20 Best Cpu For Socket 1150 (2023 Updated)

I’m sure that if you get an i7-4790 processor, any customer, gamer and worker alike would love the product. However, i had a wonderfully odd experience with this product. The core came in the proper packaging, undamaged, installed perfectly fine.

The actually writing on the core was indeed i7-4790, so everything stated this was the right product. Make sure you check what you have after getting your pc running. I made that mistake. Despite everything saying that this was an i7, and feeling comfortable making that purchase, the actually core, despite all the writing and packaging is actually a pentium g3258.

I don’t know what went wrong, but when i started downloading more taxing games like the recent gears of war, and titan fall 2, the games wouldn’t run, even though an i7 should be perfect. Turns out i’ve had a pentium in disguise this whole time.

Good times. Outletpc has been helpful, saying that they’ll provide a partial refund for the product, and i understand that, but just a word of warning if you purchase this. I think i might be the only one this has happened to so no worries.

I ran amd before all this and never had this type of problem, so maybe it was just a freak accident on intel’s manufacturing end. Cool. I’m suffering for my errors now, just don’t make the same mistake as me and believe all of the wordings on your packaging and processor.

It might just be wrong.

I received what I ordered in a reasonable amount of time. Tracking information was sub-par as it never actually updated after going to “Shipment Information Received” two days after ordering. I received it within a week of submitting my order.

Tracking info still doesn’t say it has been delivered and it’s been here for a few days already. As for the CPU, I had the old one out and the new one in with the system up and running within a half hour.

Took longer to blow out the dust at the beginning than it did to actually pop off the cooler, swap CPUs, add new paste, and reinstall the cooler. Seems to be working fine a couple hours after install.

Ran some higher loading programs and it handled them fine.

An easy and low cost upgrade option during the global hardware shortage. This was the fastest CPU I could fit in my current PC without replacing the motherboard. The i7 gives me a 20% performance boost over my old i5, which is pretty good for the money.

I’d rather be buying a new PC, but this will keep me going until the supply picks up and I don’t have the feed the scalpers.

Still a really good processor. In some areas like gaming, it outperforms later release CPU’s. It is forgiving, runs at cool speeds even when overclocked. Personally, I have overclocked one of my 4790k to 4.

5 GHz on air (Hyper 212 Evo), though I mostly run at stock speed (4. 0 GHz). It runs office apps with no issues and is still a great choice for a workstation build and with a good graphics card, gaming.

This little CPU is priced to do a budget gaming build. Personally, it has been my favorite processor since it first appeared on the market in 2014. That’s longevity when current trends call for a new CPU/chipset annually.

It’s the fastest ddr3 cpu ever made, and there isn’t really much else to it. Is it worth picking up in 2018? Well, the closest modern equivalent to this processor is the i5-8400, which scores almost identically overall on passmark and gets very similar results of the 4790k on various benchmarks, with a slight edge to the 4790k in most single core tests and a slight edge to the 8400 in multi-core tests.

By slight edge I mean a +/- 5% difference. 2 extra cores, newer revisions of various features including turbo boost, ddr4 memory, and 4 generations of architectural improvements and several transistor shrinks weren’t enough to bring Intel’s newest mid-range offering ahead of this aging flagship.

If you are still sporting a Haswell i3 or locked i5, the i7-4790k offers a substantial gain in performance, and should seriously be considered with the RAM market being as it is. It could comfortably be paired with a 1080 ti and play any of the newest games, and for productivity you aren’t going to do better for your money if you’re sitting on a lower end haswell system already.

Even if you just had a good amount of ddr3 lying around and wanted to build a cheaper used system from scratch, the 4790k should be near the top of your considerations. There is little sense in paying full retailprice for this chip, as they are built like tanks and there is little risk in purchasing them used.

The i5-4460 is a powerful CPU. It’s not as powerful as Intel’s i7, but I usually choose the i5 because the price/performance ratio is excellent. Most workstations that I build will not be focusing on heavy processing, but they’re for average offices or homes which sometimes need power.

I’ve built hundreds of computers, and even chose the i5 line for my last personal gaming machine because games are more dependent on GPU (graphics processing unit). Over nearly two years of using it nightly, I’ve never felt the need for more CPU power.

If money isn’t an issue and you just want the best, go for an i7, or an i9 in the latest generation. If you want a really powerful processor for a general home or office computer, or a budget gaming computer, I recommend the i5.

Even the i3 is great for most work situations, especially when paired with a solid state drive and plenty of RAM. The CPU cooler that comes with this unit is OK. It’s long-lasting, with average or standard performance.

I prefer inexpensive aftermarket air coolers for myself, but stock (included) coolers have always been perfectly adequate for all of my business customers and standard general-use home computer customers.

I have installed this refurbish CPU to my HP PC to upgrade it from i3 to i5. Works like a clock! Just like a “plug and play” thing. And in my case, it kept my Windows 10 Pro digital license activated and linked to my MS account.

Very happy with this upgrade !.

For most single player gpu bound games, general work (web browsing, hd movies, Netflix, youtube music playing), this old core2quad’s still get the job done fairly well. If you have a great motherboard that does ddr3 and can overclock, id say keep the platform.

I upgraded because of instability, lock ups and stutters while playing games was ruining my experience. If you especially want to play MMORPG RTS and play competitive multiplayer games this i5 will definitely do fine.

While from my benchmarking I didn’t see too much of a difference, I think if the graphic settings were tweaked, the i5 would see more gains. Also having a higher minimum frame rate really improved my overall gaming experience.

Plus my system is very cool and superquiet (now with my new Corsair Carbide Spec 01 case!) compared to my old Lenovo q6600 rig that was like a jet engine space heater! If you can spend the money and play online games and just do general work don’t render, i5 otherwise if you render go fx 8 or a i7.

Highly recommend this CPU if upgrading. Update all board drivers and bios if you have any issues. I was having a problem transferring files at first before updating. Now I can transfer a 7G file in about 45 seconds.

The product was new but not in the box as shown but that’s not an issue.

Even with only 4 cores/threads it plays top games very well with a modest overclocking. My system is actually bottlenecked by the rx580 graphics card at 100% load with this processor at about 50% load on most games I play.

Not buying into the ryzen FAD!! Look at benchmarks. These can be had used for half a new AMD chip that is comparable. And, you can keep using that ddr3 ram. With a 120mm AIO, these cpu runs at very acceptable temps.

It does thermal throttle with aida64 after 10mins, but not other stress tests. A 240mm radiator with a proper water block would let this chip sustain 4. 8ghz all day. Likely even surpass 5ghz. Depending on the rest of the system.

Not a bad CPU. This thing likes to get hot without heating up my H100i’s coolant, as there’s a large (25-30*) discrepancy between core temps and coolant after hours of load, which suggests that intel hasn’t really “fixed” the heat transfer issue.

It stays below 65* even @ 4. 5Ghz and 1. 26v despite this, though. Unfortunately this did not come without several re-applications of thermal paste even though I know what I’m doing when it comes to computers.

I’ve found that the best way to get passable temps for me is to put the thermal paste on in a vertical line, which I think is the shape of the Haswell CPU die. Could be remembering wrong. However, the temp.

spikes I was having before that could be partially attributed to my H100i needing some washers between the backplate and motherboard. It’s not a huge upgrade from AMD, though. If I hadn’t come upon a dead motherboard in my room the other day I don’t think I’d have made the platform switch.

Alas, I decided to try something different. It’s worth the $100 extra for upgrade-ability and efficiency combined but not for raw performance. However, I do really like Intel’s screaming single core performance.

Certain games do run better now because they only were able to partially use AMD chips. Bottom line: It’s probably worth the money unless all you care about is raw performance. You’re paying somewhat for the name, but that’s gonna happen.

It’s awesome with my GTX 970 and I can see this combo lasting for quite a while.

My build details are below. I can’t stress enough that this is an awesome CPU for gaming without a doubt. I was thoroughly impressed to be able to go from 3. 5GHz stock to 4. 7GHz at 1. 31V. My system seemed stable at 1.

3V but I decided not to push too hard. I was able to get 4. 8GHz at 1. 35V but it only marginally increased my benchmark performance while increasing temperatures from 60C max at load to about 70C at load, something I wasn’t comfortable with doing long term.

Considering that few people have reliably pushed the 4770k/4790k beyond 5GHz, and that this requires at least 1. 4V, I see no reason to spend the extra $100 for a gaming PC. This thing runs flawlessly, and paired with my 840 EVO SSD, my PC loads before the windows symbol can even finish forming for the first time.

Restarts literally take a combined time of 8-9 seconds. I cannot recommend this chip enough for people looking to upgrade their gaming or even video-editing PCs. This is the last big chip before the 14nm change next year, and DDR4 RAM is going to cost a pretty penny, so I would recommend investing in this chip.

What you may save from a similar AMD chip (FX8350/9370/9590) you will lose in overclocking capability. My Build: -i5 4690k @ 4. 7GHz, 1. 31V -MSi z97 Gaming 5 Motherboard -16GB Corsair Vengeance 1600MHz RAM OC @ 1866MHz -Samsung 840 EVO SSD 500GB -Western Digital Green 2TB 5400RPM HDD -2x MSi GTX 760 OC Edition 2GB in SLi -Corsair CX750M 750W PSU -NZXT H440 Case -Corsair h100i Closed Liquid Cooler in push-pull with 4x SP120 fans.

Firstly, if you are considering this CPU at the time of writing, and have a Z97 or H87 chipset, I may suggest waiting about a week and getting the 4690K for around the same price. Should also note the 4690K has advertised support for VT-d too, and is rumored to be using a better thermal compound in-between the CPU die and IHS (for better temperatures).

I upgraded from a Phenom II X3 720 (unlocked to X4 @ 3. 2GHz) and an ASRock 970 Extreme3 R1. 0 board, so in that regard, the 4670K is a really nice and noticeable upgrade. I overclocked my 4670K to 4.

0GHz across all cores, with a cache ratio of 40. Vcore voltage is 1. 2V. YMMV. My environment consists of an ASRock Fatal1ty H97 Killer, a CM Hyper 212 Plus (using Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound with the dot in the center method), and a hec 585W PSU (about 3 years old).

That PSU in-particular only has a 4-pin CPU connector, which I can confirm is enough to reach the above clock speeds (anything higher isn’t ideal temperature and stability-wise in my setup). My GPU is a MSI R7850 PE 2GD5/OC @ 1GHz core clock, at 1600×[email protected]

So about the lack-of VT-d, it seems relatively common that Intel strips certain virtualization features from their unlocked CPUs. I was interested in trying out some GPU-passthrough and virtualization.

Considering my old setup met the requirements to do the passthrough (IOMMU), I thought it wouldn’t be a problem with way-newer Intel hardware. Needless to say, I was rather surprised by the lack-of that feature.

As for why Intel does this, it seems to be mostly speculation, but an idea is to just keep their non-unlocked CPUs relevant. And as for a temperature note, it seems Intel chose to use a cheap thermal compound in-between the CPU die and IHS (the top cap you sit the heatsink on; note the die is significantly smaller than that area).

Previous CPUs by Intel used solder, which transfers heat from the die to the IHS far more efficiently. There’s no official-word for the reasoning as far as I know, but there are two ideas: – Due to the die manufacturing process, using solder and having temperature changes would cause the die itself to crack under stress from typical usage scenarios (would be bad for PR and the RMA department).

– It’s cheaper to use thermal compound over specialized solder (this wouldn’t surprise me coming from Intel). And on-top of the cheap thermal compound, the IHS is secured to the PCB via thick glue. Because of this, the IHS and die don’t come in-contact with each other as close as they can, which then leads to poor heat transfer.

You can attempt to fix the temperature situation yourself via “delidding”, but be very aware of the risks of doing so (one wrong scratch on the CPU die and it’s likely done), along with accepting loss of any warranty.

It cannot be stressed enough; do your research before even thinking about trying delidding! The risk is well worth the reward in some cases though (significantly lower temperatures, thus more O.

Was easy to install and a nice upgrade in speed compared to the origial celeron CPU. It does however have some HDMI (GPU) problems now and then, probably to do with the CPU heating up too fast. Cooling solutions are not easy to change due to the nature of the CPU being for mobile use.

And yes replaced the cooling paste and cleaned it before so. it is a heating solution configuration issue. Needs some tweaking and modding. :P.

First off, I don’t pretend to be an expert on the subject of CPUs the way some people are – I mainly take the word of other people here and Tom’s Hardware who know more about these things than I do. The biggest reason I bought this chip over the 3570k is that someone suggested the 1150 socket type might see use in the future, where the 1155 is pretty much dead.

I’m really not sure this is true – you’d probably want to research more on your own. That having been said, this chip is most definitely a huge upgrade over the oooold dual-core CPU I was running and in that respect, it’s a winner.

My hesitation in not giving this 4 or 5 eggs is that I think I might have done a little more research before jumping on the 4670 bandwagon. I originally was thinking of getting an i5 3570 and from what I’ve seen, you might want to consider this too, but please, don’t take my word for it.

This chip has 2 significant drawbacks I’m aware of: 1) It runs pretty hot when OC’ed 2) It doesn’t seem to OC particularly well to begin with. I don’t really know how well an OC’d 4670 benchmarks against an OC’d 3570 at a higher clock rate, though, so the inability of most of these chips to go above the 4.

3-4. 4ghz range could wind up being a wash. I got an EVO 212 cooler and cranked it the processor up to 4. 5ghz and something stupid like 1. 4v, before gaming for a couple hours. The chip stayed under 90C for a couple hours of punishment, but the next morning it started blue-screening, and I was able to replicate those results with some Prime95 stress tests.

Ultimately, I had to dial it back to 4. 3ghz and 1. 2ish volts. Good enough, I suppose, but nowhere near the 4. 6 or 4. 8ghz some people are getting from their chips. Not all 4670s are created equally, I suppose.

Overall, I’d say I’m fairly satisfied with the choice I made, but I might have done a little more research before buying this one first – I might well have chosen differently if I had.

No hesitation in recommending this CPU at all. Runs everything (1080p for me) at Max settings with all ray tracing features turned on with an RTX 3060 just about flawlessly (occasionally needing DLSS just to smooth things out).

It’s a shame this CPU doesn’t come without on board graphics as the built in GPU hardware isn’t really up to scratch though it is better than previous generations. Those interested in overclocking or having E-cores (for production or content creation) should go for the K or KF variant (which doesn’t cost much more) as this base CPU doesn’t support much in the way of overclocking.

You can tweak the base clock a little and some (though currently very few) motherboards with external clock generators will let you muck around with some other settings that may prove useful to overclockers but otherwise this is a very solid chip.

It’s worth noting though that the cooler that comes with it is terrible and you’ll definitely want to get an after market one. I bought the Noctua redux with this that keeps it running idle at about 35° and it rarely tops 60° when gaming.

Upgraded from a i5-6400, Huge improvment. Before I wasn’t able to run Warzone and discord together, running virtual machines was slow aswell and gaming performance was potato reaching up-to 100% cpu utilisation on every triple A level game titles which left no room for my PC to work on other tasks.

Paired with a 3060ti, the 6-cores and the increased instruction per clock (IPC) now allows it to carry out tasks without a CPU bottleneck, as of early 2022 it runs every game perfectly without an issue.

The stock cooler isn’t great when the CPU reaches 4ghz+ you’ll be reaching high of 70 degrees (Very Hot) with the fan speed maxed out which can be annoying as its very loud and without proper airflow (which is a must) can heat up and even melt your side panel.

One way to solve that would be to get a custom air cooler or lower the maximum processor state that way it will never reach 4ghz but it be a lot quieter and still give great performance. If your going with a 3rd-party cooler with this CPU and have good airlfow, then I reccomened it, however if you’re on a tighter budget than I reccomend the 12400 as a better value for money option.

I bought the i5 12500 for my new PC. It really fits in that ‘performance at an affordable price’ range that Intel seems to nail with their 12th gen i5 chips. The stock cooler is a little bit weak, with the CPU reaching 60 degrees C under full load.

While this CPU can boost all the way up to 4. 6 GHz, you will only see this on single-thread workloads. At 100% CPU with a multi-threaded workload, my personal experience is the chip will hit 4. 08 GHz and stay there reliably.

Overall I’m pretty happy with the i5 12500, and it serves my gaming and workload needs just fine.

My first build in a long time. Read a lot of reviews on here and other sites which helped a lot. What I ended up going with is as follows, and is all worked well IMHO, with all the parts fitting like they should and working like expected.

I7-4770K Asus VI Hero MOBO N82E16813131989 RipJaws memory F3-2133C9D-16GXH N82E16820231571 Cooler is a NH-U14S N82E16835608041 Fractal R4 case N82E16811352021 PSU is a SeaSonic G Series SSR-550RM N82E16817151119 SSD 840 Pro 256G N82E16820147193 HDD 3T, 7200 N82E16822148844 Video Card MSI GTX760 N82E16814127745 Notes, The ram fit just nicely in front of the of the rather large Noctua cooler.

The RAM heatsinks do miss the shroud of the CPU cooler. The cooler fit easily into the R4 case and the PSU has tons of power for everything. I wanted a Gold PSU and one that was not so big that I was always running a 5% of rated power.

FYI, With a Kill A Watt meter (these measurements are without video card, using I7 for video) on the power bar, the PSU draws (input to PSU) about; 35 Watts with computer doing minimal tasks (idle) like websurfing and typing reviews.

90 Watts max when running the WEI benchmarks. This was a decent improvement over my old Opty 185, plus this system goes in and out of sleep very well. With router DIR655 (5W) and SURFboard cable modem (5.

1W), 24″ monitor (43W), the computer and peripherals seem to surf the web (idling) at about 103 Watts. During a load, like the benchmark, it jumps up to about 155 Watts. When it putts itself and the monitor to sleep I read about 21.

8 watts to the PSU. This idle power on this computer is about 75W less than the one I replaced, and it will go to sleep properly, so some nice power saving if you care about that. Now with the video card I see a max draw of about 280 Watts (total with monitor and everything else) when playing the free game that came with it (AC4).

So, I was worried about the 550 W being too small, but after taking measurements, I am no where near drawing even half what this power supply is rated at putting out. A quick estimate is this PUS is drawing about 207W (280-43(monitor) – 30 (modem, router, speakers)), if eff=85%, then the output is only about 175W, still lots of PSU left,,, cool, & quiet.

Happy with it. May overclock a bit, as everything is 7. 9 except CPU is 7. 8, so for fun will want to see all 7. 9. Game plays much better with video card, it was not that good with just on board. Plus the MOBO had one video out, and wify wants two monitors for her work,, I missed that when I switched from the Sabertooth to the Hero MOBO last minute.

The Sabertooth has 3 outputs, this one only has HDMI out,, thus the video card. but the game is kinda cool, LOL.

The chip arrived promptly in oversealed packaging. The CPU lid is scuffed in the upper right quadrant, probably from an overtightened heatsink. Aside from the slight damage, the lid was rather clean of defects and remaining thermal compound.

Installation was easy on a Z97 board. I was not able to achieve a stable overclock past 4. 0 gHz on this chip, (which is dissapointing) however this could very well be do to my own limited experience.

Otherwise the chip runs fine at stock and OCd to 4. 0 gHz.

The one I got turned out to be a decent mid-range overclocker as I was able to get 4. 4GHz stable with Gskill Sniper memory at 1866. Never had temperature issues, just flat out instability above 4. 4 GHZ, but hey: That’s still almost a 30% OC! Had to push cpu voltage up to 1.

295 -just under the 1. 3v ceiling where Haswell starts to really heat up. Memory rated for 1866 @ 1. 5v needed a boost to 1. 52 volts to stay stable but it has been running 24/7 like this for almost a week now.

I do have an H110 mounted in the top of my Corsair C70, pulling air through the radiator and exhausting out the top of my case. Glad I got that because temps have been very good. Also have four intake fans (2 front, 2 bottom) and one rear exhaust which give the C70 great positive air pressure (side panel vents taped up with clear packing tape.

) At stock clocks idle temps are in the mid 20s, and overclocked to 4. 4 running benchmarks temps never go over 80c. That’s a win as far as I’m concerned. System: Corsair C70 ASUS Z87-Pro (V Edition) i5 4670K 8GB G-Skill Sniper 1866 Sandisk Extreme 240GB SSD MSI R9 270X OC Gaming I replaced a Core2 Duo e6870 (Couldn’t even get a 10% OC with that) and am very pleased with the Haswell i5, especially since the ASUS MB can access all of its overclocking potential and tweak every little thing the processor has to offer (which is a lot.

) All games so far are on max or ultra graphics settings. This processor compliments a good graphics card very nicely.

The I5-4670k is still a great processor for gaming. The 4670k is about 8-15% slower than the I5-6600k if you look at benchmarking websites. The 4670k has an unlocked multiplier like all k Intel processors.

If you plan on overclocking the 4670k watch the temperatures, for the 4th generation processors run a bit hot side compared to previous generation Intel core i processors. For this reason, I would recommend a good air cooler or an AIO liquid option to get the best overclocking results for this processor.

My 4670k I stable at 4. 7GHz @ 1. 230V with an evo air cooler. I see temperatures within high 70s when running a CPU benchmark. (Please don’t input my results into your system you can DAMAGE your system if you don’t know what your doing).

(cont’d) Another myth that needs busting is tdp, these cpus have a 10w higher 10tdp then last gen. THAT DOES NOT MEAN IT USES 10w MORE THEN THE LAST GEN. In fact haswell is more power efficient then ivybridge if u check the reviews.

Heres the definition of TDP: “The thermal design power (TDP), sometimes called thermal design point, refers to the maximum amount of power the cooling system in a computer is required to dissipate. The TDP is typically not the most power the chip could ever draw, such as by a power virus, but rather the maximum power that it would draw when running “real applications”.

This ensures the computer will be able to handle essentially all applications without exceeding its thermal envelope, or requiring a cooling system for the maximum theoretical power” What this means is the more tdp, the more heat/power headroom it has, which translates to better overclocking.

WHICH IS A GOOD THING. Another thing I noticed about this cpu is that it generally hits a wall at 4. 5ghz (atleast the average silicon) which scored it a 9. 8 in cinebench r11. 5, the 4820k (ivybridge-e) hits a wall around 4.

8ghz (thanks to many improvements to its internal heatsink and larger tdp, and much lower temperatures) but score a 9. 4 in cinebench r11. 5, even though it is using quad channel (dual channel is fine, memory clock above 1600mhz MEANS NOTHING unless you are overclocking stuff u shouldnt touch).

So the z87 platform has much more value. Hyper-threading, what is it and should you be getting a i7 over a i5? My answer: go for the i5, save $100 bucks, get a nice ssd/gpu/cooler. UNLESS You LOTS of video editing, media conversions, archiving, and all that other good stuff.

Or if your just looking for a excuse to get a i7 (my case lol) and want to future proof for then next 6 years (good luck??? well, the struggle is real people). OK now to explain hyper-threading. Hyper-threading is not doubling your cores.

You are adding 4 “logical cores” or rather each of your 4 cores get 2 threads each. You will get UP TO 30% more performance in multi-threaded applications THAT actually use more then 4cores/threads. Remember, A logical core is not a physical core.

Having hyper-threading can turned on can actually hurt performance because of “resource contention” (basically a processing collision) but newer cpus have great schedulers so the impact is almost nonexistent.

With hyper-threading on, each core will show the OS itself as 2 cores, and lets it analyze its work load and handle it more efficiently (in a nutshell) and is kept more busy (doing more work). with ht turned off the system will try to make best use of the 4 cores and spread the work out efficiently.

I hope this helped you decide what you want, and hopefully it wasn’t too much to read. Don’t mind the typos! It was a lot to type. Source: I like to researcher and learn this stuff on my spare time and i had also worked as a computer service technician and salesperson at a electronics and com.

Ok so I initially review the CPU as 5 stars, and I stand by that for an average user. When using the 5 way optimization on my Asus Z97-A motherboard, I was able to manage a “software” overclock of about 4.

3ghz. I am also running 16GB Mushkin Redline DDR3 2400 RAM with the XMP profile selected. This worked great. I did not record temperatures but had the stock CPU cooler. Manual overclocking on the other hand was underwhelming at best.

Now I am new overclocker, but I researched and used the tutorial on ASUS youtube channel (the one where the guy does something like 4. 8Ghz). So I followed the video and was only able to get a stable OC @ 4.

2GHZ using 1. 2v (manual and adaptive were stable, so I stayed adaptive). I am also using a Cooler Master Hyper N520. My idle temps are 38-40C and with the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility my temps are about 90C, Prime95 is 100C.

During gaming (Assasins Creed Unity, GTX 780 in SLI) I stay 58-65C. When I tried to overclock higher it was a complete failure. I couldn’t get even 4. 4GHZ to pass 1-2 minutes of Intel’s stress test before getting BSOD.

I tried voltages up to 1. 325 before giving up, even at 1600mhz memory clocks. Even if I got it stable my temps would have been insane. Yes I could get a better cooler, yes I know Haswell CPU’s run hot, but I think my chip is on the lower spectrum of overclock ability.

The stock cooler will keep it cool just fine if it’s not being overclocked, and it is installed correctly. Don’t remove the thermal paste because it is a high grade thermal compound, and it will work really good.

Now about the stock coolers that come with the processors. There are three manufacturers of the Intel cooler that I know about. Delta, Nidec, and Foxconn. All these make Intel part number E97378-001 with copper core, and Fleabay is flooded with them for cheap, so shop around because some sellers think they are made out of gold.

Ok, now it’s time to cherry pick the best. My i5-4690K came with the Nidec, and the total weight was 194 grams. Nidec is the worst of the bunch because the PWM fan profile will cause the fan to ramp up to full speed during boot up which is annoying.

My first choice would be the Delta, and a lot of these are available because at least some of the Intel anniversary g3258’s had this cooler. The total weight is 240 grams, and fan does not ramp up during boot.

Second choice would be the Foxconn with a total weight of 214 grams, and the fan does not ramp up during boot. When you read reviews here on NewEgg that the stock Intel paste is bad, it’s just not true because I know for a fact from my testing that it is just as good or better than Arctic MX-2 and Prolimatech PK-1.

The chip is fast. I’m not even gonna touch on that because if you are getting this you already know. What I will touch on is the overclock ability of the chip. It is really the luck of the draw when it comes to overclocking.

Either you have a very well optimized chip that will let you go far on a low Vcore, a standard chip, or a bad OC chip! I think I am in the standard range. NO MATTER WHAT I DO I CAN’T GET THIS TO 4. 5GHZ It is a pain.

I have gone up to 1. 27v (the min so my system will run 4. 5ghz) and while it runs, it runs rather warm because of my cooler H60. It will get up to the high 70s and low 80s at that voltage on OCCT stress test.

That, even for stress testing, is too much for me and prefer under 75 while stress testing. DO NOT USE PRIME95 WITH HASWELL. YOU WILL KILL YOUR CHIP FAST AS PRIME95’s LATEST VERSION IS NOT THE BEST FOR THIS CHIP Use the Intel one or OCCT.

Trust me, I was able to push this chip to a stable 4. 4ghz with a 1. 24Vcore and as a first time overclocker, I got to say it was very easy. Just a little nail biting when you start but after 20 BSOD you start to realize that nothing worse than that will probably happen.

I tried to set it to 4. 5ghz with a 1. 200Vcore and I had to Clear the CMOS because it would freeze in the bios. Have fun because this chip is great! My idle temps at 4. 4ghz and 1. 24Vcore are low to mid 30s and while stress testing, Max of 72c.