Test Setup
CPU Intel Core i7-8700K
Cooling Corsair H100i GTX
Motherboard MSI Z370 GAMING PLUS
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000MHz
Graphics AMD Radeon 480
Storage OCZ Vector 180 240GB SSD
PSU Corsair HX1050 80 Plus Gold Certified PSU
Monitor AOC U2879VF
Capture Device Epiphan AV.iO 4K
Cooling Corsair H100i GTX
Motherboard MSI Z370 GAMING PLUS
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000MHz
Graphics AMD Radeon 480
Storage OCZ Vector 180 240GB SSD
PSU Corsair HX1050 80 Plus Gold Certified PSU
Monitor AOC U2879VF
Capture Device Epiphan AV.iO 4K
Benchmarks
Cinebench R15 – CPU/OpenGL Score
x264 HD 4.0 – 1st and 2nd pass encoding
SiSoftware SANDRA – CPU & Memory benchmarks
POV-RAY – CPU benchmarks
TrueCrypt – CPU benchmarks
AIDA64 – CPU benchmarks & Memory
PCMark 8 – Home Suite & Photoshop
3DMark FireStrike – 3D Benchmark
Games – Rise of the Tomb Raider & Total War: WARHAMMER
x264 HD 4.0 – 1st and 2nd pass encoding
SiSoftware SANDRA – CPU & Memory benchmarks
POV-RAY – CPU benchmarks
TrueCrypt – CPU benchmarks
AIDA64 – CPU benchmarks & Memory
PCMark 8 – Home Suite & Photoshop
3DMark FireStrike – 3D Benchmark
Games – Rise of the Tomb Raider & Total War: WARHAMMER
Other Software
Temperature Analysis: Real Temp
Stress Testing Software: AIDA64 Stability Test
CPU Specification Monitoring: CPU-Z
Stress Testing Software: AIDA64 Stability Test
CPU Specification Monitoring: CPU-Z
Overclocking
Like previous generations, the Intel Core i7-8700K is unlocked and also has flexible attributes in terms of the BCLK and ratio/multiplier. This makes the job of overclocking much easier.
While we were able to shift the 8700K up to our current milestone of 5GHz, we required a substantial 1.41v to achieve this and under the current BIOS (7B61v10) we had difficulty getting the CPU to settle at 5GHz under load. Setting fixed or dynamic modes resulted the frequency bouncing between 3GHz and 5GHz. We have spoken to MSI about this, and were advised to modify certain settings which did not alleviate the problem.
