Intel i7 4790K Devils Canyon CPU Review

Intel i7-4790K Review

Test Setup

With a new CPU we decided to start off with the ASUS Z97A. This is the cheapest and most ‘standard’ of our Z97 motherboards, so it makes sense to begin there.

Intel Core i7-4790K
ASUS Z97A
nVidia GTX780Ti
Corsair Vengeance Pro 2400MHz
Corsair AX1200i
Corsair Neutron GTX
Corsair H100i
Windows 7 x64 

Overclocking

As very much a minor refinement of the i7-4770K, we would expect to find an improvement in the low voltage scenario’s. At the other end of the scale, with the greatly improved thermal performance, we’d hope to have more voltage to play with.

As it is the i7-4790K hits both these marks with ease. Running at the stock speed of 4GHz we were able to drop the voltage down to 1v on the vCore, which is barely believable. 4GHz @ 1v. At the high end the i7-4790K allowed us to pump a whopping 1.35v through whilst keeping the CPU beneath our 80°C target. This gave us 4.8GHz which shows how much of a golden chip our 4770K is.

Of course we wouldn’t run 1.35v all the time, so for our overclock benchmarks we’re sticking to 1.26v, which enabled us to hit 4.6GHz. Only 200MHz above the 4.4GHz Turbo speed of the latest Intel offering, so our stock/oc comparisons should be close.

Intel i7-4790K Review     Intel i7-4790K Review  

Intel i7-4790K Review

Temperatures

The change of thermal interface material has had an enormous effect upon the temperatures of the i7-4790K. 64°C at stock, and 76°C when overclocked. A big drop for just a change of thermal pad.

Intel i7-4790K Review Â