Intel launched its current-generation (and current-socket) "Arrow Lake" 200S processors at the end of 2024, but the preceding 14th Gen Core ("Raptor Lake Refresh") models remain capable options for desktop CPU shoppers. Take the Intel Core i5-14400 ($221 MSRP), one of the slower Core i5 chips in the Raptor Lake Refresh family on the LGA 1700 socket. It doesn't enjoy much spotlight or discussion, but our tests show that the Core i5-14400 still packs plenty of performance for a wide range of applications, particularly for budget PC builds. Despite this, you can find more potent options for about the same price, even from Intel itself, notably the Editors' Choice-award-winning Core Ultra 5 250K Plus. The Core i5-14400 mostly makes sense if you're already on the LGA 1700 platform and don't want to reinvest in a new motherboard and (especially) pricey new RAM.

Chip Design and Specs: A Deca-Core Core i5

Based on the Raptor Lake Refresh architecture, the Core i5-14400 uses a hybrid processor design with six Hyper-Threaded, high-performance P-cores, and a handful of more energy-efficient E-cores. (The E-cores don't support Hyper-Threading, so the chip supports up to 16 concurrent processing threads.) The most notable difference between the Core i5-14400 and faster Core i5 entries in the family, such as the Intel Core i5-14600K, is the number of E-cores. That has been reduced from eight on the Core i5-14600K to just four on the Core i5-14400.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The P-cores on the Core i5-14400 clock in at 2.5GHz with a max turbo of 4.7GHz, while the E-cores come in more conservatively at a 1.8GHz base clock, with a boost clock of 3.5GHz. The reduced E-core count also slashes the Core i5-14400’s total amount of L3 cache, down to 20MB from the i5-14600K’s 24MB. The processor has a base thermal design power (TDP) of just 65 watts (W), however, which could make it a more attractive option for a compact PC build. It can reach a TDP of up to 148W at peak turbo, but its typical power draw should be lower. The Core i5-14600K, in contrast, has a base TDP of 125W and a peak TDP of 181W.

The Core i5-14400's integrated graphics processor (IGP) represents a step down from most processors in the 13th Gen ("Raptor Lake") and 14th Gen Raptor Lake Refresh product lines. Most of them use the Intel UHD Graphics 770 IGP, with 32 execution units and a total of 256 shaders, but the Core i5-14400's UHD Graphics 730 contains just 24 execution units and 192 shaders.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

That said, the lighter-hitting graphics won't be an issue if you're going to install a dedicated graphics card in your system. Likewise, if you don’t plan to play AAA-class games on your PC, the UHD Graphics 730 is a perfectly capable display adapter. It's less punchy than the 770 but more than capable of handling everyday graphics operations and even some casual games.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The Core i5-14400 is designed for Intel's LGA 1700 platform. Most LGA 1700 motherboards will work with the Core i5-14400, but you may need to update the BIOS for the Core i5-14400 to work correctly. The 14400 has official support for DDR5 RAM clocked at 4,800MHz.

Though I didn’t test it, the Intel Core i5-14400 also comes with an Intel Laminar RM1 stock cooler, which should keep the processor cool enough under regular use. Any CPU cooler with official support for the LGA 1700 platform should work fine with the Core i5-14400. Its base TDP of 65 watts is low enough to work with most coolers.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Test Setup and Competition

I tested the Intel Core i5-14400 using our LGA 1700 test platform, which is built on a Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master motherboard with the Corsair iCue Link Titan 360 RX LCD liquid CPU cooler we use for all consumer chips. For memory and storage, the benchmarking system carries two 16GB DDR5 RAM sticks in a dual-channel configuration and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD with Windows 11 installed. Per usual practice, I used an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 for all benchmark runs, except those focusing on integrated graphics performance. (The whole system is housed in an open-air Praxis Wetbench chassis.) Finally, I set the system to the CPU’s officially supported maximum memory speed of 4,800MHz. (See how we test CPUs.)

The Core i5-14400 went up against several modern budget competitors and some older high-end CPUs. I'll focus on the first group, which includes the AMD Ryzen 5 8500G and the Intel Core Ultra 5 225. Both of these processors are in the same price ballpark but offer different feature sets. I compared the Core i5-14400 to the following range of CPUs...

Intel Core i5-14400: CPU Performance Tests

First up: benchmarks that test raw CPU power. These tests place a heavy load on the processor, enabling us to see how much work each processor can complete while operating near 100% usage. The tests we use are all content-creation-centric, as media-creation work is often heavily threaded and very demanding on the host processor.

Right off the bat, the Cinebench 2024 test gave a taste of things to come. The Core i5-14400 was no match for the high-end competition, be it AMD or Intel, but it fared better against the other processors in its price range—lagging behind its Core Ultra 5 250K Plus and Core Ultra 5 225 kin, but clearly ahead of the Ryzen 5 8500G.

You'll see that pattern repeated over and over in these benchmarks. The Core i5-14400 beat the Ryzen 5 8500G at POV-Ray 3.7, HandBrake, Adobe's content creation tests, and Blender (where it also inched closer to the Ultra 5 225). It's easy to discern a clear pecking order among these budget chips.

Intel Core i5-14400: Gaming Tests, Low Settings

Running PC games at low graphical settings can help you to achieve a high refresh rate. Our objective in testing with these settings? To show the performance difference between processors and how the CPU affects peak frame rates. Typically, faster processors can support a higher overall frame rate when tested with low graphics settings and a fast enough graphics card, but this is a somewhat oversimplified view. Other factors can play into these results, such as the speed and size of the system RAM, the processor's cache, and the graphics card. As we have standardized our test systems to minimize these variables, most of the difference you see in these tests will be down to the processor's speed and architectural intricacies.

Running these tests with an RTX 5090 installed is designed to show where and by how much a processor in question is a limiting factor on the frame rates you get. In gaming with our RTX 5090 card installed, we've typically seen Raptor Lake Refresh processors outperform first-generation Arrow Lake processors. That didn't happen this time around.

In our tests, the Core i5-14400 performed well enough for its price and market positioning, but it generally lagged behind the Core Ultra 5 225. Cyberpunk 2077 showed this same dynamic, and while both outpaced the 8500G, the Core i5-14400 was well behind the Ultra 5 225.

In F1 2024, the Core i5-14400 pulled closer to the Ultra 5 225, with the Ryzen 5 8500G once again even further back. The same basically held true for Black Myth: Wukong and Total War: Three Kingdoms. The three processors came closest to one another in performance in the older Shadow of the Tomb Raider, but their relative positions didn't change.

As for the newest comparable Arrow Lake Refresh chip, the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus, it was clearly faster than the Core i5-14400 in most of these tests. In Black Myth: Wukong, the Core i5-14400 was a little quicker running the game at 4K, but in all other tests, the Ultra 5 250K Plus pulled well ahead.

Intel Core i5-14400: Gaming Tests, High Settings

Testing graphics cards with high in-game graphical settings shows how these processors perform under duress. Most in-game settings that affect image quality increase the graphics card's workload, but some also increase the processor's. Your frame rate drops due to the increase in graphical workload, but the frame rate can drop further if the processor is unable to keep up with its heftier workload, too. Testing in this configuration allows us to see if the processors are able to cope.

Gaming with high graphics settings went somewhat better for the Core i5-14400; in these tests, the GPU becomes a more limiting factor. (The increase in graphics quality shifts the workload from the CPU and more onto the GPU.) When processors show similar performance in these tests, it's typically because the GPU is maxed out; having a faster processor won't get you faster gaming performance.

The Core i5-14400 turned in an impressive performance in 3DMark, where it got closer to AMD's elite Ryzen 7 9800X3D than at any other point in our tests. In Cyberpunk 2077 with the Ray Tracing Ultra preset, the Core i5-14400 was about 10% slower than the Ultra 5 225 at 1080p, and the performance difference was much smaller at 1440p. (The Ryzen 8500G brought up the rear, as before.)

Ditto on the F1 2024 test, running at the Ultra High graphics preset. The Ultra 5 225 and the Core i5-14400 were quite close at all resolutions this time, and (you guessed it) both showed a large advantage over the Ryzen 5 8500G.

In the last test—Black Myth: Wukong, using the Cinematic graphics preset and DLSS set to 100% quality—all of the competitors in the trio finished relatively close to each other. The Core i5-14400, in fact, should perform about as well in Black Myth: Wukong as any other high-end CPU that I’ve tested recently.

The 250K Plus comfortably outpaced the i5-14400 in most tests. Black Myth: Wukong showed the Core i5-14400 was roughly on par with the 250K Plus, but gaming at lower resolutions and in other games showed the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus held an advantage over the Core i5-14400.

Intel Core i5-14400: Integrated Graphics Tests

With many desktop CPUs, the integrated graphics processor (IGP) goes unused and untested in favor of a discrete graphics card. The IGP can be a highly useful tool for troubleshooting issues, driving a second display, or performing some multimedia tasks. I do not test the IGP extensively, but the limited in-game testing I conduct gives us some idea of how these IGPs perform relative to each other (and, heck, to the mighty Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090).

The Intel UHD Graphics 730 inside the Core i5-14400 is a passable display adapter by today's standards, but not much more than that; it's clearly one of the less powerful options out there in recent-generation desktop CPUs. It’s about on par with the (weak) integrated Radeon graphics inside of the likes of the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D, the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X, and the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, all of which share the same IGP.

If you intend to rely on the IGP for gaming, you have better options. Most other, newer Intel CPUs here feature higher-quality IGP hardware, especially the newer Arrow Lake chips like the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K. And from an integrated graphics standpoint, the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus is easily the best option near the Core i5-14400's price. The Ryzen 5 8500G also has much better IGP performance than the Core i5-14400, and for less money. That's that chip's main attraction.

Intel Core i5-14400: Power Consumption and Thermal Tests

To judge each processor's power consumption, I used a Kill-A-Watt power meter while running our Blender and Cinebench tests. This gives us the full power consumption of the test system, rather than just the processors. This makes comparing numbers between AMD- and Intel-based processors in this section somewhat tricky, as the power draw of the motherboard and other components is included. As the test systems use as many of the same parts as possible, however, and because this difference in platform power consumption is unavoidable, these numbers can still be informative.

Once again, the i5-14400 performed OK overall, but its power efficiency wasn't stunning. The chip's power consumption is higher than that of other budget processors like the Ryzen 5 8500G and the Intel Core Ultra 5 225, but lower than that of the other processors I tested. This makes the 14400 clearly less efficient than the 225, as that processor's platform used less power and performed faster in these tests.

On the plus side, the Core i5-14400 stayed cool throughout testing, considerably lower in temperature than the rest of the lot, save for the Core Ultra 5 225. This Raptor Lake Refresh processor likely won’t have any issues running with the Intel stock cooler, either.

The Core i5-14400 consumed 180W in Cinebench and scored 764 in its multi-threaded subtest, which is the one I measure power consumption in, as the single-core power draw would be much lower. The Core Ultra 5 250K Plus consumed 280W and scored 1,768. This means that the 250K Plus scored 131% higher than the i5-14400 in Cinebench 2024, while consuming just 55.6% more power. Put into other words, the 250K Plus delivered roughly 6.3 points per watt in the Cinebench 2024 multi-threaded test, while the 14400 achieved roughly 4.2 points per watt in the same test. This makes it clear that the 250K Plus was far more efficient on this test.