Intel Core i5-12600K vs Intel Core i9-12900HK

Core i5-12600K vs Core i9-12900HK specs and performance

In our benchmarks, the Core i5-12600K beats the Core i9-12900HK in overall performance. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i9-12900HK in all gaming tests too.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core i9-12900HK has slightly more cores with 14 cores compared to the Core i5-12600K that has 10 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i5-12600K. With our hardware info, we find that the Core i5-12600K has a significantly higher clock speed than the Core i9-12900HK. Despite this, the Core i9-12900HK has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Core i9-12900HK outputs less heat than Core i5-12600K thanks to a significantly lower TDP. This measures the amount of heat they output and can be used to estimate power consumption.

Most CPUs have more threads than cores. This technology, colloquially called hyperthreading, improves performance by splitting a core into multiple virtual ones. This provides more efficient utilisation of a core. Indeed, the Core i5-12600K has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.