REVIEWS CPUS Intel Core i3-10100 + B460 Motherboard Review Core i3 vs. Ryzen 3 3300X
The Core i3-10100 is Intel’s most affordable 4-core, 8-thread CPU ever. Coming in at a $122, that places it in direct competition with AMD’s recently introduced Ryzen 3 3300X which costs $120. In case of both processors though, offer is somewhat limited at the time and pricing can be a tad higher or stock hard to come by. We expect that to settle down eventually so we won't focus on that and just say these are $120 CPUs in direct contention.
Let’s talk a bit about the Core i3-10100. As the successor of the i3-9100, clock speeds are about the same as we’re still looking at 3.6 GHz for the base with a 100 MHz increase for turbo to 4.3 GHz. The key difference between the two is the use of Hyper-Threading, allowing the 10100 to support 8 threads opposed to just 4. In terms of specs, the Core i3-10100 is very similar to 2017’s Core i7-7700, which cost over $300 or more than twice as much as this i3 CPU.
When compared to the i7-7700, the Core i3-10100 has less L3 cache with 6 MB, though the i3-10300 which costs $20 more gets the full 8 MB. The same UHD Graphics 630 are in use, and we’re looking at a 65 W TDP rating.
Speaking of TDP, when we reviewed the Core i5-10400 a week ago we did so without any power limits as only Asus motherboards seem to enforce these limits. This upset a few people who claimed this wouldn’t be indicative of performance on more affordable B and H-series motherboards, and fair enough, this is something we should have touched on. As it turns out, that’s not actually the case, the i5-10400 will deliver the exact same results on all H410 and B360 boards to what we showed on the Z490 board. This isn’t because most H410 and B360 boards won’t adhere to the Intel spec, but because the 10400 doesn’t actually exceed the TDP.
Under heavy AVX workloads you’re looking at a package TDP of 64 watts, so the 10400 sneaks in there and won’t trip any power limits. So to clarify, power limits enforced or not, the Core i5-10400 will deliver the same performance on all H410, B460 and Z490 motherboards. Thus the only performance advantage seen in more expensive Z490 motherboards will be through memory overclocking.
With that out of the way, it goes without saying that the Core i3-10100 also comes in under the 65W TDP envelope, reaching just 41 watts in an AVX accelerated core-heavy workload. That doesn't mean the CPU is only consuming 41 watts -- that’s not how TDP ratings work, but we won’t get into that here -- we’ve discussed how Intel and AMD’s TDP ratings are defined in the past, the point we need to make is simply that motherboard type or quality won’t influence performance for these parts.
Where this can become a problem is for the Core i7 and Core i9 models, but that’s a review for another day.
The Core i3-10100 runs an all-core clock speed of 4.1 GHz with a max single core frequency of 4.3 GHz. Using the included box cooler it peaked at just 61C in our Blender stress test and ran reasonably quiet.
We'd just like to note that comparing the operating temperature of the i3-10100 to something like the R3 3300X is a pointless exercise, you’re better off just looking at power consumption because temperatures can easily end up being an apples to oranges comparison. Where the temperature probe is located in the CPU can heavily influence the reading; a good example of this can be seen when looking at AMD GPUs which include a hotspot readout as well as an edge temperature which is often much lower. Still, for those not satisfied with that, the Ryzen 3 3300X using the Wraith Stealth box cooler reached 75C under the same test conditions while the R3 3100 reached 65C.
he Ryzen processors were tested on the Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master, 8th and 9th-gen Intel Core processors were tested on the Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Ultra, and the new 10th-gen Core processors on the Asus ROG Maximus XII Extreme. For the sake of exhaustiveness, we’ve also tested the Core i5-10400 and Core i3-10100 on some B360 boards and found the performance to be identical to that of the Z490 board running DDR4-2666 memory.
All setups were completed with an RTX 2080 Ti, 32GB of DDR4-3200 CL14 memory, and a Corsair Hydro H150i Pro 360mm all-in-one liquid cooler. Let’s get into the results.