IntelCore™ i7-14700K Desktop Processor 20 cores (8 P-cores + 12 E-cores) up to 5.6 GHz

Excellent cpu at a great price and it peforms wel,Higly recommended seller

The Intel 13th and 14th generation i7 and i9 unlocked CPUs have had a difficult time recently due to overvoltage under idle or light load. Hopefully this has been resolved by the microcode updates. Both CPUs have a reputation for being difficult to cool, and requiring AIO water cooling. Get the cooling right and these are still good CPUs for gaming and productivity. The i7-14700K is a good cost / performance mix and works well with Z790 motherboards. Z890 motherboards have a different socket, and no longer use DDR4 and PCIe Gen 4 NVMe. Although I'm not a gamer, my everyday self-build computers are always gaming motherboards with overclocked unlocked Intel CPUs, as they are reliable. I might have been pushing my luck with this build. ROG STRIX Z790-H Gaming Wi-Fi motherboard, i7-14700K CPU with Noctua NH-D15 air cooler and, Team Group DDR5 7200MHz memory. The Noctua heat pipes clash with the VRM heatsink, so the Noctua big cooler has to be swung through 90 degrees: see the first photo. I use the integrated graphics, so the placement of a graphics card wasn't an issue. The second photo shows the UEFI BIOS screen. CPU at 5900MHz, DDR5 memory at 7200MHz, CPU at 39 degrees C, motherboard at 28 degrees C, XMP1 profile enabled. At idle, it consumes around 45 watts; the PSU is an EVGA 650 P2 Platinum rated.Update 20 March 2025It has run perfectly since my earlier review, so it appears that the BIOS update has worked. I forgot to mention that the CPU was mounted with a Thermaltake anti-bending frame, so that may be keeping the temperature lower too. More than happy with the STRIX motherboard and Intel CPU.

This is an amazing chip, good overclocking and performance, that is if Intel and motherboard manufacturers don’t kill it with the bad microcode. But I have been running my one since day one as sensible voltages and clock speed with no issues at all. It’s a good chip just treat it well.

There is no doubt this is a very powerful processor. But beware, even using standard settings (not overclocking) even while completing basic tasks, I initially struggled to maintain the temperature within sensible limits. I had purchased an Artic cooler for £25 but it was totally inadequate. In the end I fitted a Noctua NH-D9L, Premium CPU Cooler with NF-A9 92mm Fan (£50) and now the its fine (although rather more noisy than I would have liked). Having read numerous reports online this seems a common problem.

Great

brought this chip for my new build although it can have the intel self destruct problem heat issues a bios update and intel chipset update fixes these issues and no problems with it at all under heavy gaming

Worked for about 12 hours started giving me errors in unreal games... contacted intel... changed some bios settings... fine for 3 months and now crashing again in all games... intel give me more bios options to change which don't even have the same names in the bios... no offical info on how to change them to what they should be or even what they should be.... massive waste of time and money eventually agreed to rma as obviously faulty and getting worse... should have gone amd. Honestly nightmare to deal with. Just google all the issues with these chips. AVOID.

Functionality, Performance, Value for money combined! Was easy to install and so far touch wood had no problems that relate to these chips so far.