IntelCore i7 6700K 4.00 GHz Unlocked Quad Core Skylake Desktop Processor, Socket LGA 1151 [BX80662I76700K]

I had an Ivy i-3570k that served me well since February of '13. Had it @ a comfortable 4.2Ghz. Could I have held off 2+ years? Sure. But I thought to enhance the durability for my CPU for an additional 4-5 more years and do a complete build with the works (motherboard, RAM, PSU, SSD's). I completed the build about 3 weeks ago, and I gotta say, OCing this chip manually, I settled on a 4.5 Ghz @ a cool 1.25V with headroom given the new 1000W platinum certified PSU I have with a delicious 12V rail. I messed around and got to a "17%" overclock according to ASUS' BIOS by getting the chip up to 4.7GHZ @ 1.42V. via OCCT, but crashed about 5 minutes in. Some room for improvement, but with a premium cooler (I prefer liquid) and a top shelf thermal paste, temps are a chilly 26°C on idle, 45°C on gaming load, and 60°-65°C on stressing levels (4.5Ghz, mind you).The only con I have of this chip is that it doesn't cook me breakfast! *gigglesnort* Seriously though, if you have the means and the desire, get this CPU and you will not regret it.At the end of the day, to each their own. I upgraded to 'Skylake' out of sheer desire, not out of necessity. You WILL love this chip if you are coming off of anything older than my previous chip (Ivy) such as a Sandy, Pentium, or AMD equivalent processor. I'm delightfully satisfied with this CPU in terms of performance improvements, the hyperthreading (coming from an i5) for multiple app tasks, its overclocking potential, and its temperatures. I recommend it to you without a doubt, as long as your budget can handle the additional required hardware you may need mentioned in paragraph one.My 'Skylake' build specs and some pictures:*CPU - Intel i7-6700K (4.5 for now; not in a hurry to increase it)*CPU Cooler - Corsair H110i GTX AiO Liquid cooler (My H100i broke, I upgraded to the H110i)*Motherboard - ASUS Maximus Hero VIII*RAM - Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 16GB (3000 Mhz)*GPU - ASUS STRIX 980TI 6 GB (OC edition)*Chassis - Corsair 760T Graphite Series (White Edition)*Storage - SAMSUNG 850 Pro 256 GB SSD (Boot drive), SAMSUNG 850 EVO 1 TB SSD, Intel 750 Series NVME SSD 400 GB*PSU - Corsair HX1000i (80+ Platinum Certified) (A bit overkill for non-SLI, but I got a good price for it.)*Fans - Corsair AF120's (x2) and AF140's (x4), White Edition LED*OS - Windows 10 Home, 64 Bit

For the price you cannot go wrong with this. The only issue that I found was that the number of PCIe lanes described in the documentation for this CPU was not enough for what I wanted. The specs say it has 16 lanes, but my video card alone needs 16 lanes. Plus I have an M.2 hard drive that needs 4. I almost didn't buy it, and went with a different CPU and motherboard. But, I did some more research and found that these are just the lanes in the CPU, and the bridge chip has its own lanes. These lanes are really intended for the graphics card only. So, if you look how the motherboard is setup, these 16 lanes go to the first x16 slot intended for a video card. That is how mine is. Then the skylake chipset that is paired with this CPU has 20 more lanes. That is enough for another x16 card, and a x4 M.2 hard drive or whatever. So, you actually end up with 36 lanes of PCIe between the two. Once I saw that, there was no question this is for me.It is a 14nm process, which is one of the newer processes, and it runs at 4Ghz, The CPU is unlocked, so you can overclock if you want. I put on a water cooler and just did some brief checks with OC, and I ran at 4.5Ghz without issue. However, I really don't need it and I don't want to risk burning it out fast, so I put it back to 4Ghz for now. But, I know I can run much faster in the future if I want to.As for specs and performance, this is a middle of the road 4 core, 8 thread CPU. It has the memory controller built in, supporting DDR4 memory, which is what I use, and the performance is just staggering. >34GB/s of memory throughput, that's wild.The CPU has 8MB of smartcache that is shared amongst the cores. This is much better than normal cache, it allows a program in cache to be shared with another core, when the thread jumps to a new core, without copying the data to another location in cache. The performance increase of this small feature is quite large. The CPU has a decent video card built in, but I don't use it. I opted for the Nvidia GTX1080. Combining this CPU with that graphics card, M.2 drive, and DDR4 memory makes this a powerhouse that can stand its own against basically anything. However, the built in graphics do support 4K resolutions, so if you are not playing cutting edge games, or VR, the graphics card built in is probably all you would ever need.Without going into the technical specifics of this CPU, it basically has all the features that you would expect from any i7 CPU. The price, for what you get, is really unbeatable. You can get an i7 with more cores, or cache, but you will pay a large amount more. For 99.99% of people out there this is more than you will need. There is nothing you will get from the CPUs that are 2X+ the price that you will even notice. Just make sure you pair this with a good chipset, like the Z170, and never look back, you will run so fast you won't believe it.My PC runs windows 10. From the time the BIOS screen disappears to when it needs my password is about 3.5 seconds. From hitting enter after my password until the machine is fully booted, and I have full control, no hourglass, etc, is about 2-2.5 seconds. So, I boot in under 6 seconds, basically. That is a full cold boot, not a resume from sleep.Pros: 4Ghz, unlocked and ready for overclocking (use a water cooler if you overclock this bad-boy). 4K graphics built in. 16 lanes of PCIe on board for fast access to the video card. 20 more lanes of PCIe on the chipset, so you can have another 16x video card, and a M.2 x4 drive, or whatever else you might want. New generation cache speeds up thread jumping from core to core. DDR4 memory controller with >34GB/s throughput. The biggest PRO is the price, for what you get.Cons: Would have been nice to have 12MB or more of cache, but the cost would have been significantly more. For the price, there is really no downside to this CPU.

By far the best processor I have ever built with. Not only is i7 leaps and bounds above AMD with instructions/clock and single-threaded performance, but their energy efficiency and low voltage demand make them perfect for overclocking! Do NOT abuse this amazing CPU with an air cooler – you'll be very happy you chose water cooling.With my Corsair H105 cooler, I managed to clock all cores at 5.0GHz with +220-250mV offset, and run the benchmark you see attatched. Temps run in the low-mid 70s C under full load @ 5.0GHz. It handled a 20-minute stress test without crashing, so I consider it decently stable at this freqency, although more abusive testing may be needed to confirm a 100% stable voltage.I was able to achieve and run some tests at 5.07 GHz, but stability isn't great, and 5.10 GHz runs into current limits on my motherboard that I haven't found out how to disable (or whether it's even safe) to push this thing harder. Either way, this is an insane performance processor for the price and power consumption, and I highly recommend anyone with an AMD build or Sandy/Ivy Bridge build to consider a Skylake i7 upgrade.