Intel I5-7600k Processor Kabylake Gaming Intel i5-7600k Processor kabylake Gaming Pc INTEL CORE-I5-7600K PROCESSOR MOTHERBOARD ASUS Z270-PRIME LGA 1151 VGA CARD GTX 1070 8GB DDR5 SSD KINGSTON /SANDISK 240GB SATA SEAGATE HDD 2TB SATA 7200RPM RAM DDR4 16GB 2400MHZ CORSAIR POWER SUPPLY 600WATS 80 PLUS BRONZ CASE NZXT S340 RAZER Intel Core i5-7600K, a comparatively high-end member of the 7th Gen Kaby Lake family, which sits just below the new flagship Intel Core i7-7700. But with Intel going for refinement during this processor release, rather than reinvention, is it worth buying into this latest generation of CPU? For this review we take a look at the performance of the Intel i5-7600K processor in a wide variety of benchmarks, including a look at some of the latest AAA game releases, to see what pushes this Kaby Lake 7600K to its FPS limit. What is Kaby Lake? While we’re still facing an interminable wait for AMD's Zen CPU generation, Intel has struck out with yet another generation of processors. This time around it’s the seventh generation Intel Kaby Lake, the successor to 2016’s Skylake. With Intel’s move away from its usual Tick Tock cadence, Kaby Lake is the first time we will see Process > Architecture > Optimization in action. Broadwell was the new 14nm process, Skylake introduced the new architecture, while Kaby Lake is the optimization of this process and architecture, a refinement of both as a stop gap to the 10nm process, delivering improved performance for a lower TDP. Just like Skylake, Kaby Lake is Socket 1151 and compatible with the Z170/Z270/h170 range of motherboards Intel Core i5-7600K The Intel Core i5-7600K is a quad core processor with four threads, clocked at 3.8GHz Core Clock and 4.2GHz Boost Clock. It has a 6MB L3 Cache, 91W TDP, and a release price tag of $289. Ah, and the ‘K’ suffix means this particular Kaby Lake CPU is unlocked and ready for overclocking. Intel makes the assumption if you're buying this that you're going to overclock it, so there is no stock cooler included with the Core i5-7600K, as it just wouldn't cut it. As you can probably tell from the specs, and the fact that the Core i5-7600K is neither a die shrink nor an architectural change, this is very much an overcharged version of Core i5-6600K from last year. I will make this clear - if you have a Skylake CPU, there really is no point in upgrading to Kaby Lake, there really are too few benefits to justify the cost. If you are opting for a brand new system however, you may as well jump in at the latest and (almost) greatest. This is a relatively affordable yet high-end CPU which is going to have zero issues playing the most demanding games of today (except H1Z1: King of the Kill, I suspect). Intel Core i5-7600K Benchmarks Unfortunately we haven't got our hands on the previous generation Core i5-6600K for a direct comparison, but we've gone a little further back and stacked up Intel's i5-7600K against the older Haswell-E (Extreme) Intel Core i7-5820K, which we feel represents a slightly better point in time when considering hardware upgrade time. So the i7-5820K CPU is a little older, launching at the tail end of 2014, but it was an extremely high-end processor at the time, setting you back somewhere in the region of $380, compared to $289 for the i5-7600K.