Introduction

Today's Comet Lake review is about the Intel Core i5-10500 six-core processor. This is one of the product stack filler SKUs Intel has between its popular products, such as the Core i5-10400/F and Core i5-10600K. Intel likes to bolster its Core i5 product lineup with several models in the middle, spaced apart by $20–$30 in pricing. The Core i5-10500 in this review is priced at $200, or $20 more than the Core i5-10400, and $40 more than the Core i5-10400F. It's $20 away from the Core i5-10600, and a further $40 should get you a Core i5-10600K. The Core i5-10500 reviewed today is a 6-core/12-thread processor that strikes the psychologically pleasing 3 GHz barrier, and it is clocked at 3.10 GHz (the i5-10400 ticks at 2.90 GHz). At 4.50 GHz, its maximum Turbo Boost frequency is 200 MHz higher than the Core i5-10400.

Intel's Core i5-10500 is based on the 10th generation "Comet Lake" microarchitecture, which enables HyperThreading and increases L3 cache sizes across the board to make the absolute most of the "Skylake" core design that's been in use for the past four generations. Compared to the previous generation Core i5 processors, which were 6-core/6-thread chips with 9 MB cache, the 10th generation Core i5 desktop processor family maxes out the 6-core "Comet Lake" silicon that resembles the "Coffee Lake" die, and features 12 MB of L3 cache.



The Core i5-10500 isn't an unlocked processor, meaning you can't use the base clock multiplier to overclock it. Intel has, however, dropped many restrictions on power management by motherboard vendors, letting you practically play with the power limits on even the lower-cost chipsets, like H470, B460, and H410. You can also drive up the base clock itself, as well as eke out more performance by tinkering with the DMI and PCIe clocks. Given the i5-10500 has its TDP (PL 1) set at just 65 W, there's a bit more potential to squeeze out performance than with the i5-10400 because the multipliers are set two notches higher.

In this review, we take a close look at the Core i5-10500 processor to tell you if it's worth spending the extra Jackson on this chip over the Core i5-10400, or saving some money over the Core i5-10600K. We pit it against the formidable Ryzen 5 3600 and 3600X from the AMD stable. On paper, AMD has forward-looking features, such as PCIe gen 4, but lacks an integrated GPU, which the i5-10500 has. There are no iGPU-devoid "F" SKUs of this chip. We tested the Core i5-10500 in four configurations. The first one (green bar) is the processor out of the box, with the motherboard made to respect Intel specs for power management. The second (brown bar) has its memory clock lowered to DDR4-2666, which is the reference memory frequency of this processor on B460 or H470 chipset motherboards. The third data point (blue bar) is the processor with power limits relaxed and maximum Turbo frequencies engaged. The fourth (red bar) is a manual overclock that cranks the base clock up to 103 MHz.

A Closer Look

Our Core i5-10500 sample came in a tray-only package. The retail packaging includes a heatsink, which will help keep overall system cost down.


The Core i5-10500 looks like any LGA1xxx processor released by Intel in the past decade. The processor is only compatible with socket LGA1200 motherboards because the position of the round notches has been changed. It will not work with an older motherboard.


Luckily, socket LGA1200 retains cooler compatibility with all older LGA115x-series sockets. This means you're going to be spoiled for choice when picking a cooler to go with this processor.

Architecture

Under the hood of the Core i5-10500 is the 6-core "Comet Lake-S" silicon built on the same 14 nm++ process as the previous two generations. The die area is estimated to be 149.6 mm². This die looks similar to the 6-core "Coffee Lake" or "Coffee Lake Refresh" dies.


The "Comet Lake-S" silicon is laid out similar to the past four generations of Intel mainstream processors, with two rows of CPU cores flanked by the iGPU on one side and the system agent (integrated northbridge) on the other, and a Ringbus Interconnect serving as town square between the various components. The last-level cache is scattered across as slices of 1 MB or 2 MB, adding up to 12 MB of unified L3 cache all cores can access equally.

Much of the processor's uncore components are clumped into the system agent, which contains the memory controller, PCI-Express gen 3.0 root-complex, DMI interface, and memory PHY. The iGPU solution, though present on the silicon, is permanently disabled by Intel.


The core itself is identical in design to "Skylake," and there are hence no IPC increases to be had. As we explained in the introduction, all of Intel's efforts to increase gaming, single-threaded, and less-parallelized application performance revolve around increasing clock speeds and deploying as many as three intelligent boosting algorithms to achieve the advertised clock speeds.

The Core i5-10500 has a nameplate base frequency (aka nominal clock) of 3.10 GHz and a maximum Turbo Boost frequency of 4.50 GHz. Unlike the Core i9-10900K, it lacks Turbo Boost Max 3.0 or Thermal Velocity Boost. It still has significantly increased power limits compared to something like a Core i7-8700K, with PL1 set at 65 W and PL2 at 134 W, and a 28-second Tau (time value at which the processor is allowed to sustain elevated power levels before having to drop down to nominal clocks).

Motherboard manufacturers have been given the freedom to override PL2 and Tau as they see fit, so various motherboards implement power limits differently depending on the effectiveness of their VRM solution. You are hence rewarded for buying a pricier motherboard that has a better VRM and more aggressive vendor-supplied power management. Of course, all boards come with Intel-spec fallbacks.

Intel introduced a handful of overclocking enhancements with the 10th generation, including the ability to toggle HyperThreading on a per-core basis rather than globally. This could be an interesting option for those gaming and streaming, where a certain number of cores have HTT disabled for the best gaming performance and certain cores have them enabled, with Windows process core affinity settings taking care of the rest.

The company also introduced the ability to overclock the DMI chipset bus. DMI is a PCIe-based interconnect that handles transfers between the processor and the chipset (PCH). The LGA1200 platform uses DMI 3.0 (comparable to PCI-Express 3.0 x4 in terms of bandwidth). Intel has apparently decoupled PCIe clock domains to enable you to overclock the DMI and PEG (that topmost x16 PCIe slot) without destabilizing your PCIe setup for graphics cards. Multiplier-based overclocking, however, isn't possible on the i5-10400F.

The Z490, H470, and B460 Platforms

Z490 is the top 400-series chipset targeted at gaming desktops and PC enthusiasts, as it enables serious overclocking and multi-GPU support. In terms of I/O capabilities, the chipset is nearly identical to the Z390, with 24 downstream PCIe gen 3.0 lanes, six SATA ports, six USB 3.2 gen 2 ports that can be converted to three USB 3.2 gen 2x2 ports, ten USB 3.2 gen 1 ports, and fourteen USB 2.0 ports. Intel is recommending its i225-V 2.5 Gbps Ethernet chip as the wired networking solution to go with Z490, and the company's AX201 802.11ax WiFi 6 WLAN solution to go with the chipset's CNVio interface.


You are more likely to pair locked and entry-level processors such as the i3-10100 with the B460 or H470 chipsets. B460 has motherboards start at around the $90 mark. It comes with 16 downstream PCIe gen 3.0 lanes (compared to just 12 on the previous-generation B360). Compared to Z490, you get fewer PCIe lanes (16 vs. 24) from the chipset. fewer USB 3.2 ports (eight 5 Gbps ports and no 10 Gbps ports compared to six 10 Gbps and ten 5 Gbps ports on the Z490). You also lose out on CPU overclocking features and multi-GPU capabilities (such as SLI). B460 motherboards also come with memory frequency restrictions set to DDR4-2933. The H470 is an interesting middle ground between the Z490 and B460. You still lose out on multi-GPU and overclocking, but get more platform PCIe lanes (20 vs. 16 on the B460 and 24 on the Z490); four 10 Gbps USB 3.2 ports in addition to what you get from the B460.

For multiplier-locked chips like the i5-10500, you could save a lot of money by opting for cheaper B460 or H410 chipset motherboards.

Test Setup

• All applications, games, and processors are tested with the drivers and hardware listed below—no performance results were recycled between test systems.
• All games and applications are tested using the same version.
• All games are set to their highest quality setting unless indicated otherwise.