Life after the i7 2600K

In 2011 I built a gaming rig based on the i7 2600K that ran (mildly overclocked) at 4.2ghz. After 3 years, the usual lifespan of a decent gaming machine, I was looking at the possibility of an upgrade but in truth there was nothing out there below £300 that would offer substantial gains. By the end of 2016 the it was still difficult to say that even the i7 6700 was worth paying the money for if you already had a 2600K, but the newer architecture supported faster memory and delights such as m.2 SSD drives. I didn't build a new machine because I needed more processing speed than I already had but because I wanted to take advantage of faster storage and faster memory. I could've spent extra on the i7, but reliable reviewers seemed confident this CPU could overclock to 4.6ghz without too much trouble and having never really felt the benefit of hyper-threading I figured I'd save a few £'s and get the i5 6600K and put the extra cash into a better graphics card than I had budgeted for. My fear was that it wouldn't feel as fast as my old i7, especially in gaming. Before the build, I ran some benchmarks on the 3 games I have played the most at 2560x1440 with the i7 2600K (at 4.2ghz) and a GTX 970 vs the i5 6600K (at 4.6ghz) and a GTX 1070, at the same resolution. The power draw was obviously lower with the new i5 but the faster DDR4 memory and high-end GTX 1070 meant that I have enjoyed an average framerate improvement on Star Wars Battlefront, Far Cry 4 and GTA 5 of around 30% at very high or ultra settings. Desktop applications run absolutely fine, even the horribly-optimised Adobe Premiere Elements 15. It runs cool, quiet and even three hours into a gaming session the fan is only blowing out warm air, not hot as the 2600K even with a very good water cooler. My new machine has 3 fans but they don't need to work very hard to keep things cool. Given you can pick one of these up new for about £180 if you shop around now the Kaby Lakes are out, there can't be many better purchases, bang for your buck, when it comes to a new CPU to build a machine around. If money's no object, of course you go i7, but this CPU is no slouch, especially when it runs cool and quiet at 4.6ghz if you have a good cooler (on that, spend the money, it's worth it). There are some benchmarks where the trusty old i7 2600K can still beat this CPU, but unless you're running software that can take advantage of the hyper-threading, this is a pretty sweet CPU for your above-HD gaming rig. There's still not much out there below £2000 that can do 4K gaming justice, but at WQHD, this CPU will deliver if paired with a decent GPU. I have no regrets buying it.Read full review

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