It's too early to draw conclusions, but my initial observations are:
- The 7700k has the potential to be stable at 5Ghz @ ~1.4v, with exceptional samples reaching 5.1 / 5.2 perhaps.
- The power draw when overclocked 'seems' high, evidenced by the vdroop of 0.08v when under IBT load! I have no other means of measuring power draw - Let's hope the AT review focuses in on this.
- I am unclear at this point whether temps are being reported correctly, but i believe not given the general expectations is for higher temps under poor air cooling (plus I witnessed a discrepancy of ~15 degrees between the BIOS and windows) .
- Could an AIO cooler be standard in order to run overclocks north of 4.8ghz?
- If you're going to overclock, get a board that has strong power management to sustain voltage with limited vdroop! I'm not sure whether Z270 motherboards will offer better VRMS etc in anticipation for the 7700k.
This is all very interesting to me. First -- can you link me to a reseller for the "de-lidding tool?"
I ordered my 6700K binned @ 4.8Ghz, $50 for the CLU-re-lidding. Silicon Lottery had pronounced, and I had verified, that it cut 12C off the temperatures for my particular chip.
Instead of an AiO or custom-AiO as I had been considering, I picked a ThermalRight LG Macho for being bested by an EKWB Predator 240 by 5C degrees. So with the CLU-relid, my 6700K performs better than the Predator by 7C.
It would be tempting to see what Silicon Lottery offers in an i7-7700K binned at 5 Ghz (or more? Perhaps?). Or I could face the real lottery and delid it myself. I'm just guessing that the VRMs on my Saber Z170 S board are as good as they seem to be now -- for what is basically a 12-phase or 8+4 power design. And as I understand it, the +4 is for the iGPU, which I don't use.
Someone else mentioned this "wasted silicon" of the iGPU. For a quad core chip, it's a peripheral advantage prior to ordering a dGPU, and of possible unknown advantage thereafter. Think of it as the spare tire for a Duesenberg roadster.
With the Sabertooth, some reviews suggest I lose 100Mhz in OC potential for second-tier choice over the 1st-tier 16-phase models like the "Maximi" models, the Deluxe, maybe one other ASUS board. But the benchmarks put the Saber among those top-four ASUS boards. The two "VCORE" VRMs never exceed 44C under severe stress, and never break out of the 30's with normal gaming usage.
But do I really want to spend that money just to see what 5Ghz is like "on air?" I can't see falling short in comparison to your AIO cooler, unless 5C is going to make a lot of difference. Whether or not it does, I wouldn't want to run my system with peak package C exceeding 75 or 76C. For now, I'll clutch the money and stick with the Skylake.