Gadgetory

welcome back to harbor unboxed today we're investigating if the core i7 8700 k really performs as advertised by your favorite media outlets but before we get into it today's video has been sponsored by Alliance heroes of the spire file we have a respectable mobile RPG title it has over 400 unique heroes that can combine it over 10,000 different ways that's very cool the two coolest game modes include fighting to the death against crazy giant bosses or battling real people or even your best friends in a PvP mode and not to mention really massive battles between guilds which are my favorite I really could speak about this game for hours but it's best you go check it out for yourselves and now for the sweetest part download alliance by the link in the video description you get a bonus of 50,000 gold and 50 gems right away go check it out and thank you alliance for sponsoring this video all right so before we get into the benchmarks and even explain what this video is all about let's just do a bit of a recap here so Intel rushed out their eighth generation coffee-like series late last year and it was basically a paper launcher try and steal some attention away from AMD's Rison processes which were continuing to gain momentum it was a pretty weak move his Intel didn't really have supply just a single high-end chipset was released and prices were well above the MSRP for pretty much all of 2017 however according to some that wasn't even the real issue rather the issue was reviewers and I'd say I'm included in this so reviewers loved what the 8700 K had to offer in terms of performance and that rule like the 8700 K is the best gaming CPU hands-down and if you want big frame rates then there's no better choice the issue some seem to have with this was that our results were misleading and they didn't represent what you the consumer were going to be seeing despite there being zero evidence of these claims oh and that's consumer for American viewers who think consumer sounds ridiculous right what was I talking about again yes so the results were misleading there were a few reasons for these claims a one was the multi-core enhancement which is basically at basically overclocks the cpu let's say and it's enabled by default on a number of motherboards some reviewers did get caught out by this I was well aware of this feature though so I decided to disable it though you could certainly argue that since it is enabled by default on a number of motherboards it's just a feature but let's not go down that rabbit hole for this video truth is it's essentially overclocking as it pushes the CPU above the Intel spec so I've always opted to disable it so bullet dodged there with the read fanboys maybe not with the blue variety but you can't please everyone you really just have to go with what makes sense to you so MC is disabled in all our tests what next the next accusation was that Intel's TDP ratings for H Gen core processors is rubbish as they can't hold their clock speeds at the specified ratings at least under certain conditions this all came about because Intel now only advertised the base clock frequency that's the minimum frequency all cords will operate as well as the single cord turbo frequency the maximum frequency a single core can achieve they no longer specify the operating frequency when two or more cores are under load so the 8700 K which has a base frequency of 3.7 gigahertz might only operate that frequency if the motherboards power deliver real cooling solution and up to the job this is opposed to the 4.3 gigahertz all core frequency most reviewers such as myself saw so a 14% drop in frequency could obviously lead to a decent decline in performance so what impacts turbo frequencies well the answer is many things but I'm just going to mention a four of them here first is the type of workload this plays a key role as it often dictates how many cores are active which then dictates power consumption and that in turn influences the operating temperature second is the ability to remove the heat from the CPU core this is impacted by the TDP rating of the CPU package and the heat syncing system applied to that package third is the supply and performance capability of the vrm fourth is the capability in design of the PCB used by the motherboard most of us have heard of examples of catastrophic overheating of PCBs due to penny-pinching manufacturing techniques such as to light on the copper or thin on the tracks for example if any of these four simple factors are not designed and implemented correctly then the CPU will start to heat up and then self-regulate its frequency and then of course head down towards the guaranteed base frequency because reviewers generally use high-end motherboards and elaborate cooling solutions this isn't really an issue as we essentially show a best-case scenario but what if you want to buy a budget motherboard and a cheap cooler how much performance can you expect to lose well in the case of the 8700 K as I note in a moment ago up to around 14 percent would be possible it's more extreme with the lower 65 watt TDP model such as the core i7 8700 there you could drop by up to 26% from the 4.3 you Hertz all called turbo frequency to the base frequency of just 3.2 gigahertz it's a similar story with the core i5 8400 as well so how bad does the motherboard and cooler need to be for this to be an issue well late last year tech sight computer base reviewed the media on a razor X six seven zero one five a prebuilt that sold at Aldi supermarkets they found that when compared to their core i7 8700 test system the media on a razor was 13% slower and Cinebench is ar-15 multi-threaded test and that placed it behind the Rison 5 1600 X that particular pre-built uses the Intel box cool that comes with the 8700 and we are talking about the non K model here of course however the real issue here I suspect is a completely rubbish motherboard and are we in version made by none other than ACS now I don't have many nice things to say about ACS motherboards so let's skip over most of my opinion and I'll just say that the quality of their products has always been highly questionable so if you're gonna make the argument that Intel CPUs can't hold their turbo boost clock speeds under load I wouldn't recommend making that argument with an e CS motherboard that said I personally don't care about representing pre built performance and frankly if they can't make a system that gets the most out of stock components that's a problem with the Builder and not the component maker still I wanted to look into this issue using cheaper components than what we typically use as opposed to a pre-built system made as cheaply as possible while still working to maximize margins so I got a few different cheap said 370 motherboards and Intel Box cooler a new budget cooler from silverstone ER representing the high-end the new corsair h 150 i pro for the CPU I went with the 95 watt core i7 87 or okay and I thought that would be very interesting to see how it got on with the 73 what box cooler that comes with the non K model if Intel should be accused of anything it's that their lakh CPUs come with complete not a garbage to cool them their box coolers have almost always been a joke and the cool that comes with their 65 watt TDP models is a complete joke at least when paired with their expensive six core models moving on from coolers most of the testing was done on the msi said 370 a pro but i also tried the gigabyte said 370 d3 and the asou stuff said 370 plus gaming all three boards delivered the exact same results and those results were in line with what I got from the MSI's Dad 370 god-like and gigabytes at 370 horas gaming 7 for example so a view a viewer of harbor unboxed and presumably other youtube tech channels as well as a reader of various tech sites been misled by reviewers using 8th gen core processors on high ends at 370 motherboards with expensive $100 plus coolers well let's go find out before we get to the benchmark results importantly talk about temperatures first using the h 150 i pro courses latest and greatest all-in-one liquid cooler sporting a whopping great 360 millimetre radiator we saw temperatures peak at 79 degrees after 2 and a half minutes of load and here the operating frequency held at four point three gigahertz then 15 seconds later the frequency dropped down to 4.1 you goats and this allowed temperatures dropped down to 72 degrees then for the next 30 minutes temperatures hovered between 72 and 74 degrees as the operating frequency jumped between 4.1 and 4.2 gigahertz been representing the budget air cools is the rather unimpressive silverstone AR 0 2 this cooler saw the 8700 k peak at 91 degrees at four point three gigahertz after about one and a half minutes then 10 minutes later it dropped down to four point one gigahertz with a temp slower to 77 degrees for the next 30 minutes the temperatures hovered between 73 and 82 degrees and 76 degrees was the average across the entire benchmark test and the operating frequency sat at 4 gigahertz then we have the Intel Box cooler that comes with their 65 watt parts and it's rated for a maximum of 73 watts of heat dissipation with the Box cool of the 87 or K peaked at 100 degrees after three and a half minutes however the peak 4.3 gigahertz frequency was here after a minute and a half where temperatures were reported to be 87 degrees once hitting 87 degrees the frequency dropped to 3.9 ki Gertz then 3.8 gigahertz then 3.7 gigahertz and finally 3.6 gigahertz but temperatures continued to rise that said though 30 minutes later the frequency was jumping between 3.7 and 3.8 gigahertz well the temperature remain locked at a hundred degrees so using those frequencies as a rough guide the Silverstone AR 0 2 could result in a 2 to 5 percent reduction in performance while the entire box cooler could reduce performance by as much as 14% that being the case let's move on to see how things played out I figured Cinebench r15 was a good place to start and here we see less than a 1% reduction in the multi-threaded score when using the AR 0 - opposed to the H 150 Pro that's certainly within the margin of error I should note this test was run exactly a dozen times back-to-back to allow the CP or each it's typical operating temperature and I'm reporting the average result of those 12 runs then with the Intel Box cooler we see a three to five percent reduction in performance from the all-in-one liquid cooler that's not a lot it's certainly nothing like the potential 14% reduction I thought we might see it's also worth noting that these single core performance was the same for all three configurations but that's not terribly surprising a CPU isn't generating that much heat here anyway let's move on to a much longer test this blender workload takes the 87 ok at least 51 minutes to complete and for that entire period it's under 100% load again we see virtually no difference in performance between the 87 on occasion the H 150 I Pro and the Argonne AR 0 - the results are well within the margin of error using the Intel Box cooler did increase the completion time by 6 percent taking us for almost 52 minutes - 55 minutes not an earth-shattering result with a woefully underpowered cooler but we are at least seeing a real difference here when testing with Corona we once again see there's really no difference between the budget air cooler and Corsairs might eh 150 I Pro we do however see a 6% reduction in performance when using the flaky little Intel Box cooler the poverty benchmark also shows no performance difference between the all-in-one liquid cooler and the budget air cooler the Intel box called added cost performance was dropped by percent though the 7-zip test was left looping for an hour and here we see a little to no difference between the three tested configurations here the Box cooler reduced performance by just one and a half percent which is basically within the margin of error anyway now for some gaming benchmarks this is where things get a little interesting regardless of which cooler we use the average frame rate was pretty much the same and that was not something I was expecting to see at least not with the Intel Box cooler however we do see a two percent drop from the liquid cooler to the tower style air cooler for the minimum frame rate then we see an eight percent reduction from the liquid cooler to the Intel Box cooler so that's a decent drop in performance next up we have f1 2017 and the built in benchmark runs for just over two minutes and again we've taken an average of three runs here we find a similar story to that of battlefield one though this time the entire box cooler does fall away a bit for the average frame rate here the average performance was down 2% while the minimum was down 4% those aren't exactly earth-shattering margins though finally I tested ashes of the singularity and here we saw a 2% drop in the average frame rate when going from the H 150 I Pro to the Argonne IR zero to the minimum frame rate was also reduced by 3% and really this is within the margin of error the AR 0 2 did continually come in slower but at times the margins were just 1% or less but based on an average of 3 runs this is the result we've got then with the Box cooler we see a drop of 6% for both the average and minimum frame rate I believe what we're seeing here is a worse case scenario for gamers all right so we've seen the results and it's pretty clear that anyone building their own desktop system isn't gonna have any trouble getting the most out of an 8th gen core processor on an entry levels at 370 motherboard with a cheap and nasty cooler in fact they don't even have to be that nasty deep cool of selling made game ax 200 T for just $8 on you egg and Amazon that's an insanely good deal I'll provide links for you guys in the video description performance-wise it's very similar to the silverstone AR 0 - likely a bit better in fact there are loads of budget alternatives such as the cooler master hyper T to the Zelman CNP s 8x optima and the cryo rig m9 mini tower just to name a few that's it if you're spending over three hundred dollars us on a CPU probably going to be prepared to spend at least $30 us on a cooler but what about the locked processes that come with Intel's underwhelming Box cooler CPU such as the core i5 8400 for example well it's not really a problem performance wise you're not really sacrificing anything other than operating volume and even then it's not that bad these 65 watt parts also hit the expected boost clocks when using the Box cooler so what's all the fuss about then honestly it's really hard to say I guess the fact that Intel's no longer quoting the boost clock speeds for multi-core workloads led to a few wild conspiracy theories for a CPU that can boost as high as four gigahertz the core i5 8400 sure does have a low base clock frequency at just 2 gigahertz but the reason for this is perfectly understandable all six core 65 watt TDP models will feature a low base clock and the reason for this is advanced vector extensions or AVX for short AVX is a set of instructions for doing single instruction multiple data or sim do operations they built upon previous offerings such as MMX and SSE and one way they did this was by expanding to 256-bit wide units from 128-bit both Intel and AMD support AVX instructions but while skylight kb lake and coffee like architectures offered to 256-bit wide units per core AMD zen architecture only offers to 128 bit wide units per core this means when running an intense AVX workload the intel cpus and more power-hungry is the wider data pass require more wires and this leads to higher power usage the upshot of course be much greater throughput so if Intel wants to keep their new locked 6 core models such as the core i5 8400 within the 65 watt envelope during AVX workloads the clock speed has to be greatly reduced in the case of the 8400 needs to be dropped all the way down at 2.0 gigahertz in order to remain within the thermal and power limits this was less of an issue with the previous Core i5 generation as the kb lake models only packed for cause at least meant the core i5 7600 could guarantee a minimum operating frequency of 3.5 gigahertz with a turbo frequency of 4.1 gigahertz so adding two extra colors means Intel's had to reduce the base clock speed by 20% which seems reasonable if you want to keep the same 65 watt TDP without a dash rink so that should explain why then use 65 watt six core coffee like parts feature surprisingly low base clock frequencies I also don't expect that we'll see anything different in terms of performance with the upcoming budget motherboards featuring yet to be released H 370 and B 360 chipsets finally there's no chip lottery when it comes to the advertised clock speeds and review samples proved to be no different to the retail chips some overclocked well and some didn't but they all ran within an acceptable margin of the maximum single core turbo frequency all testing this video was conducted with retail chips and I've also tested three different core i5 8400 chips all of which held a 3.8 gigahertz all core turbo frequency during non AVX workloads and that's going to do it for this one if you enjoyed the video then please be sure to hit the like button subscribe for more content and if you appreciate the testing we do here at Harper unbox then can sit supporting us on patreon thanks for watching I'm your host Steve see you next time