Intel Core i5-9600K Processor Overclocking Review @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

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Nice review, really surprising that the overclocks weren't there.
I know some people were delidding these and gaining some better temps still, the stock tims are better being soldered, but liquid metal has proven to be pretty amazing.

Totally agree anyone holding on to a 1st/2nd gen i7/i5 series cpu will see a very nice bump with this or any of the current second gen ryzen offerings. Not even to mention all the quality of life features of the new motherboards, ram, drives, etc.
 
Dekar12 said:
Nice review, really surprising that the overclocks weren't there.
I know some people were delidding these and gaining some better temps still, the stock tims are better being soldered, but liquid metal has proven to be pretty amazing.
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Not terribly surprised. Several other reviews have basically noted that while the solder is superior to the old TIM, the package ended up getting thicker.

Therefore to beat a 8000 series, you not only need to delid a soldered CPU, but also sand it down. Whereas the 8000 series was a straight delid + LM.

So if you're running stock, great. But if you were a person who liked to delid, it's worse.
 
Thank you for an excellent write up and I find your conclusions to be 100% spot on, albeit with one caveat. As others have noted, Moore's law
becoming less relevant means hardware manufacturers can ill afford to leave as much performance untapped as they did in the past.
Sadly, overclocking is a dying art of diminishing returns and I feel that the effort and risk to the long term viability of your expensive processor
or GPU, (especially in the case of delidding to achieve a paltry 100Mhz gain) is simply NOT worth the minimal gains in performance.
 
Silicon lottery is really a huge thing with these CPUs (9600K, 9700K & 9900K), some will do 5GHz at like very lowly 1.21~1.23v or thereabouts, others need 1.35v(+). I'm scared of this, with my absolutely bad luck I have with silicon lottery I think I'd end up getting one doing 4.9GHz at 1.35v or something like that which is probably way too hot to handle on highend aircooler anyway.

I do have a 8600K today but as the upgrade to a 9700K would be relatively easy and somewhat cheap and the 2 extra cores would come handy in rendering in After Effects in particular.

My 8600K is such a bad sample too, 4.75GHz at 1.32v..... At least my Ram runs at a bit above 3200 CL14 to compensate though. That is also one of my reason I'd like to upgrade, hoping for at least reaching 4.9GHz stable to get my money's or at least my "epeen" satisfied but the somewhat ridiculous pricing is also holding me back right now.
 
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RPGWiZaRD said:
Silicon lottery is really a huge thing with these CPUs (9600K, 9700K & 9900K), some will do 5GHz at like very lowly 1.21~1.23v or thereabouts, others need 1.35v(+). I'm scared of this, with my absolutely bad luck I have with silicon lottery I think I'd end up getting one doing 4.9GHz at 1.35v or something like that which is probably way too hot to handle on highend aircooler anyway.

I do have a 8600K today but as the upgrade to a 9700K would be relatively easy and somewhat cheap and the 2 extra cores would come handy in rendering in After Effects in particular.

My 8600K is such a bad sample too, 4.75GHz at 1.32v..... At least my Ram runs at a bit above 3200 CL14 to compensate though. That is also one of my reason I'd like to upgrade, hoping for at least reaching 4.9GHz stable.
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I wouldn't worry about it too much, even if you don't overclock the chip at all, you will still be getting 90% of the overclocked performance...at some point you have to ask yourself if that extra 5fps is actually worth it.
 
Good stuff! That all core 5GHz for 270 is mighty appealing. I just really don't want to give Intel my money until all the security fiasco is finished. But damn, six cores @ 5GHz for 270.

I notice you have a water block there not being used! I wonder if you cooled down the power regulation if it might yield some more MHz? :)
 
I'm debating between the 8700K, 9600K and 9700K...if the 9700K had hyperthreading enabled it would be a no brainer but as usual nothing is easy with Intel...
 
Great review, thanks [H]!

Need some advice from my fellow [H]orde members:

I've been holding on to my 3770K, and I'm looking to upgrade my MoBo, CPU, and RAM in a couple/few months once tax returns hit my bank account.

I primarily use my PC for gaming at 1080p (144 Hz) with my 980Ti.

Given the ridiculous pricing of GPUs, upgrading that will have to be negated.

Will jumping into a new i7, i9, or Ryzen 2xxxX coupled with DDR4-3200 provide a significant (and I do emphasize this word) performance gain with my current 980Ti at 1080p 144 Hz?
 
DejaWiz said:
Great review, thanks [H]!

Need some advice from my fellow [H]orde members:

I've been holding on to my 3770K, and I'm looking to upgrade my MoBo, CPU, and RAM in a couple/few months once tax returns hit my bank account.

I primarily use my PC for gaming at 1080p (144 Hz) with my 980Ti.

Given the ridiculous pricing of GPUs, upgrading that will have to be negated.

Will jumping into a new i7, i9, or Ryzen 2xxxX coupled with DDR4-3200 provide a significant (and I do emphasize this word) performance gain with my current 980Ti at 1080p 144 Hz?
Click to expand...

Since you're a 1080p high refresh gay, I would say that indeed a 5GHz CPU would be beneficial
 
CAD4466HK said:
Great review as usual Kyle.

Oh and this line here...



It just makes me feel weird and dirty " upgrading" from a i7 to a i5, but that's just me. :D
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Yeah, but also an i7 8700K would be better than this chip, especially if you are like me (or know someone) who already has a delid kit

Just from a thermal potential with delidding the 8700k is better then the soldered 9th gen as a whole
Sad to see I guess, now if Intel would've packed some actual IPC gains in there

Dekar12 said:
Nice review, really surprising that the overclocks weren't there.
I know some people were delidding these and gaining some better temps still, the stock tims are better being soldered, but liquid metal has proven to be pretty amazing.

Totally agree anyone holding on to a 1st/2nd gen i7/i5 series cpu will see a very nice bump with this or any of the current second gen ryzen offerings. Not even to mention all the quality of life features of the new motherboards, ram, drives, etc.
Click to expand...
Quite frankly I think we have just hit the absolute max of clocks using Silicone in general and 14nm in particular (even if it is +++ by now)


RPGWiZaRD said:
Silicon lottery is really a huge thing with these CPUs (9600K, 9700K & 9900K), some will do 5GHz at like very lowly 1.21~1.23v or thereabouts, others need 1.35v(+). I'm scared of this, with my absolutely bad luck I have with silicon lottery I think I'd end up getting one doing 4.9GHz at 1.35v or something like that which is probably way too hot to handle on highend aircooler anyway.

I do have a 8600K today but as the upgrade to a 9700K would be relatively easy and somewhat cheap and the 2 extra cores would come handy in rendering in After Effects in particular.

My 8600K is such a bad sample too, 4.75GHz at 1.32v..... At least my Ram runs at a bit above 3200 CL14 to compensate though. That is also one of my reason I'd like to upgrade, hoping for at least reaching 4.9GHz stable to get my money's or at least my "epeen" satisfied but the somewhat ridiculous pricing is also holding me back right now.
Click to expand...

HT and SMT does wonders for rendering as well ya know
 
Thanks for the review, I just purchased one last weekend.

Overclocking is a bit disappointing, but hey I'm stuck with it now. Hopefully I get lucky, I'd like to stick with air cooling.
 
Alakar said:
Thanks for the review, I just purchased one last weekend.

Overclocking is a bit disappointing, but hey I'm stuck with it now. Hopefully I get lucky, I'd like to stick with air cooling.
Click to expand...

If you can notice the difference in real world gaming between 5 and 5.2 ghz I'll buy you all the beer you can drink. We've pretty much been at a wall for ipc since sandy bridge, and have seen some incremental improvements over the last few refreshes. To make you feel better, it doesn't look like Intel will be releasing anything anytime soon that would make this a 'bad' purchase in hindsight, so enjoy your process and watch it chew through all the games you can find.

May I ask what you moved on from for this upgrade?
 
I ended up buying an i7 9700k. I doubt it will show me much over the i5 9600k in gaming, so I probably paid too much. Then again, it never hurts to have two extra cores, and a few extra MHz as well ;)
 
I'm still bouncing back and forth between this, the 9700k, 8700k/8600K and the 2600X for a gaming machine. I'll most likely still be debating it well after I finally get around to buying and assembling it all, even if I'll probably never notice the difference in the real world.
 
Thanks for buying a 9600k so you could tell us like it is Kyle. That thicker silicon is a bit of a disappointment and muddies things up. I had expected the dead cores to help with overclocking, but not with your sample, at least.

Maybe once non-k 9th gens are out the binning will get better..... or they'll just stop making 8th gen and price of the 8600k will trickle up.
 
Still running a 4700k here. My curiosity is how well a 4C HT CPU stacks up to a 6C non HT CPU. Assuming clock for clock, same architecture. Anyone have any experience or any links to a good read?
 
I'm also running a 4770K @4.3Ghz .. I think that if i had held onto a 2600K this long.. it would make more sense to go for the 9700k if you want to go for a similar 7~yr (or whatever how old is the 2600K?? now) upgrade cycle..

the 6C/6T might be great in gaming today... but much as 2500K's look less viable today than the 2600K a 9600K is likely to start becoming a bottleneck / disadvantage much sooner than the 9700K in a few years time.

I'm not sure what I'm doing with my 4770K.. Thinking of waiting till next year to upgrade now...
 
IdiotInCharge said:
Yeah, the fastest processor you can buy for a desktop socket is boring, :ROFLMAO:
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Intel has indeed become very boring. Same architecture since skylake... same process node, and they had to cheat the TDP specs to get the 9900k to be the fastest. It's the P4 days all over again. The majority of my machines are Intel. I don't hate Intel. However, if they don't get off 14nm they are going to allow themselves to look like fools.

AMD is the undergdog and is getting very, very close. It's not leagues away, it's feet away at this point. If that happens Intel will lose the enthusiast community first, and then eventually OEMs won't care and will want to use the best. Just like they do now with Intel chips.
 
oldmanbal said:
If you can notice the difference in real world gaming between 5 and 5.2 ghz I'll buy you all the beer you can drink. We've pretty much been at a wall for ipc since sandy bridge, and have seen some incremental improvements over the last few refreshes. To make you feel better, it doesn't look like Intel will be releasing anything anytime soon that would make this a 'bad' purchase in hindsight, so enjoy your process and watch it chew through all the games you can find.

May I ask what you moved on from for this upgrade?
Click to expand...

3570K. Honestly, looking at the review when it finally arrives (Postal Strike) I'll probably be happy. Upgrading the whole system after 6 long years.
 
WinMan_x2000 said:
Still running a 4700k here. My curiosity is how well a 4C HT CPU stacks up to a 6C non HT CPU. Assuming clock for clock, same architecture. Anyone have any experience or any links to a good read?
Click to expand...

https://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/3407-intel-i5-9600k-cpu-review-vs-2700-2600-8700k

Steve goes into good detail on CPU performance and digs well past fps numbers.

For the most part, 6/6 will do better than 4/8 in gaming. FC5 seems to be an exception where 6 threads really take a beating.

That said, if you are going to upgrade, it is FAR better to get the 8700k. It will be way more future proof, especially with online multiplayer.

Getting an 8600k/9600k instead of the 9700k/8700k is much like getting the 2500k/2600k 6 years ago. For the most part, the 2500k does just fine and fps charts show similar performance, but just about every 2500k owner regrets not getting the 2600k in the first place.
 
One day.. you guys should do a Intel CPU run, from say... i7 4790K to the current to see how well Intel has done it's evolution. REALLY want to know where my i7 4790K stacks up....
 
Squall_Rinoa89 said:
One day.. you guys should do a Intel CPU run, from say... i7 4790K to the current to see how well Intel has done it's evolution. REALLY want to know where my i7 4790K stacks up....
Click to expand...

Gamer's Nexus just did a revisit to the Sandy Bridge generation of chips. That'll get you 1/2 the way there lol.
 
If this is a review I miss comparisons to the i7-9700K (the benefit of two more cores) and the Ryzen 5 2600X (which is AMD's best opposition featuring twice as many threads at a bit lower clocks).

homernoy said:
I ended up buying an i7 9700k. I doubt it will show me much over the i5 9600k in gaming,...
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Depends on what games you play. An increasing portion of new games make good use of eight threads and make four- and six-thread CPUs suffer.
The only viable reason for the existence of this CPU is as a means to make use of some flawed eight core chips.
 
Kyle,

This review has pretty much cemented, IMO, that I doubt we are going to see any serious gains IPC for gaming for quite a while. It seems the drive is to optimize uses cases where "more cores is better" scenarios. That is fine....do what pays your bills the best. In that same regards, if a machine was built on the 8600k/9600k which would you choose at this point?
 
As a gamer, I just made the jump from a i5-3570k @ 4.5GHz to the i5-9600k. I am really happy with it. It's a very noticeable performance improvement. I am pushing my 1080 Ti at 99% at 1440p where as before I was starting to get CPU bottlenecked. Took it to 5.0GHz across all cores without issue.
 
rexbinary said:
As a gamer, I just made the jump from a i5-3570k @ 4.5GHz to the i5-9600k. I am really happy with it. It's a very noticeable performance improvement. I am pushing my 1080 Ti at 99% at 1440p where as before I was starting to get CPU bottlenecked. Took it to 5.0GHz across all cores without issue.
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I'm in the same boat, it runs rock solid at 5.0 Ghz for me. If push past this speed, however, I get immediate failures and instability. All I had to do in my Gigabyte Z370's BIOS was enable the profile for an 8700K at 5.0 Ghz and it preset all the settings for me, perfectly.

When I was manually overclocking it, I had the core voltage up 1.4 and it wouldn't remain stable at any speed above 5.0 Ghz.

I game with it and some of my publishing apps are old school single threaded x64 programs that run like ass on my Ryzen but like butter on this processor. Gotta love apps coded with Intel's compiler.

Oh yeah, and I paid 259 bucks for it on Walmart.com
 
Think I'll wait another generation yet. I built a 7700k system March 2017 for gaming and office work. Disappointing were the gains over my 2600k. It was probably my 3rd or 4th personal quad core system. NVME, faster memory, new audio, 600 mhz, watercooling, and still couldn't feel much of a difference. Next machine will be 7-10nm 8 core minimum and likely 16. Keep the damn thing for 10 years. GPUs are all that matter now at home, imho.
 
ochadd said:
still couldn't feel much of a difference.
Click to expand...

You're not going to 'feel' much of a difference; we're at a point where in many cases the limitations are systemic and software-related. I can't tell much difference between a 2000-series quad-core i7 at ~2.0GHz and a 4.7GHz i7, when the slower CPU has a SATA SSD and 8GB of slow DDR3 and the faster NVMe and 32GB of fast DDR4. The stuff that you 'feel' is as fast as it's going to get.

The stuff that actually gets faster, like render times, compile times, and framerates and so on scale better of course.
 
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