Found an interesting article today mentioning the company below selling 8700k CPUs guaranteed to do over 5 GHz.

https://www.caseking.de/search?sSearch=8700k

And a solid silver IHS, price tag is over double retail!  But for those with money to burn....  I bet they do sell them tho.  The overclocking ability of the 8700k is so far turning out quite good, with many early review samples going over 5 GHz.  First thing I'm doing with mine- delliding and applying liquid metal.  A 20c drop on my skylake and I was sold.  

As a former computer hardware engineer, I have to agree (in theroy, because I don't actually have one to test) with the article below.  In fact, it sounds very much like what I initially guessed.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/10/intel-coffee-lake-8700k-review/

I'm an Intel guy through and though, and I've known too many people who bought it AMD's hype in the past.  But I have to say, I'm wondering if they haven't learned from their lessons and haven't stepped up there game.  I don't think I'd jump at any of their existing processors, but I'm looking at them for the future - VERY skeptically, but I'm at least looking at them.

 

I do major upgrades of hardware and OS only about once every 5 years and we're now finally looking right at 5 years for me.  From looking at Passmark for single core performance the 8700K at 5.0Ghz represents a 41% increase in Passmark score over my 3930K at 4.4Ghz.  This is finally starting to sound worth doing an upgrade for.  The only area I'm unsettled on is heat management.  I use a Noctua DH-14 I think it is and it's been fantastic for o'clocking my now 5y/o 3930K system which still works quite well but forces me to stop flights  and reconfigure usually lighting settings but certainly scenery density as well.   I plan to install a 1080Ti as well, plus move to Win 10 I guess, kicking and screaming from Win 7.   It will be the upgrade trifecta:  new CPU, new GPU and new OS.   I'll likely hold off a while more until everything I use frequently is P3D v4.x compatible as I'm on v3.0 now and I don't want to have to reinstall all 3.0 stuff only to start over w/ 4.0.

Sounds like de-lidding is a must.  What's wrong w/ intel that they don't do this at the factory?  The only rationale I can think of is they are going to save this 'trick' to pull out of the hat in order to keep the required uptrend in performance on track.  Sure, it would cost a little more to solder the IHS but truly, not a whole lot.  Has to be intentional for other purposes than cost savings.   Perhaps that's what's behind upcoming Ice Lake?!