Intel 7th Gen Intel Core Desktop Processor i7-7700K

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.

The I7 7700k is a great CPU. It’s expensive but worth every penny if you are one with overclocking in mind. I would say that an amd chipset like a ryzen (comparable cost) is perhaps a little more bang for your buck, especially at higher resolution gaming but the intel I7 7700k does this as well and does it at a high level. One huge complaint with this chip is the heat. Now this issue comes only with overclocking. At stock speeds you might get heat jumps of 10c but generally it stays cool enough for this to not matter. If you plan on overclocking (why not) this is were I have seen temps that can become frustrating. A jump in temperatures of 10-15c when your temps are already elevated is not a desired thing. This CPU is better ran with liquid cooling to get its full potential and a lot of people buy the rockitt 88 kit to de lid their CPU to get a better TIM seal. This does void the warranty. Overall a great CPU just keep in mind that you need to take extra precautions with cooling as the I7 7700k is a fire breathing dragon

I like it very much. This is the fastest CPU that will fit in my Gigabyte Z170x Gaming 5. Overclocks just fine from 4.2 GHz to 4.7. The only thing to note is that the Kaby Lake runs at a significantly higher temperature than other CPUs in this generation: 50C (med) to 70C (heavy), but don’t be alarmed, that’s normal for this particular processor. Also, if you’re running an NVidia graphics card (using GTX 1060 SSC 6gb), opt to offload the PhysX processing from the GPU to the CPU and you will get even more performance out of it.

Pros:
– This processor is fast. I’ve had a 4770K and it would only go up to 4.1 GHz. Anything above that and it would crash. This processor is overclocked to 5 GHz and I can tell in all my games that they were smoother. Frametimes were noticeably better than what my 4770K gave me.
– Glad that they stopped putting the stock cooler with this CPU. You need a great CPU cooler if you’re going to buy a CPU of this caliber anyway. You need to be able to keep it cool so that it won’t throttle.

Cons:
– TIM used was crap. I had to delid this CPU and put liquid metal to drop temps. They could have soldered this chip for better temps, but no. Intel could have really done better with this one, but they decided not to.

This processor really performs. I built my pc before I had my graphics card, mainly to install all my games and software that I use. I used to play League of Legends and CS:GO alot on my old pc, and because it has a older dual core processor and no graphics card, I would get 48 frames on average in League of Legends and about 18 frames on average in CS:GO. This processor, on the same low settings, will get a solid 180 fps in League of Legends and between 80-120 fps in CS:GO. And that’s only at the stock clock, I didn’t really stretch my overclock on this card, I only have it overclocked to 5ghz, but I with that I’ve noticed faster load times in various programs and some fps increase on some games. This processor should be a cheaper option to good performance, compared to current pricing of coffee lake. Would recommend this processor, or the new coffee lake processors, assuming this performance is carried over and the bonus of the extra 2 cores on coffee lake.

Pretty awesome little chip, i jumped from the amd fx series to this monster. I’m in love. Pissed that it only over clocked 4.8mhz. Other than that its a beast no lag.