When comparing Intel i5-6600K vs Ryzen 5 1600, the Slant community recommends Ryzen 5 1600 for most people. In the question“What is the best processor to pair with the GTX 1060?” Ryzen 5 1600 is ranked 1st while Intel i5-6600K is ranked 2nd. The most important reason people chose Ryzen 5 1600 is:
This CPU is good for gaming, multitasking and compute-intensive applications like audio rendering and virtual machines.
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Pros
Pro Good RAM options
THe 6600K works with both DDR3 and DDR4 RAM, so for those upgrading an older generation system, their RAM will still be usable while still retaining the option to upgrade to a newer generation of RAM (DDR4, if their motherboard supports it).
Pro Semi-inexpensive
Good price for performance allows for the user to not break the bank while building a gaming centric PC.
Pro Close performance to an i7-4790K
The performance of the i5 6660K is similar to a more expensive i7 processor in gaming situations. While the i7 does use more threading (twice as much), there are very few PC games that can actually take advantage of this making the i5 a good choice when building a gaming specific PC.
Pro Good RAM options
THe 6600K works with both DDR3 and DDR4 RAM, so for those upgrading an older generation system, their RAM will still be usable while still retaining the option to upgrade to a newer generation of RAM (DDR4, if their motherboard supports it).
Pro Can allow for extreme gaming solutions
The chip itself allows for 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes. This translates into how many PCIe devices can be used at the same time and how fast they can be controlled which makes for a scenario where multiple PCIe GPUs can be used at their top transfer speed of 16x for one and 8x for two.
Pro Overclockable
The K series of processors from Intel allow for overclocking. This means the user can choose to use after market cooling systems to then overclock their chips to see better performance than stock.
Pro Great for both gaming PCs and workstations
This CPU is good for gaming, multitasking and compute-intensive applications like audio rendering and virtual machines.
Pro Excellent stock cooler
This CPU comes with the Wraith Spire (non-RGB) cooler, which has the same cooling capacity as an after-market cooler worth around $40.
Pro Low power consumption
This CPU draws around 30W less than comparable CPUs at 65W.
Cons
Con Does not come with a heatsink
No longer does Intel include a heatsink with their new CPUs, so the user will have to purchase their own. While they are not too expensive, that basically means out of the box this can not be used unless a purchase was made for a heatsink along with this item.
Con Adds another pin to the connection
This processor uses the LGA 1151 CPU socket. For those upgrading from an older generation chip this means the will need to purchase a new motherboard and possibly RAM in order to use this chip. This can be expensive to replace so many components all for a single new pin in the chips connection. While the performance will be better than the last generation, it may not be worth the price of all new gear to see this performance.
Con Lower single-core performance
Older games and other applications which have not been optimized for threaded architectures may perform worse compared to Intel CPUs. As software developers update software and produce new software this should become less of a problem.