Final Verdict
We have 2 highly contrasting tales to tell in this review. On one side with Core i5-10400 it seems that Intel has finally started to take Ryzen seriously, as it is competing with it on even ground if we take cores and threads into account. Which makes for a lot fiercer competition in the middle of the stack. Yes it is true that in applications Ryzen 5 3600 is still faster than Core i5-10400, but the difference on average is less than 10%. On other hand the new Intel model is still a bit faster in gaming even with the slower DDR4-2667 memory, unless of course the Ryzen 3600 is overclocked. So roughly on average both cpus are the same in performance, right? They are also about the same in power consumption too, though AMD model tends to get a bit more hot, due to it’s off-center core placement and higher computation density, but again, that is not something too extreme. Currently the Core i5-10400 is more expensive, but you get an integrated GPU for that difference, which is at least something.
On other hand we have Core i3-10100, which managed to fall quite a bit behind the Ryzen 3 3300X in application performance, and we are not talking some ignorable differences. We have on average almost 20% more performance from the AMD model, and especially in multithreaded performance the gap is massive. The new Core i3 even managed to loose against the notably cheaper Ryzen 3 3100. Even in the gaming performance, typically a strong suit for Intel processors, the 10100 is slower than Ryzen 3 3300X and not much faster than Ryzen 3 3100. And even against its older sibling the Core i5-10400 there is quite a notable difference both in gaming as well as in application performance, so it should be enough of an incentive to overpay for the higher tier if you have the budget.
And finally there is the overclocked Ryzen 5 3600. Should you even bother overclocking? No. Just take the difference for a larger cooler and buy yourself a Ryzen 5 3600X + slightly better than default cooler, and then just run PBO. You’ll get probably the same performance.
So should you buy any of the new intel processors? Personally I think that Core i5-10400 is worth the consideration at least, though it has a strong competitors in Ryzen 5 3600 and 3600X. As for Core i3-10100 – no. It’s just not worth it against Ryzen 3 3100 and 3300X.
