Intel Core i7 5820K Review

Introduction

There are plenty of interesting things about the X99 chipset, not least of which is the inclusion of DDR4 support. If you’ve been looking with envious eyes at the Haswell-E range topping Core i7-5960X but your wallet cannot stand the hit, then like many of us you’ll be casting your glance further down the wealth of processors to find one more suited to your pocket.

Enter the Intel Core i7-5820K.

Naturally when you’re slashing two thirds off the price some things have got to go, and with the i7-5820K the most noticeable thing is two of the cores. This returns to the territory first marked out by the i7-970 and dealt with well in the initial LGA2011 range of CPUs by being a hex core. Six hyperthreaded cores of goodness, but capable of being run in the latest X99 motherboards with their tasty DDR4 memory.

Does it blur the lines between gaming and enterprise solutions or is it a jack of all trades?

Technical Specifications

As with most CPUs these days the two numbers that count are the amount of cores, six, and the speed at which those cores run. Despite plenty of Intel CPUs getting around the 4GHz mark the i7-5820K is 3.3GHz at default, with a turbo of 3.6GHz. We’re sure we can squeeze more out than that, but it’s nice to know what there is at stock.