Core i7 4790K Processor 5.0 GHz Review - A Silicon Lottery - Final Words & Conclusion

Final Words & Conclusion

For some purchasing a couple of processors to find the best one with the best yield is a sport. Others just like the gamble, purchase one processor and are fine with the fact that the processor overclocks at 4700 MHz opposed to say 5 GHz, that would be 99% of you guys and girls. Most of us do not want to spend the time and money to find that perfect processor, but would like one. That’s exactly why parties like Silicon Lottery can be of significance. I like the idea of purchasing a processor from which I know for certain that can do say 5 GHz (as it is in our case). Obviously you need to throw in the extra cash for that as the binning process honestly is an expensive and risky task. For each 4790K processor that reaches 5 GHz, likely 10 others won’t, and these lower binned processors have to be sold as well. So props to the guys and small companies doing stuff like this. 

Our experience was good, the overall temperatures when the CPU is overclocked with added voltage definitely was a notch better opposed to the 4770K (which we also never got to 5 GHz). Albeit high, I think that being in the 70~80 Degrees C at 1.35 Volts with a Corsair H110 LCS cooling kit really is respectable if you run 5 GHz. As stated at 1.35 Volts (core) / 1.90 Volts (input) for 5000 MHz on all four cores is 100% stable, but sure temps remain extensive on the package sensor. Devils Canyon needs a lot of voltage to be overclocked and does not deal with heat in the best manner, as such proper cooling is need to accomplish high overclocks.

It is the nature of the beast I guess. What about energy consumption you might wonder. Well, Haswell and its chipsets are energy friendly fore sure, ... just not when you overclock them :)

It's not all bad though, once you increase voltage on the processor and start to overclock, you will nearly double your power consumption. Idle power consumption sticks in the 75 Watts range, however load CPU power consumption makes the system draw just over 230 Watt opposed to roughly 125 normally. Well, that's the trade-off with overclocking.

Final Words

A regular 4790K will cost you roughly 320 EUR, say 339 USD. A binned 4.8 MHz model is in the 375 USD range and the 5 GHz models will pass 400 USD. As such a binned processor is more expensive, but does come with that very nice guaranteed clock frequency. Perhaps if you are in the market for a new system and would like to rule out that your processor is capable of a certain frequency, well that’s where these guys can come in very handy. Currently they are selling 4690K / 4790K and even 5960X processors that have been preselected and tested for you. Go check them out, our experiences with them has been nothing other than pleasant and the product does exactly as advertised.

siliconlottery.com

Definitely recommended.

Handy related downloads: 

• SiSoft Sandra
• AIDA
• CPU-Z
• HWMonitor
  
  
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