PC Builder's Central

CPU:5820k

Description

To begin this CPU is no run of the mill mainstream processor like its little brothers the 4790K and 6700K, the only thing it shares with the two is the i7 namesake. This CPU while not an extreme edition CPU is part of the enthusiast "X" series platform and therefore comes with a few benefits regardless of which enthusiast CPU it is. These benefits include but are not limited to: more pcie lanes for expansion and graphics capability, more on chipset USB ports as well as more cores and threads. For the rundown of this particular chip the 5820k its got 6 cores 12 threads very typical of an enthusiast cpu of its price. Along with these extra cores comes 28 pcie lanes for up to 3 way sli and 4 crossfire configurations. However it is important to note that the 5820k has a base clock of 3.3ghz and a boost clock of 3.6ghz causing it to outperform the 4790k and 6700k in multithreaded applications but to fall behind in single threaded ones as those two chips run at about 4.0ghz each but only have 4 cores. Other things to note are that it has 6x256KB L2 cache and 15MB of L3 cache.

Reasoning

The reasoning behind choosing this CPU isn't that complicated, it doesn't cost much more than the mainstream 6700k, and for just a bit more money you get an entire 2 more cores, 4 more threads, and more PCIE lanes that allow for sli and crossfire configurations beyond 2 way and allow for more PCIE devices while operating with these configurations. These are all things that the 6700K cannot do and does not have, so for just a little bit more money it is definetly worth it.