Intel Core i7-7820X X-Series Skylake-X 8C/16T CPU Review

The CPU

Intel typically ships engineering samples in little black boxes such as the one above, but retail packaging will differ greatly from this. You will get a fancy box with Core i7 and a big X on it, but you still won't get a heat sink cooler.

The top of the CPU is identical to that of the 7900X, all the way to the little inactive RFID tag in the upper right-hand corner of the CPU. The CPU doesn't use solder between the die and internal heat spreader.

The CPU's bottom has many golden pads that fit into the LGA-2066 socket.

Test Setup

• CPU: Intel Core i7-7820X
• Motherboard: MSI X299 Gaming M7 ACK
• Cooler: Corsair H100i V2 AIO Water Cooler
• Memory: Corsair Dominator Platinum 32GB
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• Storage - Boot Drive: Samsung 950 Pro 256GB M.2
• Storage - USB Drive: Corsair Voyager GS 64GB - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• Case: Corsair Obsidian 900D - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• Power Supply: Corsair RM1000 - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 - Buy from Amazon
• Monitor: ASUS PA328 ProArt 32" 4K - Buy from Amazon
• Keyboard: Corsair K70 LUX - Buy from Amazon
• Mouse: Corsair M65 PRO RGB - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• Headset: Corsair VOID RGB Wireless - Buy from Amazon / Read our review

We are using MSI's X299 Gaming M7 ACK with two BIOS versions, 1.1 and 1.2. Version 1.2 comes with an updated CPU microcode and perhaps some MSI tuning, and I wanted to show how the BIOS version can affect performance.

CPUz screens show the BIOS version, cache sizes (1MB L2, 11MB L3), frequencies, and even TDP.