Are you looking to build your next PC with the Intel i5 13600K, but don’t know what parts to choose? Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered with 4 PC builds at different price points all featuring this 14-core chip.

The Intel Core i5 13600K is a versatile chip – compared to 12th gen Intel CPUs, it has the best of all of them. It can play games like an Intel Core i9 12900K and handle productivity tasks like an Intel Core i7 12700K, all while consuming power like an Intel Core i5 12600K.

So whether you’re looking to build your next PC for gaming or work, I have you covered.

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Comparison Table

Best Budget Intel i5 13600k PC Build

CPU: Intel i5 13600K | CPU Cooler: Thermalright Peerless Assassin | Motherboard: MSI Pro B660M-A Wifi DDR4| RAM: TEAMGROUP Vulcan Z 16 GB RAM | Storage: Crucial P5 1 TB M.2 NVMe SSD | Video Card: Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 6700 XT | Case: Deepcool MACUBE 110 Micro ATX | Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA 650 GT

We will begin with a more budget friendly PC.

Starting with our ultimate budget build, I wanted to strike a balance between not spending too much or too little money. At $1000, you are spending just the right amount on an Intel Core i5 13600K build that can handle anything you throw at it, while still being affordable.

Starting with the motherboard, I paired the 13600K with the ultimate budget champion board – The MSI Pro B660M-A Wifi DDR4. It is one of the best cheap boards for LGA 1700 and will not let you down if you don’t have a budget to spare for a more expensive motherboard.

Do be mindful thought that this is a B660 motherboard so it will not support overclocking and you will need to update the BIOS before using it.

Whenever someone asks me for the cheapest possible board that is actually good for intel 13th gen processors, I recommend the MSI Pro B660M-A WiFi without skipping a heartbeat. 

This board supports DDR4 RAM instead of DDR5. That’s why for RAM, I recommend the TEAMGROUP Vulcan Z 16 GB RAM kit. It has 2 sticks of 8 GB DDR4 RAM clocked at 3600 MHz with a CAS latency of 18 ns. In general, no PC in 2023 and beyond should have less than 16 GB of RAM and thankfully DDR4 kits have become very affordable and a perfectly viable option for those who cannot upgrade to DDR5 just yet.

For those looking for the best air cooler at the lowest possible price, look no further than the Thermalright Peerless Assassin. Do not underestimate this air cooler at all because it can even cool the Intel Core i9 13900K without breaking a sweat. It is almost always under $40 and has become the spiritual successor to the Cooler Master Hyper 212. 

Do note though that you will need an adapter for LGA 1700 to make the Peerless Assassin compatible with the 13600K which goes for around $7 to $9. Even at this price, it matches or outperforms coolers that are twice as expensive as itself. 

Just like air coolers and RAM, SSDs have also become incredibly affordable in the past few years. For the storage, I went with the Crucial P5 1 TB M.2 NVMe SSD. At around $50, we can now get a PCIe Gen 4×4 M.2 NVMe SSD that has a 1 GB DDR4 cache. Thanks to the cache, this SSD isn’t slowing down easily and will load your games at blazing-fast speeds.

Speaking of games, for around $300 there are plenty of options to choose from for a GPU. After looking at all of them, it is clear that the best bang for the buck GPU right now is the Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 6700 XT.

Compared to every other GPU in this price range, it has 12 GB of VRAM instead of 8 GB. Only the RTX 3060 has 12 GB but is significantly slower. The RX 6700 XT on the other hand can even outpace the RTX 4060 Ti. Initially, I was going to either recommend the AMD RX 7600 or the RTX 4060. Sadly neither of those two GPUs can hold a candle to the 6700 XT.

To house the entire PC, I chose the Deepcool MACUBE 110 Micro ATX case. It strikes a great balance between low price and good build quality, which is hard to come by at under $50. It’s easy to work with thanks to ample space and excellent cable management routing through the back along with a separate PSU shroud to hide the cables completely.

Speaking of PSU, powering this system is the EVGA SuperNOVA 650 GT. It’s a fully modular 650 W 80+ Gold Certified unit that will easily handle this build for years to come.

In conclusion, this PC is going to be perfect for 1080p gaming with high framerates while giving you decent 1440p performance.

Coolers, RAM, and SSDs have seen a dramatic fall in price with a sharp increase in performance which helps to put together a powerful PC that doesn’t break the bank.

At $1000, this is one the fastest bang for the buck PC in 2023 and will last you a very long time with plenty of room for upgrades. 

You can check all the components mentioned in the description.

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Best Mid-Range Intel i5 13600k PC Build

CPU: Intel i5 13600K  |CPU Cooler: Deepcool AK620 | Motherboard: Asus TUF Gaming Z790-PLUS WiFi | RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws S5 | Storage: Crucial P5 Plus | Video Card: Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 6700 XT  | Case: Corsair 4000D Airflow mid-tower ATX | Power Supply: Corsair RM750x

Next we have a mid-range PC with a budget of around $1300

Before I begin telling you the parts I chose for the $1300 build, I want to preface by saying that when I built the first 13600k PC build for $1000, it already had a good foundation in terms of raw performance.

Now I had to make a choice – for the extra $300, do I simply upgrade the RX 6700 XT to the RTX 4070 and call it a day or do I upgrade everything else, like the cooler, motherboard, RAM, SSD, PSU, and case?

Spoiler alert – I upgraded everything else.

The RX 6700 XT, even in a $1300 build represents excellent value as it is still one of the best 1080p and 1440p gaming cards with a price to demolish every other card in this price range.

I kept the Sapphire Pulse RX 6700 XT because the only suitable upgrade over the RX 6700 XT is the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070. I chose not to go with the 4070 because upgrading the GPU while keeping everything else the same would yield diminishing returns and upgrading the GPU down the line is much easier when you have a well-rounded PC in the first place.

First of all, I upgraded the motherboard from a B660 board to the Asus TUF Gaming Z790-PLUS WiFi. It’s only fair that the Intel Core i5 13600K is paired with a Z790 motherboard which will allow us to overclock the CPU and give us more features than standard B series boards.

Among all the Z790 boards, the Asus TUF stood out as the obvious choice because it’s got everything you could ask for while being around $250. The Asus TUF Z790 comes with a lot of goodies like a 16+1 phase VRM, Thunderbolt port, 4 M.2 slots, and a total of 8 rear and 7 front USB ports. For any budget, this board is really hard to beat.

The Asus TUF Gaming Z790-PLUS WiFi supports DDR5 RAM and for a $1300 budget, we can easily treat ourselves to a 32 gig kit of G.Skill Ripjaws S5. It features 2 sticks of 16 GB 6000 MT/s RAM with a CAS latency of 30 ns. You should be building a new PC in 2023 with DDR5 because it’s the way forward and prices have gone down significantly.

Next up, we have the Deepcool AK620 to cool the Intel i5 13600K. It is currently the best-value CPU cooler because of its capacity to go head-to-head against more expensive AIO water coolers.

You can be at ease of mind because the Deepcool AK620 can even cool the Intel Core i9 13900K all while costing around $60. You won’t need to buy an adapter separately because it is included with the AK620.

As for storage, I went with the 2 TB version of the Crucial P5 Plus. It comes with a 2 GB DDR4 cache and can read and write data at over 5 gigabytes per second without slowing down.

To power the entire build, I chose the Corsair RM750x (2021). It’s a fully-modular 750 W unit with an 80+ Gold certification which gives the entire PC ample headroom to overclock the CPU, as well as an upgrade path to a more power-hungry graphics card in the future.

Finally, the case gets a really big upgrade. Everything will snuggly fit in the Corsair 4000D Airflow mid-tower ATX case. Some may call it boring, but I call it dependable. It’s large enough to fit any ATX motherboard and even large 360mm AIO coolers.

To sum it all up, for a budget of $1300, we can take a pre-existing $1000 PC with great performance and remove the compromises we made earlier to get a more well-rounded PC.

You can now get a PC with fast 32 GB DDR5 RAM, a 2 TB Gen 4 NVMe SSD, a better cooler, a much bigger case, and a stronger power supply.

All of these upgrades will make a powerful an future-ready PC.

Check This Out: The History of Motherboards: Evolution Over the Years

Best High-End i5 13600k PC Build

CPU: Intel i5 13600K  |CPU Cooler: Deepcool LT520 | Motherboard: MSI MAG Z790 TOMAHAWK WIFI | RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws S5  | Storage: Samsung 980 Pro or Crucial P5 Plus  | Video Card: MSI GAMING X TRIO GeForce RTX 4070 12 GB | Case: Fractal Design North ATX Mid Tower Case | Power Supply: Dark Power 13 850 W 80+ Titanium

Let’s move now to a higher-end 13600k PC build with a budget of around $2000

For $2000, my goal was to build a PC that can not only play games at ultra settings in 1440p but also be a powerhouse 4K video editing and 3D rendering machine.

This is also one of the most beautiful PC builds that I have ever put together but don’t let the form fool you. None of these parts are outrageously expensive and they all deliver incredible value at their respective prices.

Feels like Christmas morning.

Let’s start with the MSI MAG Z790 TOMAHAWK WIFI. This is currently my favorite Z790 board that’s affordable yet packed to the brim with features. It’s an elegant 6-layered PCB that does everything for around $250. Powering the CPU will be the 16-phase VRM sitting underneath a large heatsink.

The I/O and features on this board are excellent; you get 10 rear USB 3.2 ports (8 type-A and 2 type-C), an HDMI port, a DisplayPort connector, a CMOS clear button, a BIOS flash button, a 2.5 GbE port, and a full array of audio jacks powered by the Realtek ALC4080 audio codec. The motherboard also comes with WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, 4 M.2 slots, and 4 RAM slots.

For the RAM and storage, I needed to make sure that the budget allows for a lot of RAM capacity and 2 separate drives – one drive for the OS and the other as a scratch disk.

I went with the G.Skill Ripjaws S5 64 GB kit which comes with 2 sticks of 32 GB DDR5 6000 MT/s CL30 Memory.

As for storage, it’s hard to go with anything other than the Samsung 980 Pro or Crucial P5 Plus.

So for this build, I went with both!

You can choose which to use as the scratch disk and which to use as the OS drive. I’d personally use the Crucial P5 Plus 1 TB SSD for OS and applications while the Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB is ample for storing games and to be used as a scratch disk for large projects.

Speaking of play and work, my GPU for the this $2000 build goes to the MSI GAMING X TRIO GeForce RTX 4070 12 GB. It has CUDA to accelerate supported apps like the Adobe suite and has advanced features like DLSS 3.0 and best-in-class ray tracing performance for unmatched gaming performance for $600.

It keeps up with the RTX 3080 in games and can work as fast as the RTX 3090 in productivity apps all while drawing a mere 200 watts of power at full load.

I promised you this PC would be beautiful and this graphics card is a sight to behold.

But the next two products are downright gorgeous yet practical and affordable at the same time. I am of course talking about the Fractal Design North ATX Mid Tower Case and the Deepcool LT520 which will be cooling the CPU. Both of these are undoubtedly the prettiest parts of the entire computer. 

The Deepcool LT520 is a 240mm AIO cooler that can even chill the Intel Core i9 13900K at full speed. It comes with 2 included 120mm fans and the cooling block has a lovely glass LED cover.

As for the Fractal Design North, it is everything you could wish for in a case all at once – spacious, beautiful, and affordable.

The most striking feature of the design is the wooden front that serves as the intake for two included 140mm fans with dust filters. You can choose the case either in black or white and either a tempered glass side panel or a mesh side panel.

Lastly, when it comes to power supplies, I never compromise and neither does be quiet! with their Dark Power 13 series of power supplies.

Powering this behemoth is the Dark Power 13 850 W 80+ Titanium certified fully-modular ATX 3.0 power supply which includes a dedicated 12VHPWR connector. This way, we won’t have to use the included adapter with the RTX 4070 and the power supply is completely future-ready.

All in all, at $2000, you can easily build a no-compromises gaming and editing PC. You can choose whatever parts you want to your heart’s desire, but it can be easy to spend money on the wrong parts.

Different builds have different needs, however, I meticulously chose parts that make sure they are going to be top-notch today as well as serve as a strong foundation for upgrades in the future.

Most people building a PC at $2000 are not just building a PC for gaming. It needs to be ready for demanding tasks like 3D rendering or AI training for those who want more from their computers.

Look to These Z790 Options:

• Z790 vs B760 Motherboards – Which Should You Choose?
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Best Mini-ITX i5 13600k PC Build

CPU: Intel i5 13600K  | Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix Z690-I Gaming WiFi | RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws S5 | Storage: Samsung 980 Pro  | Video Card: Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 6700 XT  | Case: Fractal Design Define 7 Nano Mini ITX Tower Case | Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS Plus Platinum 650 W

My last PC build is for those who love small factor PC builds

I love small form factor PCs as they can be powerful yet small enough to carry around with you wherever you want to take them. The problem is that ITX machines get a bad rep for being more expensive and hard to cool while finding the right parts small enough to fit into ITX cases can be harder to find.

Don’t worry though, because I have the best combination of PC parts for an ITX build with the 13600k that will be easy to build and will not cause any hassle down the line when you decide to do some upgrading. 

I am so confident that you will like this PC that I am telling you right now that this ITX build has a full-sized ATX power supply instead of a Small Form Factor power supply.

But before that, let’s start with the motherboard. I paired the Intel i5 13600K with the Asus ROG Strix Z690-I Gaming WiFi. Asus knows how to make the best ITX motherboards and the Strix Z690-I continues this tradition by giving us beefy VRMs and plenty of features.

The RAM I chose is the G.Skill Ripjaws S5. In particular, I chose the 32 GB kit that comes with 2 sticks of 16 GB DDR5-6000 CL30 memory.

For the GPU, I chose the Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 6700 XT for its excellent gaming and productivity performance. RDNA 2 GPUs proved to be much more power efficient than the Nvidia RTX 3000 family of GPUs and it fits perfectly in an ITX without worries of overheating.

For storage, I went with the Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB M.2 NVMe SSD. It’s a powerhouse and one of these will be perfectly fast and stable thanks to its 2 GB DDR4 cache.

Now for the part that makes it all possible – the Fractal Design Define 7 Nano Mini ITX Tower Case. It is sleek, stylish, and easy to build in while costing just around $100. The Define 7 Nano can accommodate all Mini ITX and Mini-DTX motherboards meaning that space will never be an issue.

This does make it slightly larger than other ITX cases like the ever-popular CORSAIR ONE i400, but the slightly larger size gives it an unfair advantage over other ITX cases. The best advantage is having a separate PSU shroud like full-sized ATX cases means support for long high-wattage full-sized power supply units. No more needing to find the right Small Form F power supply that will fit in your ITX case and have sufficient wattage.

I chose the SeaSonic FOCUS Plus Platinum 650 W. It is a fully-modular 650 Watt 80+ Platinum certified full-sized ATX power supply unit that will easily fit inside the Fractal Design Define 7 Nano.

To summarize everything, you don’t need to worry about anything when building a small form factor PC these days. With so many options for parts, it’s easy to get confused.

You just need to choose the right type of case and the rest of the system will be as easy to build as a full-sized ATX PC.

ITX PCs are also just as affordable as ATX PCs if you make the right moves, for this PC build the estimated cost is $1400.

Check Out Other M-ITX Options Here: The Best Mini ITX Motherboard!

Conclusion On the Intel i5 13600K Builds

To conclude, building a PC in 2023 with the Intel i5 13600K as its heart offers versatility across various price points. From budget-friendly to high-end, there’s something for everyone. 

Whether you’re a gamer or a professional content creator, this guide showcases builds that can handle demanding tasks without compromising on aesthetics or breaking the bank. The world of PC hardware has never been more accessible, and with parts like these, the future of computing looks incredibly promising.

Remember, investing in the right components ensures that your PC is not only powerful today but remains relevant in the years to come. So, take your pick from these builds, get crafting, and unlock the true potential of the Intel i5 13600K!

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Konstantinos Chiotis

Combining a passion for tech and enthusiasm for games sparks dedication. Striving to learn the ways of new technologies and discussing components such as motherboards, GPUs, and processors in detail is a part of Konstantinos's life. These factors are what drive him to write eloquently on hardware comparisons and reviews. Most importantly Konstantinos is a PC builder since he was 14years old and he has been in the tech industry for more than a decade and that is what makes him stand above in the realm of PC gaming and hardware.

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