Intel CM8070804497016

The 11400F posts a 2,980 single-thread PassMark score, landing in the 81st percentile and embarrassing plenty of pricier chips. Six cores, twelve threads, and a 65W TDP make it an efficiency champ for budget builds. Just remember: no integrated graphics, so you'll need a dedicated GPU, and the stock cooler runs hot under load.

The 2,980 single-thread PassMark score is the headline here. It's a standout result that puts the 11400F ahead of plenty of pricier chips in tasks that care about raw per-core speed, like gaming and general responsiveness. The multi-thread score of 16,884 is solid, landing in the 73rd percentile. Not going to set any rendering records, but for a 6-core part at this price, it's more than respectable.

Rocket Lake on 14nm means Intel squeezed every last drop out of that node. The 12MB of L3 cache and 3MB of L2 help keep those six cores fed. PCIe 4.0 support is a nice bonus for anyone running a fast NVMe drive or a modern GPU. Memory support tops out at 128GB of DDR4 across two channels, which is plenty for a chip aimed at gamers and budget builders. The 65W TDP keeps power draw modest, and users consistently mention low power consumption as a selling point.

Against the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, the 11400F gets absolutely demolished in raw performance, but that chip costs several times more and targets a completely different buyer. The more honest comparison is against older Intel parts like the Core i5-4590S, which the 11400F crushes in both single and multi-thread scores while drawing similar power. The Dell Xeon E5-2637 V2 is a server chip with a different purpose entirely, and the 11400F's weak 59.5/100 server score shows it's not trying to compete there. The be quiet! Ryzen 3 Dark Rock Pro 5 is a cooler, not a CPU, so that's a weird one to see in the competitor list. The real story is that the 11400F sits in a sweet spot: fast enough for modern gaming, cheap enough to build around, and efficient enough to not need exotic cooling, assuming you ditch the stock cooler.

This is where the 11400F earns its reputation. The budget score of 79.2/100 and efficiency score of 79.6/100 are both strong, and the sentiment data backs it up with value_for_money showing up as the top recurring theme across roughly 12 mentions. USD pricing runs from USD 120 to USD 230 across five listings, which is a spread of USD 110. That's a huge gap for the same silicon. If you're shopping in the US, hunt for the lower end of that range. The EUR market is tighter, running EUR 319 to EUR 353 across six listings, a EUR 34 spread. The CAD range of CAD 150 to CAD 324 is wild, so Canadian buyers should shop carefully. The chip itself is a bargain. Some of the listings are not.

The Core i5-11400F posts a PassMark multi-thread score of 16,884 and a single-thread score of 2,980. That single-thread number lands in the 81st percentile of our database, which means this chip punches well above its budget-class weight in games and everyday tasks. Six cores, twelve threads, and a 4.4GHz boost clock on a 65W TDP. It's the kind of spec sheet that makes you wonder why anyone spends twice as much for marginal gains.

But there's a catch, and it's right there in the F suffix. No integrated graphics. You need a dedicated GPU, period. For most people building a gaming rig, that's fine. For anyone hoping to run a headless server or a basic office PC without a graphics card, this chip is a non-starter. The efficiency score of 79.6/100 and budget score of 79.2/100 tell the real story: this is a value play, not a Swiss Army knife.

Skip this chip if you don't already own a dedicated graphics card or have no plans to buy one. The F suffix means no integrated graphics, so you literally cannot get a display output without a discrete GPU. Also skip it if you're building a server or workstation for heavy multi-threaded workloads. The server score of 59.5/100 is the weakest area by far, and the multi-thread PassMark of 16,884, while solid, won't impress anyone doing serious rendering or virtualization. And if you're the type who never upgrades the stock cooler, be warned: multiple owners report 100°C under load, which is not a temperature you want to see on a regular basis. Budget an extra USD 30 for a decent air cooler or look at a chip with a better included cooler.

The Core i5-11400F is one of the best budget gaming CPUs you can buy right now, assuming you already have or plan to buy a dedicated graphics card. The single-thread performance is genuinely impressive for the price, and the 82/100 sentiment score with a 4.7-star average across 1,534 reviews tells you owners are happy. The stock cooler is the one real weak point, with multiple users reporting 100°C under load. Spend USD 30 on a cheap aftermarket cooler and you've got a chip that handles 1080p gaming and everyday multitasking without breaking a sweat. If you need integrated graphics or server-grade reliability, look elsewhere. For everyone else, this is the budget king.