CURRENTLY SOLD OUT
 | Shop by category |
{"delay":300}
|
Current slide {CURRENT_SLIDE} of {TOTAL_SLIDES}- Best Selling in CPUs/Processors
Current slide {CURRENT_SLIDE} of {TOTAL_SLIDES}- Save on CPUs/Processors
Current slide {CURRENT_SLIDE} of {TOTAL_SLIDES}- You may also like
I'm a renderer and a gamer, so wanted something which was the best of both worlds. I wanted a 7900X but decided to see, for a few hundred more, if I could go nuts with a second hand 7960X. What a monster. Even with windows set in "balanced performance" mode, this thing is noticeably faster than my last rig (2600K overclocked to 4.5Ghz) doing single threaded work. I was planning on overclocking it, but not sure if I need to. My GTX680 is now the new bottleneck with heavy video rendering. In Windows 10 Balanced mode it sits all cores at 1.2Ghz when idle, 2.8Ghz when a little bit busy, and easily full throttle to 4.4Ghz on 2 cores (or 3.6Ghz all cores) when doing something strenuous. The most strenuous thing I did recently was a 6GB exe file winzip compress, with munched 100% CPU and all 32GB of RAM (nice to see all resources being used), and it did it in under a minute, which would have taken my last machine 5-10 mins to do. Runs surprisingly cool and draws only 26W when in balanced power mode at idle. Obviously it rockets when you do anything strenuous. Cooling wise, I'd recommend an AIO waterblock as it turbo's so aggressively it requires the heat to be taken away quickly and efficiently. I'm using a Kraken 62 and it's as cold as an iceberg. It is rumoured to have better thermals than a 7900X because of the larger die-size (spreads the heat out over larger surface area under the heat spreader) which might be true. But it might be more because its clocked lower. I had also read that anything above 20 threads and older apps may not work (20 logical core max). As this has 32 with HT on, and I am an avid user of oldskool programs (including oldskool games like Unreal 1998), I feared I'd be turning HT off. However, with my full compliment of apps and games, I report no issues. Even Unreal and Soundforge XP from the early 2000s (the latter notoriously unstable). The increased CPU PCIe lanes are a godsend for expandability, but make sure you get a motherboard with a sensible configuration of PCIe slots. Motherboard manufacturers still insist in supporting the unpopular KabyLake-X CPUs, which causes the designers to do things a little silly with CPU PCIe lane slot configuration, and often makes for awkward placements of GPUs if you don't want the heatsinks covering up valuable CPU-driven PCIe slots. What I'm saying is, plan your PCIe configuration before buying the motherboard (Gigabyte have done this a little bit on my Designare EX, which is a shame). With X299 mobos you also often have 1 slot less than mainstream processor boards, as the 8 memory channels and lower CPU position take up space. Something to consider. Back to the processor; absolutely nuts, worth the money if you're going to make use of all 32 threads. I will say this now, if all you want to do is play games, don't waste your money. These are hybrid server-class CPUs which have been modified by Intel to be the best of both worlds (single & multi thread) but you really don't need any more than 8 threads if you're gaming. Streaming however, and VR, are other matters which you may want more than 8 threads for.... 5/5, money (for me) well spent. What a beast.Read full review
Verified purchase: No
