Intel Core i9-7900X X-Series 10-Core Processor Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

The Intel Core i9-7900X is a priced all over the place. If it’s in stock at the big name stores, you can pick it up for around £949.99. However, I’ve seen it listed on Amazon for almost £1200 directly from Intel, which is just ridiculous. How can there be a £250 pricing difference within one week of launch? Be sure you shop around and get the best deal you can, this processor is expensive enough as it is.

Overview

I normally get straight on with the performance here, however, we need to talk about that price again. It’s common for Intel to launch a £1000 CPU, they’ve been making the fastest consumer processors and are able to charge big money for those who desire it. That being said, for most consumers, the Ryzen 1800X, even the 1700X is looking pretty good right now at less than half the price. In saying that, those who need to do extreme workloads will find a benefit in X299 and the Core i9.

Is performance Everything?

As we saw in our review of the Gigabyte Aorus X299 Gaming 9 Motherboard, which has some other benchmarks of the i9-7900X not featured in this CPU review, it is a fantastic CPU for a lot of things. If I was rendering or doing game development, for example, the i9 is tempting. Time is money, and anything that can get those rendering times down is a big win for any company. You’ll pay up now, but the time saved is as good as cash in the bank.

Gaming performance was all over the place. In some of our benchmarks, performance was amazing, in others, it was behind the last generation a little. This typically happens with any new platform, and we’re expecting a barrage of BIOS updates, software updates and more in the coming weeks and months. No doubt, we’ll revisit this review in the near future and see how things have improved, and they will.

X299 Benefits

Of course, X299 did introduce a few new features for these CPUs, it’s not just the chips. More PCIe lanes are a welcome bonus, and most of the high-end boards have 3 x M.2 drive mounts, Optane support, support faster memory, and so on. If you’re building an enthusiast gaming rig or workstation, all these little improvements can add up to a big benefit.

Overclocking

Credit where credit is due, this chip is very easy to overclock. You can hit 4.5 GHz with fairly manageable temperatures on a high-end cooler in just a few clicks. I managed to get it stable at 4.8GHz, although temperatures were constantly trying to push past 100c, and moving down to 4.7GHz was a sweet spot between extreme performance and blazing temperatures. Heat is not the worst problem to have though, bigger coolers can remedy that, and you’ve no shortage of cooling options on the market. What’s impressive is just how big the performance gains were from overclocking, and that it was able to do so with all 10 cores enabled. Get some water cooling on this beast, and embrace the temperatures for some seriously impressive performance gains. Of course, make sure to keep an eye on your electricity bill, 10-cores running near 5GHz is a real energy burner.

Pros

• Incredible single and multi-core performance
• Very easy to overclock (despite high temperatures)
• 10-Core and 20-Threads
• Price was lower than expected from previous HEDT Intel offerings
• Multitasking powerhouse
• Great for gaming and heavy workloads
• Users LGA2011-V3 Cooler Mounts
• Added Features Courtesy of X299 Chipset
• Fastest Consumer CPU We’ve Tested
• Managed to hit 4.7GHz on air with all cores

Cons

• The price is a real wallet buster
• Very hot, and even your usual 240mm AIOs may not be enough

Neutral

• High power consumption, but more cores and higher clock speeds will do that

“The high temperatures and price may have you sweating, but when it comes to brutish processing power, the i9-7900X excels far better than expected. Highly recommended to anyone that has a need for processing speed.”