Intel Core i7 990x Extreme Edition Processor Review

👤by Sahil Mannick Comments 📅13-09-11
Temperatures

Load temperatures were measured using Coretemp after doing 20 runs on LinX as we do in all our CPU cooler reviews. The max temperatures were recorded and averaged for each clock speed we benchmarked the CPU at. The Phanteks PH-TC14PE was used for cooling.


It’s interesting to observer the Core i7 990x ran much cooler than even the bottom of the range i7 920 despite its extra two cores and 0.8GHz overhead. This goes to show the benefits of the 32nm manufacturing process and Intel’s engineering. At 4GHz, the Core i7 990x yielded the same maximum temperature deltas as the similarly clocked i7 920. This is down to the much lower voltages it required for the overclock. It is still impressive that the processor is seemingly unfazed by its 4GHz clock speed. Going up to 4.6GHz drastically increases temperatures, undoubtedly due to the 1.4V+ Vcore. It is not dissimilar to the 920 clocked to 4.2GHz at 1.35V. I’d like to add that idle temperatures were always in the low-mid 20s thanks to Intel’s clever power gating technology.

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