Last week I looked at the Intel Core i9 13900K performance under Linux while today the focus is on the Core i5 13600K. The Core i5 13600K is a 14-core / 20-thread processor (6 P cores + 8 E cores), up from 6 P cores + 4 E cores with the prior generation Core i5 12600K. The Core i5 13600K has a recommended customer price of $319~329, which is indeed being honored among Internet retailers and with robust availability. Here is an initial look at how the Core i5 13600K "Raptor Lake" is running under Ubuntu Linux.

This 14-core / 20-thread processor has a 5.1GHz maximum turbo frequency while the base frequency on the P cores is 3.5GHz and then 2.6GHz on the E cores. This mid-range processor has a 20MB L2 cache, 24MB L3 cache, and has a 125 Watt base power rating with 181 Watt maximum turbo power. Like the rest of the Raptor Lake line-up, the Core i5 13600K features DDR5-5600 and DDR4-3200 support, UHD Graphics 770, and makes use of an Intel 7 process.

While the Core i9 13900K in the two weeks since retail availability has been commanding prices higher than Intel's recommended customer price, the Core i5 13600K is retailing as of writing still in the $319~329 range and Best Buy has even listed it as low as $300. As with the i9-13900K, my initial testing with the i5-13600K has also been with the ASUS PRIME Z790-P WIFI motherboard after having DDR5 issues with the ASUS ROG STRIX Z690-E GAMING WIFI as outlined in the prior article.

Intel's Raptor Lake processors are running well on Linux along with the new Z790 series motherboards. Given Intel's track record of timely hardware enablement on Linux and Raptor Lake an evolution of Alder Lake, the Linux support is in good standing. It's also smoother than when Alder Lake first debuted last year and there were still pending improvements particularly around the hybrid processor design. If you are running -- or planning to run -- a modern 2022 Linux distribution, you should be in good shape for Intel Raptor Lake.

All of this CPU review testing and the other (re)tested processors were on Ubuntu 22.10 with the Linux 6.0 kernel and running with the performance CPUFreq/P-State governor throughout. All of the benchmarks were at stock CPU speeds, 2 x 16GB DDR5-6000 for all ADL/RPL/Zen4 tests and 2 x 16GB DDR4-3600 in all other tested older configurations, Samsung 980 PRO 2TB NVMe SSD storage, and Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics.