INTEL CORE I7-6950X

SOMETIMES YOU NEED to bring out the big guns, and for Dream Machine, we want the biggest guns possible. Intel’s Broadwell-E parts were the natural choice, with the i76950X more than doubling the core count of the i7-6700K, with 40 PCIe lanes as an added bonus. And we put it all to good use.

Yes, the i7-6700K can hit slightly higher stable overclocks (4.8~5.0GHz), but with 2.5 times as many cores, the i7-6950X is more than able to make up for the clock speed deficit. We could still push it to a stable 4.2GHz. At stock, the 6950X has a 140W TDP, but it has to drop clocks to 3.0GHz at times to stay within that limit. Running at 4.4GHz, it guzzles juice, dissipating over 250W. It also chews through benchmarks, setting several records along the way.

We briefly considered going for the 24core Xeon E7-8890 v4, but Xeon chips don’t support overclocking. Intel’s monstrous i76950X strikes a happy medium.

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