I built my PC around an MSI Z790 Tomahawk motherboard with an LGA1700 socket. It currently has a Core i5-13600K paired with an RTX 4070. I mostly play CPU-intensive shooters and multiplayer PvE/PvP games, so I'm wondering whether upgrading the processor would provide a noticeable improvement or if the 13600K is already fast enough to keep for several more years.
4 Answers
It probably isn’t worth upgrading. The 13600K is still a very capable gaming CPU and should handle modern games well for years, especially when paired with a 4070. I’d save the money for a future platform upgrade instead.
The only upgrade that might make a clearly noticeable difference would be moving to a newer platform with a gaming-focused chip such as an X3D processor. But that means replacing the motherboard and possibly dealing with memory compatibility, so it’s not a worthwhile expense unless you’re chasing very high refresh rates or consistently hitting a CPU bottleneck.
I’d stay on LGA1700 for now. The higher-end 13th- and 14th-generation chips can draw a lot more power and require stronger cooling, while the 13600K already offers an excellent balance of performance and efficiency.
Even moving to something like a 14700K generally wouldn’t be a huge jump in CPU-limited games—roughly around a low-teens percentage improvement in many cases. The extra cores won’t help much for gaming unless you also have heavy productivity workloads.
Exactly. A platform change could make sense if you already have compatible DDR5 and can sell the current parts, but simply swapping to another LGA1700 CPU doesn’t offer enough of a gain.