I upgraded from an FX-8320 to this CPU and it SCREAMS. For the cost, I wasn't sure if this was going to perform better than the i7-6700k but I really think it was worth it based on the increase in gaming quality I've seen. But even with the huge increase in performance, there have been some drawbacks, though somewhat minor in my opinion.
I'm going to go ahead and mirror what about half the reviews I've seen here and on Newegg have said; it gets hot. Hotter than it really feels like it should. Some people haven't had issues and I think they've won the Silicon Lottery and I am very jealous of them. I, however, am a huge loser in the lottery I feel. With a Corsair H105 I'm seeing around 36-40C idle temps and at 100% load... Well I can't really tell how high up it can really go because when I fire up Prime95 with small FFT's the temps go straight up to 100C and I have to cancel the test within seconds. When running in-place FFT's I see around 77-80C. Now granted I HAVE had my H105 for around 3 years now so it's possible it's not having fun working with my motherboard or the pump is going bad and I do plan on replacing it soon, but in the mean time I really don't think these temps are normal at all. Part of the problem could be the mobo (
GIGABYTE AORUS GA-Z270X-Gaming K7 Gaming Motherboard LGA1151 Intel Z270 2-Way SLI ATX DDR4 Motherboard
for reference) delivering too much power to the CPU, and some people have said that driver updates fix this problem and I really should have done that before this review so I will update later if that DOES fix it. Because of this issue I've been unable, out of fear, to overclock at all though I'm sure outside of stress tests I wouldn't have to worry about it overheating much while gaming or day to day use.
The other issue I've had is also related to temperature. While idling I periodically would see vastly different temperatures on each core. And when I say vastly, I mean the difference between Core 0 being 35C and Core 1 being 65C. This would happen randomly when running programs OR idling and would lead to a huge annoyance; my case fans turning up to compensate for just a few seconds then winding down. Not the biggest annoyance but I've heard others talking about this and I believe I've found a solution. After disabling the onboard graphics, the mobo option to deliver power to it was still set on. Using the Gigabyte App Center utility Easy Tune I turned it down and am no longer seeing this issue, so yay for that.
Overall I'm very pleased with this product, despite it's temp issues. These issues may seem huge but in all honesty I never see temps higher than 65C while doing anything other than stress tests and my problems could stem from mobo issues but none of these have caused me to regret my purchase. I struggle whether or not to rate this at 4 or 5 stars due to my issues, but mine aren't as extreme as I may have portrayed them and most others don't seem to be experiencing this level of temperature and that leads me to a solid 5 star review.
| Processor | 4.2 GHz core_i7 |
|---|---|
| Memory Speed | 4200 MHz |
| Wireless Type | 802.11b/n/ac |
