Intel
Intel Core i5-10400
Six-core, twelve-thread Comet Lake i5 that brought hyperthreading back to Intel's mainstream tier at a 65 W power limit, with a stock cooler in the box. In 2026 it is a used-market part that only makes sense as a cheap drop-in for an LGA1200 board you already own.
Pros
- 6 cores / 12 threads and 12 MB L3 at a 65 W base power, so a budget air cooler is enough
- Retail box includes an Intel stock cooler — no extra spend
- Works on cheap H410/B460 boards as well as Z490 and 500-series
- UHD Graphics 630 means the system boots and displays without a discrete GPU
- Still holds 60 fps in most GPU-bound games when paired with a modern card
Cons
- Locked multiplier — no overclocking headroom at all
- On H410/B460 boards memory is capped at the official DDR4-2666; only Z490 unlocks faster RAM
- PCIe 3.0 only, so no Gen4 SSD or GPU bandwidth
- 2.9 GHz base and a 134 W PL2 mean sustained multi-thread clocks depend on the board's power limits
Below average
Computed from specs & benchmarks via our public methodology.
Full specifications
Everything we track for the Intel Core i5-10400
General
- Announced
- 2020
- Socket
- LGA1200
- Process
- 14 nm
- Base TDP
- 65 W
- Max turbo power
- 134 W
- Unlocked multiplier
- No
- Cooler included
- Yes
Cores & Clocks
- Cores
- 6
- Performance cores
- 6
- Efficiency cores
- 0
- Threads
- 12
- Base clock
- 2.9 GHz
- Boost clock
- 4.3 GHz
- L2 cache
- 2 MB
- L3 cache
- 12 MB
Integrated GPU
- iGPU
- Intel UHD Graphics 630
- iGPU clock
- 1,100 MHz
Memory
- Memory support
- DDR4-2666
- Max memory
- 128 GB
- Memory channels
- 2
Platform
- PCIe version
- 3
- CPU PCIe lanes
- 16
Benchmarks
- Geekbench 6 (single)
- 1,390
- Geekbench 6 (multi)
- 5,800
- Cinebench R23 (single)
- 1,100
- Cinebench R23 (multi)
- 8,000
- PassMark
- 12,600
Quick answers
Is the Intel Core i5-10400 good in 2026?
The Intel Core i5-10400 earns an Inno Score of 32.6/100 (“Below average”) based on its specs and benchmark results. Six-core, twelve-thread Comet Lake i5 that brought hyperthreading back to Intel's mainstream tier at a 65 W power limit, with a stock cooler in the box. In 2026 it is a used-market part that only makes sense as a cheap drop-in for an LGA1200 board you already own.
What are the key specs of the Intel Core i5-10400?
Cores: 6 · Threads: 12 · Boost clock: 4.3 GHz · Socket: LGA1200
What are the closest alternatives to the Intel Core i5-10400?
Its closest rivals on InnoReviews are Intel Core i7-5960X, Intel Core i5-9600K, AMD Ryzen 3 3100 — open the comparison pages for a spec-by-spec breakdown.