Especially since… well, I wasn’t overly glowing about the Core i5-13600K when I reviewed it. But that was ultimately because I didn’t feel the higher price reflected its performance gains over the Core i5-12600K, which are more keenly felt in desktop multitasking than in gaming. To cut away the price is to cut away the underlying issue with Raptor Lake, making these chips much, much better buys in the process. To get even lower prices, let’s stick mostly to the ‘KF’ versions, which are identical to the flagship, overclockable ‘K’ chips but don’t have integrated graphics. Those aren’t necessary in a gaming PC with a dedicated graphics card, so that’s fine – though the standard Core i7-13700K is somehow cheaper than the Core i7-13700KF right now, so uhhhhh let’s just leave that one in!
UK deals:
And yes, unfortunately these 13th Gen deals do seem to be UK-only. I can find US listings with a few dollars shaved off here and there, but nothing meaty like CCL’s Black Friday sale. If you decide to pick up one of these Intel chips, remember that they’ll need a motherboard with either a new Intel Z790 chipset or a 12th Gen Intel 600 series chipset (like Z690 or B660). The latter, last-gen motherboards will also need a BIOS update first.
