Is it worth upgrading from the i5-12400F to the 14600K?

Desktops and Notebooks
1

Guys, I’m thinking about upgrading my PC. I mainly use it for engineering software.

I’ll need to invest about 1.8k in the CPU and water cooler combo.

It’s the last upgrade I’ll do on this PC to last about 4 to 5 years.

The question is whether I’ll actually see a significant gain. For example, with a smartphone.

Moving from a Galaxy A54 to a Galaxy S24 Ultra is a noticeable difference. But upgrading from a Galaxy S24 Ultra to a Galaxy S25 Ultra and paying that price isn’t worth it…

Those benchmarks don’t tell you much either.

For example, will I decompress a file in half the time?

Will Windows windows open instantly?

I want the same performance as a Galaxy S23 Ultra, for example. It’s better to have some headroom than to fall short. The i7 is a no-go. Because on top of the higher price, cooling the beast is tricky.

My specs

ASUS B660M TUF Gaming DDR4 + PCIe 5.0

i5-12400F + stock cooler

1TB PCIe Gen4 + 1TB PCIe Gen3

32GB DDR4 3200MHz (16 + 16)

MSI MAG 650W PSU

RTX 4060 Galaxy 8GB

Pichau Kazan 2 case + 4 Black 120mm 62 CFM 4-Pin PWM fans, 1800 RPM, Cooler Master

I might upgrade to a graphics card in the future. Since the motherboard has PCIe 5.0, that will help it last for several generations…

2

Yes, if you can get it for a low price and you’re after performance. The 14600K offers a significant jump in processing power thanks to its newer architecture and the higher number of performance cores (P-cores), which results in a superior multitasking experience and in games that benefit from more cores.

But fast decompression isn’t just about the processor, just like Windows’ window transitions. It’s better for you to use tweaks for these functions.

3

First things first, is it the same socket?

4

Yes. It’s the last line for lag 1700.

Then today’s ones are lga1851