Honestly, a big improvement from my i3 12100 processor. I am impressed with the power being utilized/drawn by the processor for normal day to day activities. It is efficient, and thus you can cool it with an air cooler. I am using a Cooler-Master Hyper 212 Black Edition to cool it, but I am using the cooler with Noctua NF F12 fans (push-pull config) just in case the processor starts to stretch out with that delicious violent performance. It's a beast, I love it! Just passop, raptors are wild animals. Use a good AIO for peace of mind if you want to OC.

Very good Cpu for gaming and other tasks. highly recommend.

I upgraded from a stalwart Intel 4th gen Haswell 4790k i7 CPU, which worked wonderfully well past its sell-by date. I am simply blown away with this CPU - its single core performance is easily twice as fast and multi core is completely off the charts. It hardly breaks a sweat during even the most demanding CPU-intensive games, like Read Dead Redemption 2 and keeps the framerates sky high. It all but eliminates stuttering across the board. Still cannot believe it is an i5! The only caveat to this is that it runs quite hot - temps remain below 80 degrees with the DeepCool AK620 in extremely hot climate, though. It is also quite thirsty, obviously so I would recommend a PSU of 1000W. I get the impression my old 850W is barely keeping up.