Intel Core i7-6800K, 6 Cores & 12 Threads Unlocked X-Series Desktop Processor

Overclocks like a champ... to a certain point. Compared to the 4790K this replaced, it wasn't able to overclock as high, but is far more efficient with each core. I found it was extremely stable at 4.4 GHz on 5 cores and 4.3 on the worst of six cores all while pushing just 1.385V. More on the favorite cores below. At stock frequency, this isn't the most impressive CPU. However, with the help of a motherboard with an overclocking socket and extra pins making contact with the CPU, I found that I could push this processor to 4.5Ghz on the favorite core and 4.4Ghz on the rest. However, I had to give the CPU 1.522V. Well above a 24/7 overclock should be. You may get lucky in the silicon lottery and get a CPU that can overclock higher, but at least 70% will be able to reach 4.3 Ghz on all six cores. New to Broadwell-E is the addition of the favorite core feature to new motherboards (or a Bios update to older 2011-V3 mobos). The favorite core is marked with an asterisk on my Asus sabertooth X99, but on my previous MSI motherboard, I found which core was favored over the others. In my case, core 0 was the favorite followed by 5, 2, 3, 1 and 4. This is extremely helpful when overclocking as each core requires a different voltage to achieve the same clock. The amount of voltage to get to 4.0 Ghz was just above the base clock voltage. As each core was pushed higher and higher, the voltage needed to be bumped up at an exponential rate. 4.2GHz at 1.2V, 4.3 at 1.385, and a stable 4.4GHz needed 1.5V. The safe voltage according to my motherboard is less than 1.4V, but with a good AIO or custom loop, the CPU can be pushed past 1.45V with no worry of thermal throttling. Even with a master cooler hyper D92, this was able to get up to 4.2GHz at 70 C at 100% load.

Building a computer for photo/video editing but trying not to break the bank I waffled back and forth and settled on this processor over the more expensive, more core options.I have no regrets. The 6 cores have consistently plowed through everything I've thrown at it. I'm a hobbyist so i'm not doing this as a 40 hour a week job, this may not hold up for that purpose when shaving 30 seconds off a render time might or might not matter.Pros:6 cores28 PCI lanes (M.2 ssd's and anything plugged into your PCI express slots use these) right off the bat you lose 16 to your graphics card, leaving plenty for a second card at 8x and an m.2 ssd. Or go with one GPU and a couple of m.2 etc etc.Cons:none (keep in mind if you NEED more cores, you can get them in other processorsBottom line:if you are building with a budget and need more than 4 cores this is your processor, its fast and fun and gets the job done

I'll be honest - I'm probably not going to make the best use of this CPU's potential, but this is a chip I have been looking forward to for a while. I bought this to sort of future-proof my rig. It's not the best bang for buck chip on regular price. Thankfully it only costed me $30 more than the price of a 6700K.The chip works out of the box and seems to perform as well as I could expect it to. It is keeping respectable idle and load temperatures (with a Corsair H115i cooler) on stock so far. Have not had issues streaming Battlefield 1 on max settings to Twitch, no issues with video editing on Adobe Premiere. I also intend to fold (F@H) with this chip. Have not overclocked or benched it yet but will return with results. Looking forward to 4.2GHz.

It does as it should. Let me go over a couple things with someone looking to buy this.IF you are purely getting this for a gaming core, don't waste the extra money. While this core will game and game amazingly. Over clock potential is very low, I had trouble getting it to 4.3Ghz stable feeding it a lot of vcore and it putting out a ton of heat. You can easily do a 4.0 clock on it with minimal vcore and heat. It seems to hit a wall at about 4.1Ghz. But I found that overclocking gave almost no difference in performance and just wasted electric/heat.So at stock frequency this thing under a hyper evo 212 idles at 20c and max load is around 40c. That's really low for a processor with 12 threads. Electricity draw for the core itself is around 60 watts at load. Great work horse, it can easily transcode plex and encode in handbrake at the same time.A great purchase.