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135299
Prior to purchasing this processor I owned the Haswell i5 4570 and honestly I have not seen much of a difference in performance between my old Haswell i5 and my new Devil Canyon i7. Game wise, CPU intensive games like Planet Side 2, Day Z, Crysis 3, etc runs just about the same on both processors. Many people have said that the big differences over the i5 lies in applications like video editing, etc. so that is something to consider when deciding. That said, if you already have the previous generation Haswell processor i5 or i7 then the new Devil Canyon processor is not worth the upgrade. If your doing a new build or if you have a processor over a couple of generations old then by all means I am giving the i7-4790K two thumbs up!
Con's: Even after overclocking I could only muster a 7.8 on the Windows 7 experience index.
I would recommended this chip.
After installing it in my new motherboard (Asrock z97 Fatal1ty) and 8 GB of ram (I know, not much but enough to make it run), i got windows 7 ultimate installed and everything seemed to work well. I should mention that I used the stock cooler that came with the processor (which are usually known to not be great, but usually they work well enough). At one point, I decided to head into the bios and make sure everything checked out correctly. That's when I noticed the processor temp. It was idling at around 40-45 C!!! I thought that it seemed a little strange and I wanted to try pushing the processors and see where the temperatures would level off at.
So I downloaded a tool called Core Temp to monitor the processor temps from within windows. Then I downloaded Prime 95 and tried running a stress test to see where the temps would go. Immediately after starting the test, the temps jumped to 75C (within a second or two) and after about 4 seconds I was getting warnings about the CPU temp reaching dangerous levels. I quickly stopped the stress test.
This got me thinking, I wonder if I didn't seat the heat sink down properly. After checking the heat sink I decided it was down completely and I turned the computer on again, only to see the same extremely high temps. At that point, I decided to remove the heat sink, clean off the stock thermal compound and apply arctic silver 5. After re-installing everything and turning the computer on, the temps seemed about 10 degrees cooler all around. Unfortunately, about 10 seconds in to the Prime 95 stress test, the temps jump up to 80 + degrees. Still too hot for my comfort. I've read quite a few reviewers that said they overclocked to 4.5 and 4.6 GHz on just the stock cooler so I'm not sure why mine is running so hot.
Despite the processor running this hot I still gave it 4 out of 5 starts for the value at the given price point. Stock coolers tend to be okay at best and perhaps my processor just runs a little hotter than most (or maybe all the 4790Ks run hotter) but this is a problem that is easily fixed by buying an aftermarket air cooler. I've ordered the Cooler Master 212 EVO which is a beast compared to the stock cooler. I have no doubt that installing it will drop my temps down at least 20 degrees under load (maybe more). It only cost about 30 bucks and I don't consider it a huge problem (hence only dropping 1 start off the processor).
I just wanted to post some temps of my processors here for other people to see so they have something to compare their processor to. If yours is running hot like mine, try a different aftermarket cooler like the cooler master 212 EVO (or many others out there). If I remember, I'll try it out and come back to update my review with the temps from the new heat sink.
One last note, my processor was made in Vietnam and the numbers on the processor are: SR219 X432A796. It was purchased in October of 2014 for any who are interested in which batches are being sold now.