Intel Core i7-5960X Processor Extreme Edition Review

The Core i7-5960X is Intel’s flagship high-end, a stunning performance comes at a whopping price tag that’s enough to buy one a whole gaming desktop with monitor, mouse and keyboard included.

Intel Core i7-5960X Processor Extreme Edition Review

The i7-5960X is an 8-core processor with Hyper-threading technology, allowing to work as if it’s a 16-core processor. The base frequency is at modest 3Ghz and goes up to 3.5 on Turbo Boost. It is also quite a power hogger, a processor with 140W TDP.

Intel Core i7-5960X Processor Extreme Edition Review

The processor was paired with the ASUS X99-A motherboard and HyperX Predator 2400Mhz DDR4 2x 8GB for the tests.

Overclocking & Temperature

I managed to overclock the Intel Core i7-5960X to a good 4.4Ghz which is really quite a boost for the processor, which is almost 50% of the base clock.

Intel Core i7-5960X Processor Extreme Edition Review

The Core i7-5960X runs extremely hot, of which I ended resorting to the ThermalTake Water 3.0 Ultimate for cooling, keeping it under 80c on stock and going over 100c when overclocked.

The Benchmarks

x264 – 10bit to 8bit Video Conversion

The source video is a 720p MKV file that is 90 seconds in duration. x264 settings at the slowest.

Intel Core i7-5960X 87 seconds
Intel Core i7-5960X OC 119 seconds
AMD FX-9590 165 seconds
AMD FX-8350 188 seconds
i5-4670K 228 seconds

Cinebench R15

Default settings

Intel Core i7-5960X 1331
Intel Core i7-5960X OC 1648

WinRAR

Speed of archiving some almost 1GB worth of CR2 and MOV file.

Intel Core i7-5960X 22 seconds
Intel Core i7-5960X OC 19 seconds
AMD FX-9590 46 seconds

The Verdict

The processor retails at around RM 3600, which is a price beyond the reach of most people but what you do get is outstanding performance, especially when paired with boards with Intel’s X99 chipset and couple it with DDR4 RAM.

If you are a gamer then this isn’t the best bang-for-your-buck route to take, of course this is not the case if you have deep pockets. The Core i7-5960X would work best in work environment, especially when it comes to video production.

goldfries recommended