Ryzen 5 5500 vs Core i5-10600K

Gaming speed, cores and clocks

The Ryzen 5 5500 and the Core i5-10600K are within a few percent of each other for gaming. In a game, you will not see the difference.

The Ryzen 5 5500 has 6 cores and 12 threads, and the Core i5-10600K has 6 cores and 12 threads. Core counts are the same, so cache size and clock speed decide the difference. Boost clocks are 4.2 GHz and 4.8 GHz.

Platform, power and price

The Ryzen 5 5500 uses the AM4 socket and the Core i5-10600K uses LGA1200, so they need different motherboards, and often different memory. When you compare prices, count the board as well as the chip.

Rated power is 65 W for the first and 125 W for the second. That difference changes the cooler you need, and it shows up in heat and noise.

At launch the Ryzen 5 5500 cost $159 and the Core i5-10600K $262, which gives 31.4 and 18.7 points of gaming performance per $100. Today's prices will differ.

Which graphics cards each one can feed, and which to buy

At 1080p the Ryzen 5 5500 can feed a card up to the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Laptop before it holds the card back by more than 10 percent. The Core i5-10600K reaches the Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB. Both chips are in the same range for graphics card pairing.

Choose the Ryzen 5 5500 if you want the faster gaming chip and the same or more cores. Choose the Core i5-10600K if you would rather spend the difference on a graphics card, which does more for frame rates in most games.