Intel Core i7 8700k CPU Review

Overclocking, Temperatures and Power Consumption

I always to my best to keep all testing scenarios the same, even review to review. This way I get as close to an accurate comparison as possible. Throughout every review, I keep the ambient temperature as close to 21°c, or 70°f, as possible. Stock, idle temperature was recorded 30 minutes after the PC initially booted. To record load temperatures, I ran the AIDA64 CPU Stability Test for about five minutes. And then recorded the stock load temperature.  At its stock speed of 3.7 GHz, the 8700k idled at 31°c. After 5 minutes on the stability test, the chip maxed out at 44°c. This is a delta T of 13°c between idle and load

I had previously tweaked and tested the chip to get the best overclock I could get. My i7 8700K, which is a retail sample, hit a max overclock 4.8 GHz at about 1.3 volts. I set the overclock and again, allowed the system to idle for 30 minutes. With the processor running at 4.8 GHz, I recorded an idle temperature of 33°c. Under load, it’s a bit different.  After 5 minutes on the AIDA Stability test, the 8700k hit a max temp of 62°c and a delta T of 29°c. I was impressed with this seeing my 7700k, clocked at 5.0 GHz, hit a max temperature of 68° during this same stability test. I had expected the 8700k to run hotter than it did. Especially with the higher TDP than the 7700k and the additional cores and threads. The 8700k came nowhere near its T Junction of 100°c. The T Junction is the max temperature allowed at the CPU die.

Power consumption on the i7-8700K was rather low 46 watts from the wall at idle, at least when compared to previous generations. On the load side, we see more average power usage of 174W from the wall. This is like other hex-core chip Intel has released. For example, the 5820k drew 74 watts at idle, and 181 watts under load.