[O/C]Intel i7 2600K (Sandy Bridge) Review

[hokiealumnus]

FYI, I rigged up an old school Thermaltake Big Typhoon with just a high speed Yate Loon and load temps at the stable speed in the review (4.3 GHz @ 1.312Vcore loaded) were in the mid 60°'s (C) range.

 

[deathman20]

FYI, I rigged up an old school Thermaltake Big Typhoon with just a high speed Yate Loon and load temps at the stable speed in the review (4.3 GHz @ 1.312Vcore loaded) were in the mid 60°'s (C) range.

Nice... cool runners. Well its nice to have a 95W TDP, makes it that much easier to cool when OCing.

 

[hokiealumnus]

Haven't had a chance to run gaming tests but I did run Vantage & 06 with an overclocked 6970, which scored 24617 and 30844, respectively with the CPU at 4.5 GHz. It sure kicked the snot out of the 4.0 GHz i7 870 runs from the 6970 review.

I'm just amazed by these chips. They run REALLY cool, clock insanely well on air, whollop anything but hex-core Intel chips clock-for-clock.... if you don't need sub-zero performance or additional tweakability, I really don't see anything better.

 

[Brolloks]

Go get them guys on Sunday
http://www.microcenter.com/storefronts/powerspec/index.html

 

[hokiealumnus]

Wow, I can't imagine how many of those things Microcenter bought to give that deal. Intel's official price for the 2600K is $317 per CPU for 1000. They're selling them at $369.99-$90 instant walk-in rebate for $279.99. That's just crazy. I'm glad there isn't a microcenter anywhere near me. I'd go bankrupt!

 

[EarthDog]

LIkely taking a loss... Most people dont just buy processors, you have to buy mobo's and ram, etc so that is where they are making it up I would imagine. Not to mention, Im sure they buy more than 1k of those for all their tores.

 

[GoD_tattoo]

Spoken to the manager on several occasions, and they state that they do take a loss on the CPU's.. I have one within 45min...But no money....

 

[Brolloks]

The sales tax is 7.5% but even with that it will be by far the best prices...gotta love Microcenter.

Frys will price match too if that is closer

 

[deathman20]

Wow, I can't imagine how many of those things Microcenter bought to give that deal. Intel's official price for the 2600K is $317 per CPU for 1000. They're selling them at $369.99-$90 instant walk-in rebate for $279.99. That's just crazy. I'm glad there isn't a microcenter anywhere near me. I'd go bankrupt!

Yeah but sort of sad ones not close enough to me where it would be worth while on some occasions.

 

[EarthDog]

I may just buy a bunch and flip them at this price...

 

[hokiealumnus]

Heh, limit oner per customer at MC. You'd be driving a lot.

 

[Brolloks]

They keep your data in their system see they can see if you have bought one already

 

[deathman20]

They keep your data in their system see they can see if you have bought one already

What name or just the CC number?

 

[Brolloks]

Name and Your address

 

[GIXXERGUY6]

Heh, limit oner per customer at MC. You'd be driving a lot.

Or you take more people with you

 

[GIXXERGUY6]

Name and Your address

That's easily remedied with junk name and such when paying with cash!

 

[wingman99]

Why? What do you need 6 and 8 cores for?

The same reason why you need 10-15% increase in performance for bragging rights.

 

[Techboy10]

Thanks for the MC link!! Looks like I'll be driving down to Boston/Cambridge on Sunday to pick up my new processor + motherboard and maybe a gpu while I'm down there haha.

Now the big question: i7-2600k @ $280, or i5-2500k @ $180. The i7 would be better for me since I'll be doing HD video editing/rendering but I'm not sure if its worth the price difference. The i5 is just so freaking cheap!!

 

[David]

From the reviews I've seen, Sandy Bridge kicks butt in gaming benchmarks. Even the i5 2500K version is excellent and does almost as well as bigger brother i7 2600K. The real difference is the i7 verson has HT enabled for a total of 8 threads, where as the i5 don't.

Here are my thoughts. If you already have a 1366 socket i7 like the 920, you certainly have a good system and don't really need to upgrade (although for most things it still is an upgrade). The high end hex core CPUs are the only thing really giving Sandy Bridge a run for the money, but at a much higher cost. For those like me that are stuck in the past and are still running a 775 socket, well the Sandy Bridge looks pretty awesome and would definitely be a worthy upgrade.

This seems like a nice concise summary: not necessarily enough to justify a platform change for those running high-end i7s, but well worth a look for people looking to upgrade from slightly older kit.

PS: Nice to see you around again Either that, or you have been around and I've just not been reading the forums you post in

 

[Prime]

A new challenger has appeared!
http://www.evga.com/articles/00604/