Integrated graphics made the Core i5 8400 a decent choice for professional systems, while the improved performance made it one of the best budget gaming CPUs on the market. The lack of manual overclocking potential is a shame, but the quality of Intel Turbo Boost largely makes up for it.

The Core i5-8400 brings a powerful six-core design to the mid-range, offering class-leading gaming performance and competitive performance in heavier applications. More expensive models offer more performance in both categories, but the Core i5-8400 is easily the pound-for-pound gaming champion.

Early benchmarks reveal that for average quad core usage (most games employ a maximum of four cores) the i5-8400 performs way above its pay grade. It achieves quad core mixed speeds close to Intel’s outgoing 2017 flagship the $300, quad-core, 8 thread i7-7700k, which to date has been a strong favourite for high-end gaming setups.

The performance of the 8400 is genuinely pretty stunning for a processor that just about costs less than AMD’s cheapest six-core Ryzen 5. Then there’s the fact that it’s capable of delivering gaming frame rates that are higher than either the i7 7700K and i7 7800K.

Paired with a gtx 1080 you will have no problems gaming at 1080p and 1440p for that matter. You have to remember at 1440p the graphics card is what counts, and at 1080p the i5 8400 holds its' own against a much more expense cpu. Here is a comparison with the 7700k which also would be fine with a gtx 1080. And the i5 8400 costs a lot less.