Intel’s tenth gen, six-core i5-10600K is one of the fastest consumer CPUs currently available. Out of the box, its maximum all core frequency is 4.5 GHz, but a simple overclock allows all 12 threads to hit 5.0 GHz. Although a new Z490 (LGA1200) motherboard is required, Intel have indicated that LGA1200 will remain compatible with Rocket Lake CPUs which are due later this year. The eight-core Ryzen 3700X currently competes in the 10600K’s price bracket. CPU based encoding is akin to using hair clippers on a lawn but If dedicated hardware such as NVENC or QuickSync is not an option, the 3700X can outperform the 10600K in encoding workloads such as UserBenchmark 64-core, Cinebench, Blender-CPU and Handbrake-CPU. Meanwhile, the 10600K is better for almost everything else. Currently, the real problem with the 10600K, and much of the Comet Lake line up, is availability. Whilst there was a paper launch in Q2 2020, at the time of writing, the 10600K is still largely unavailable for purchase. In order to achieve better value for money, without compromising on gaming performance, it is necessary to consider the older generation 9600K which is 26% cheaper and offers similar gaming performance. [Jun '20 CPUPro]