PC Gamer Presents - PC Hardware Handbook - May 2018

INTEL CORE I7-8700K

http://www.intel.com £400

Ladies and gentlemen, we give you Coffee Lake, Intel’s mainstream retaliatory blow to the

might of Ryzen. A second optimisation of Intel’s 14nm process, but is it enough to beat back

the big red beast?

With Coffee Lake, we think it’s fair to say that

tick-tock is dead. Coffee Lake’s main focus is to

bring the fight back to multi-core mainstream

dominance by the inclusion of two additional cores

across the vast majority of its range.

And for the most part it succeeds. The Core

i7-8700K now features a hefty six cores and 12

threads, the Core i5 has six cores and six threads,

and the Core i3 comes with four cores and four

threads. And that’s about it, there’s little else

new so far as architecture is concerned. Just

higher stock clocks and more cores. And to be

frank, it’s an effective mix.

The Core i7-8700K is a potent computational

part, still dominating in single-core performance,

yet its true potential lies in multi-threaded

applications, with it seeing a 50% performance

increase in both CineBench and our X265

benchmark tests.

BASE/TURBO CLOCK: 3.7 GHZ/4.7 GHZ / CORES/THREADS: 6/12 /

LITHOGRAPHY: 14NM / CACHE: 12 MB / MEMORY SUPPORT: 64GB DDR4 @

2666 MHZ / MAX PCIE LANES: 16

CPU

1

HOT HOT HOT

More cores and a

poor TIM between the

IHS and the CPU die

means that to get the

most out of it, you need

to delid the device.

2

GAMING

Thanks to that

single-core prowess, the

i7-8700K is the best CPU

we’ve tested when it

comes to gaming.

3

OVERCLOCKING

We managed

5 GHz at 1.3V with ease,

seeing load temps

increase to 80°C, and

performance matching

Ryzen’s best equivalent

component.

4

DELIDDING

Intel still refuses to

solder its processors.

Temperatures can drop

by up to 20 degrees with

delidding and better

thermal paste.

85 %

Hardware

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