FULL OF BEANS
WE’VE THOROUGHLY ENJOYED the processor race of the last year. From Kaby Lake to Ryzen to Coffee Lake, 14nm has produced some absolute gems. And we can safely say that older parts—even our favorite, the Intel Core i5-2500K—might finally be drawing their last gasps, as single-core performance and core count increase so dramatically.
All in all, this build was a pretty smooth ride. We had a few issues with placement fairly early on, but it all worked out in the end. The triple rad in the front caused the most issues. We did intend to use a 2TB 3.5-inch drive in the lower hard drive cage, under the PSU cover, but as we had a large PSU and that rad in the front with the fans, we couldn’t fit it all in, so had to use a 2.5-inch instead. Not the end of the world, but we do expect it to affect performance in games and media load times. We were saved by Fractal’s mounting tray across the back of the motherboard cut-out, which supports up to three 2.5-inch devices.
More Thermaltake rage came in the form of the cooler’s RGB fans. Fortunately, they only have one cable, but they are USB-headed, and plug directly into an included USB hub, which then plugs into a molex power, then into a USB port on the motherboard, forcing you to use Thermaltake’s software, and adding excessive lengths of cable to the build— less than ideal for the Meshify’s already compact compartmentalization.
Moaning over—how was performance? Pretty damn good. It’s amazing how far Intel has come just by adding two more two cores to the majority of its lineup. Seeing those multithreaded scores climb as high as 956 points, for a $190 part, is pretty awesome for Team Blue. That’s just a touch off the pace of our zero-point’s overclocked Core i7-6700K. But if you compare the Core i5-8400 against its $190 competitor from AMD, the Ryzen 5 1500X, it starts to paint a better picture. Single-core performance is 12 points higher, multi-core 150 points higher, and you don’t have to worry about potential memory compatibility issues. The big difference lies in Intel’s reluctance to unlock all of its processors, though. Hypothetically, you can still overclock the 1500X, eking out just enough performance to surpass its competitor.
So, is this the core to have? We’ll let you decide, but for a mid-range build, it’s perfect for demolishing that 1440p target alongside a GTX 1070. We saw average frame rates at 1440p sit comfortably at 67 and 64fps in Far CryPrimal and TheDivision respectively, with 38 and 35 in Total War: Attila and Rise ofthe TombRaider. It’s a cool, well-equipped rig, with enough grunt to future-proof you for the next five years, minimum, and that’s something we can definitely get behind.