Intel
Intel Core i5-11600K
The unlocked Rocket Lake i5: six Cypress Cove cores at 4.9 GHz with the full UHD 750 iGPU and PCIe 4.0. It buys clock speed and tuning freedom over the i5-11400 rather than more cores, which is a narrow gap for the price difference.
Pros
- Unlocked multiplier plus fully unlocked memory and power limits on Z590
- 4.9 GHz boost with Cypress Cove IPC — competitive single-thread against a Ryzen 5 5600X
- PCIe 4.0 with 20 CPU lanes for a Gen4 GPU and Gen4 NVMe
- Official DDR4-3200 and good headroom beyond it with Gear 1
- UHD Graphics 750 (32 EU) — the better Rocket Lake iGPU
Cons
- 251 W PL2 and high heat output for a six-core; a strong cooler is required
- No boxed cooler included
- Only ~5–10% faster than a power-unlocked i5-11400 that costs far less
- AVX-512 workloads spike temperature and clock down hard
Below average
Computed from specs & benchmarks via our public methodology.
Full specifications
Everything we track for the Intel Core i5-11600K
General
- Announced
- 2021
- Socket
- LGA1200
- Process
- 14 nm
- Base TDP
- 125 W
- Max turbo power
- 251 W
- Unlocked multiplier
- Yes
- Cooler included
- No
Cores & Clocks
- Cores
- 6
- Performance cores
- 6
- Efficiency cores
- 0
- Threads
- 12
- Base clock
- 3.9 GHz
- Boost clock
- 4.9 GHz
- L2 cache
- 3 MB
- L3 cache
- 12 MB
Integrated GPU
- iGPU
- Intel UHD Graphics 750
- iGPU clock
- 1,300 MHz
Memory
- Memory support
- DDR4-3200
- Max memory
- 128 GB
- Memory channels
- 2
Platform
- PCIe version
- 4
- CPU PCIe lanes
- 20
Benchmarks
- Geekbench 6 (single)
- 1,870
- Geekbench 6 (multi)
- 7,100
- Cinebench R23 (single)
- 1,500
- Cinebench R23 (multi)
- 11,100
- PassMark
- 19,800
Quick answers
Is the Intel Core i5-11600K good in 2026?
The Intel Core i5-11600K earns an Inno Score of 42/100 (“Below average”) based on its specs and benchmark results. The unlocked Rocket Lake i5: six Cypress Cove cores at 4.9 GHz with the full UHD 750 iGPU and PCIe 4.0. It buys clock speed and tuning freedom over the i5-11400 rather than more cores, which is a narrow gap for the price difference.
What are the key specs of the Intel Core i5-11600K?
Cores: 6 · Threads: 12 · Boost clock: 4.9 GHz · Socket: LGA1200
What are the closest alternatives to the Intel Core i5-11600K?
Its closest rivals on InnoReviews are AMD Ryzen 5 3600, Intel Core i9-9900K, AMD Ryzen 5 3600X — open the comparison pages for a spec-by-spec breakdown.