Hello folks,

I am currently running an 8600k @ 5.0 ghz, and the performance is good. I am planning to upgrade to either an 8700k or 9700k because i find myself requiring more cores for some of my modeling and CAD work.

The question is... will there be any meaningful improvement in performance to P3dv4.4? If so, how?

Also, my motherboard is the Asus Prime z370-A, is the vrm capable of handling a 5 ghz overclock on either of the above mentioned processors?

Lastly, which do you recommend? 9700k or 8700k?

Thanks in advance.

If you need more performance for other applications, go for it.  For flight sim though, that upgrade isn't going to make a difference in framerate unless there's a hefty overclock to go with it.

9700k over 8700k for games, vice versa for professional applications

Prime 370A is fine for overclocking to 5GHz.

Edited September 24, 20196 yr by TechguyMaxC

So, after a lot of soul searching, i had an opportunity to try an OEM 9700k chip in the z370-a prime motherboard. 

The chip required 1.33v to get to stable 4.9ghz (0 avx offset). In blender rendering the vrm temps crossed And kept climbing past 95c at ambient room temp of 25c (cpu load 200w). In p3dv4.4, fslabs, fps gain was non existent, but airport scenery did load slightly faster... but vrm temps were at 85c+.

The prime z370-a vrm could safely handle upto 170w cpu load, but anything above that was unmanageable by the vrm (even with high airflow to the vrm area).

Therefore, my advice to anyone planning on overclocking a  9700k or 9900k on a mid grade z370 board should forget about it.... unless your chip is able to overclock at very low volts.

I am back to the 8600k at 5.1. I think I’ll keep it for sometime!!!

are you sure you had a good heatsink mount?  That seems to be way outside the norm for this chip at ambient

14 minutes ago, micstatic said:

are you sure you had a good heatsink mount?  That seems to be way outside the norm for this chip at ambient

Yes, its making good contact with mosfets. Strangely the cpu itself was at acceptable temps, just the vrms got dreadfully hot!

Your findings are precisely the reason I went with a Z390 board that has REAL VRM cooling (Z390 Aorus Master).  You could always point a fan at the VRM "heatsinks" and try again.