Intel Core i7-8700K and Core i5-8400 Processor Review – Coffee Lake
Final Thoughts and Conclusions
The Intel Core i7-8700K was an exciting processor to benchmark and overclock as Coffee Lake drastically improves performance at a minimal price increase. For $20 more than a 4-core, 8-thread Core i7-7700K Kaby Lake processor you can now get a 6-core, 12-thread processor that overclocks just as good. We we blown away by the fact that we could get 5.1GHz stable on all six cores as that is what we could get on the 7700K quad-core processor! If you are an enthusiast wanting the best processor for the new Z370 motherboards the Intel Core i7-8700K is the clear choice!
If you are still holding onto an older Intel Sandy Bridge platform the new Coffee Lake platform is going to bring you massive performance increases. In some benchmarks we were seeing close to double the performance over stock 2700K Sandy Bridge processor with the new 8700K Cofeee Lake processor. Motherboards in general have come a long way since the old Z77 days, so moving to a Z370 board will bring you all sorts of refinements that you will most certainly enjoy.
The Intel Core i5-8400 6-core processor at $180 is a very interesting part as it has six physical cores at an impressive price point. Our chip or test platform was giving us some issues with getting over 2800 MHz and beyond memory up and running on it, but we think that will be sorted out with a UEFI update shortly. Once that gets figured out we’ll certainly be taking a closer look at this processor as it might be the one to have for a budget gaming box build for the forseeable future. Popular game titles like PUBG can benefit from six cores, so we think many gamers will be eyeing this CPU.
When it comes to pricing the new 8th Gen Intel Core processors cost only slightly more than the older 7th Gen Intel Core processors and compete well against AMD’s Ryzen 3/5/7 processors.
Intel Core i7-8700K 6-core = $359
Intel Core i7-8700 6-core = $303
Intel Core i5-8600K 6-core = $257
Intel Core i5-8400 6-core = $182
Intel Core i3-8350 4-core = $168
Intel Core i3-8100 4-core = $117
Intel has some really good processors in their 8th Generation Core processor series and should certainly have some of you wanting to upgrade!
Legit Bottom Line: The Intel Core i7-8700K Coffee Lake processor brings impressive performance gains to the table thanks to having two additional physical cores!