2017 will go down as one of the more interesting years in the CPU market. AMD released their Ryzen CPUs earlier this year and now Intel has the brand new Core X Series, which is solely aimed towards gamers and enthusiast. This high-end desktop (HEDT) series is quite interesting as when completely released there will be a total of nine processors, stating with a quad-core Core i5 ($242) and going all the way up to a 18-core Core i9 ($1999). Another new thing we are seeing here is the Core i9 Series, which is reserved for the highest-end Intel processors. Intel will release five out of the nine Core X Series processors on June 26th, and today we have the Core i9-7900X up for review. This processor right now is the current flagship until the other processors come out, and it is quite a beast! Rocking 10-cores, 20-threads, a 3.3 GHz base clock, max Turbo Boost 3.0 of 4.5 GHz, 13.75 MB of cache, 44 PCI-Express lanes, and a TDP of 140 watts. You get all of this for $999. Let’s jump in and see what the i9-7900X is all about!
Special thanks to Intel for providing us with the Core i9-7900X 10-Core Processor to review.
Below you can see a chart of the entire Core X Series processors. The bottom five processors will be available June 26th.
We’ve gone over much of the architectural details on the Core X series and the X299 chipset in an article we published back when everything was announced. Please be sure to check that out if you need any fine details on anything about these processors or the chipset.
Of course we received the processors directly from Intel so we don’t have any retail packaging to show you. If you check out the image below you can see what the boxes will look like. I actually think I like the Core i5 box the best.
The Core i9-7900X just like all of the previous HEDT processors is pretty damn big! It has the large heatspreader we are all used to seeing on HEDT processors as well.
Flipping it over we have a shot of the back, why do new processors just look so sexy?
To run the new Core X Series processors you’ll need a new X299 motherboard. This is because we have a new socket, which is the LGA2066. Slightly more pins than the old LGA2011v3, but it has the same mounts so all LGA2011v3 coolers should be compatible. Our NZXT Kraken X52 had no problem fitting.
