This CPU is absolutely amazing. I got lucky with my chip and managed a good low temperature with reasonable voltage at 5.2GHz.

This processor is Incredibly fast, it handles an all core 5ghz overclock with no problem. I guess I won the silicon lottery because mine only gets to about 70c with synthetic benchmarks, during real world usage and with a 240mm AIO water cooler it only gets to about 40c - 50c.

Get's pretty hot after 5ghz haven't had it run above 61c yet on 5ghz after a 5 hour stress test.

Probably not the best bang for buck CPU available, but single thread performance is awesome.

also runs extremely hot, AIO coolers cannot handle this cpu with an overclock, and some CPU waterblocks cannot disperse the heat generated by this fast enough.... cooling is difficult.

Fast and runs at 5.0Ghz @1.26v. I keep it at stock though because all the excess heat outweighs the very slight performance improvement.

"I bought this CPU only for the box."

Unless you have a weird obsession with the box like me or you need the higher processing power, get a 9600K/9700K or a Ryzen 7 2700X instead and save the difference. Better yet, wait until Ryzen gets Zen 2 if you are patient enough.

As for overclocking, I cannot speak to its capabilities having lost the silicon lottery. You should have something better than a 240mm AIO to push this processor beyond stock.

I wanted a top of the line CPU so I could sleep at night. Once turbo boost was enabled it runs great.

3 stars for now. CPU worked on first boot to bios. It somehow died when I went to reboot and install windows. CPU failures are so infrequent, but it seems there are several others who have experienced random and sudden 9900k failures.

Edit: new 9900k works like a dream. Temps are reasonable. 4star for price and holding hyperthreading hostage. Next stop, 5ghz.

Expensive, but a great CPU. Mine can get up to 5.2 GHz for benchmarking, or 5.1 GHz for 24/7 use at a reasonable 1.30v or so.

What can I say: it's the best Intel CPU for development, balancing cost, features and flexibility for overclocking. In development, the more cores and threads, the better for compiling, building, encoding, etc. This CPU is the latest/greatest from Intel for such (without treading into exotically priced CPUs). Plus I like to use the included graphics capabilities of the chip, instead of buying another video card.

OC CPUs to 5.0 GHz and RAM to 3200 MHz, running between 25°C and 59°C average on CPUs with my development workloads, so far. Really not stressing system, so fans haven't spun up.

I highly recommend it for software development.