4 of 5 Stars – Value for the Money
There is little headroom on increased speed and the price to get there is higher than previous generations. If you aren’t planning using Windows 10 – Kaby Lake will not support previous versions of Windows natively (There may be work arounds but…) It’s worth noting, this version does not come with a Stock Fan, so you will need to buy a 3rd party CPU Cooler for it.
This System Build
i7-7700K
ASUS ROG Maximus IX Hero
Corsair Hydro Series H115i Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
nVidia GTX 1080Ti Founders Edition
G.SKILL TridentZ RGB Series 16GB
EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 G2 PSU
Corsair Graphite Series 780T Full Tower
Windows 10 Home
Getting to 5.1Ghz
I updated my ASUS BIOS to the newest version
I used the ASUS Windows app AI Suite 3 to stress test the system to its Max stable performance. It actually did a very good job. I rebooted Windows, (hiit F1) entered the BIOS and saved the OC settings into the ASUS BIOS Profile. This saved a lot of time doing manual settings in the BIOS first, then running stress tests.
Temps
My Temps Idle speed 28-30C – Under Load 70c-73c
Kaby Lake CPU’s run warmer under load – but should Never exceed meet 80c Max temps.
I never run my older Intel CPU’s beyond 60c as stability couldn’t be insured. All my OC’d PC’s are still running 9 years later. With that said, Kaby Lake CPU’s run warmer. I have not experienced instability under Max load with the i7-7700K.
Pros
The i7-7700K can be overclocked to a stable 5.1GHz with water cooling
Cons
You need to run Windows 10. Although some online forums offer work arounds to this limitation. Is it worth it to run into issues down the line.
The speed performance premium may be too high for some.
Other Thoughts
Consider that I still run two i7 2600k systems I built in 2011 (running at 4.8Ghz) on Air Cooling, The stock speed of a i7 2600k is 3.4GHz – The i7-7700K runs at 4.2GHz and requires water cooling to get to 5.1GHz. The headroom for increased speed considerably less then it was six years ago.
Conclusion
If you’ve purchased or built a high end PC in the last two years for gaming, there may not be a lot on offer here. A GPU upgrade may deliver more tangible speed results.
If you use applications that are CPU dependent 3D rendering or Video editing, this increase in speed is welcome.
For gaming, nVidia/AMD GPU’s play a bigger role on your gaming than CPU’s once did. If you are buying this for gaming, there are cheaper alternatives. I’ve been running this for 3 days without issues. Games: Doom, Battlefield 1, Battlefield 4, Overwatch ran smoothly, without issues – The water cooling fans kicking in consistently.
