It is a great time to be a PC gaming enthusiast. After the first half of 2022, there's a flood of PC hardware releases to be seen and one of the specific items is Intel's upcoming 13th Gen Core i5 13400.  

Dave James gave i5 12400 a stratospheric 95/100 and the only way it could score higher was if it cost 50 bucks and came with a free motherboard. The only thing it lacked compared to the 12th Gen CPUs was efficiency cores.  

But everything has changed as the 13400 will consist of four Gracemont E cores which means the 13400 will receive a major multi-threaded performance boost. It won't be able to compete with the higher core count CPUs but 16-threads are enough for current gaming requirements and inclusion of E cores mean the chip will deliver low idle and light load power consumption. 

As per a list of specs provided by WCCFTech, the 13400's E cores will be clocked at 3.3GHz. This is quite low compared to the clocks of higher tier models but in case of performing background tasks or utilized in idle situations, they do not have to give an outstanding performance. 

The 13400's P cores get a 200MHz maximum turbo boost increase till 4.6GHz from 4.4GHz to 20MB when compared to 18MB of the 12400. DDR4 and DDR5 memory support remains the same at 3200MHz and 4800MHz respectively. 

There's a question on the minds of many users whether it will be able to overclock through BCLK. MSI has released B660M Mortar Max Wi-Fi that allowed BCLK with locked 12th Gen CPUs. But the question is if motherboard manufacturers would be inspired to launch budget B760 motherboards to allow it. In that case, the 13400 could end up being not only an excellent CPU but a legendary one. That might not be allowed by Intel. We have to wait and see.  

So right now, all we have is a 65W base TDP processor with 16 threads, low cooling requirements, low idle power consumption and also a maximum 4.6GHz boost clock. The 13400 looks powerful indeed. The 12400 sells for $194 at Newegg while 12400F without integrated graphics is less at $175. If 13400 and 13400F comes with same prices then Intel will have a strong budget gaming competitor. 

All we can do is to wait until we see what happens at the end.