
• Core i5-9600K @ 5.2G: 1207 CB

CPU-Z

• Core i5-9600K @ Stock: 528.8 Single Thread / 2919.1 Multi-Thread
• Core i5-9600K @ 5.2G: 619 Single Thread / 3579.7 Multi-Thread

X264 HD Benchmark

• Core i5-9600K @ Stock: 37.55 fps
• Core i5-9600K @ 5.2G: 43.76 fps

Intel 9th Generation Core Family CPU Official Specifications:

Processor Name	Process	Cores / Threads	Base Clock	Boost Clock	Cache	TDP	Price
Core i9-9900KS	14nm++	8 / 16	3.6 GHz	5.0 GHz (8 Cores)	16 MB	127W	$513 US
Core i9-9900K	14nm++	8 / 16	3.6 GHz	5.0 GHz	16 MB	95W	$488 US
Core i9-9900KF	14nm++	8 / 16	3.6 GHz	5.0 GHz	16 MB	95W	$488 US
Core i7-9700K	14nm++	8 / 8	3.6 GHz	4.9 GHz	12 MB	95W	$374 US
Core i7-9700KF	14nm++	8 / 8	3.6 GHz	4.9 GHz	12 MB	95W	$374 US
Core i5-9600K	14nm++	6 / 6	3.7 GHz	4.6 GHz	9 MB	95W	$262 US
Core i5-9600KF	14nm++	6 / 6	3.7 GHz	4.6 GHz	9 MB	95W	$262 US
Core i5-9600	14nm++	6 / 6	3.1 GHz	4.5 GHz	9 MB	65W	TBD
Core i5-9500	14nm++	6 / 6	3.0 GHz	4.3 GHz	9 MB	65W	TBD
Core i5-9400	14nm++	6 / 6	2.9 GHz	4.1 GHz	9 MB	65W	$182
Core i5-9400T	14nm++	6 / 6	1.8 GHz	3.4 GHz	9 MB	35W	TBD
Core i3-9350KF	14nm++	4/4	4.0 GHz	4.6 GHz	8 MB	91W	TBD
Core i3-9100	14nm++	4 / 4	TBD	4.2 GHz	6 MB	65W	TBD
Core i3-9000	14nm++	4 / 4	3.7 GHz	N/A	6 MB	65W	TBD
Core i3-9000T	14nm++	4 / 4	3.2 GHz	N/A	6 MB	35W	TBD

You can check out our full Z390 motherboard roundup, including ASRock MSI, ASUS, AORUS, EVGA products here. As for the launch details, you can read more on that here.