I waited too long to switch back to the FPS king. This chip is amazing. I missed you Intel.

The PC world is weird. Always chasing $50 savings. Too many games have CPU bottlenecks. I debated hard between just buying a 3700x to replace my 2700x versus the hard MB/CPU upgrade to Intel. But AMD had left me frustrated. My 2700x was never maxed out and I couldn't tell what was bottleknecking me. The 3700x didn't promise much higher clock speeds so I wasn't sure if an upgrade would help. I play Rust on 1440p and my GPU and CPU would sit at 60% utilization or less with frames only around 70fps. First test with the 10700k stock and I'm at 135fps, max graphic settings. My GPU is now pumping out 99% utilization and the game feels amazing.

This chip runs cool on stock. Idk where all the bad thermal predictions came from, but it didn't happen. Haven't even OC'd it yet and honestly I may not need to until I upgrade off of my 2080super. But that's not happening any time soon. I'm hitting 144fps on 1440p max settings now in every FPS game and that was the goal.

Thank you Intel, you nailed this one. The 9th gen had some cost/heat issues and that made me give AMD a try and I'm glad to be back!

For anyone choosing a card. The 10700k is the sweet spot for gaming and streaming. If you only game, I think the 10600k is a cheaper but same performance. I don't see any need for the 10900k.

I've had my 10700K for about a month now. I paired it with a brand new Asus Maximus XII Extreme and kept my 2080 ROG Strix. The three make a beautiful pairing. If you aren't planning on overclocking, I'll just say, pick this up and you won't regret it. If you aren't speed-chasing, it isn't worth the extra money of going to the 10900K. If you are overclocking, I personally believe the money-performance ratio puts the 10700K on top. But, speed-chasing would suggest picking up the 10900K.
As expected, temps are a little hot when overclocking. I used XMP I, clocked to 5.1GHz and left voltage on adaptive. My mobo thinks it's a good idea to stick a whopping 1.545v into it to support 5.1GHz and hit over 100C (exact temp unknown, neither of my monitoring programs read hotter than 100C), but that's totally unnecessary. Dropping down to 1.46v, highest temp spike during stress test hit 90C, not a degree warmer (25min stress test using Cinebench, 360mm ROG AIO). My goal is to hit 5.2GHz this evening. If I have the ability to update reviews, I will post results.

Overall, 10/10, strongly recommend. It's a good out-of-the-box processor, and it's fantastic for overclocking, at a price point that doesn't make you want to rip your legs off.

Intel I7 procs are still priced a bit higher than they should be for these older 10 series, but this is a good proc nonetheless.

While a good idea anyway, with many processors now utilizing stock overclocks, you can benefit a performance boost by choosing a better CPU cooler. I went the cheap route, actually, I thought it was middle of the road since the Thermaltake Contac Silent 12 is rated for 150w. I thought I could get away with a $30 cooler since I am not planning on overclocking. That cooler could not even keep up with stock CPU settings. In benchmarks the CPU hit 80-Celsius in seconds and gradually up to 90 where I had it set to throttle. In more practical testing, under basic workloads the temps are more reasonable but the Contac Silent 12 has to ramp up to %100 fan speed frequently to keep that way and it is not quiet at that speed. I know somebody is going to say that's because the default settings on the motherboard are overclocking the CPU beyond Intel's recommended settings. Well, that was one of the first things I checked and that's not the case here. Despite what somebody on YouTube said or didn't say, not all motherboards do that. It is a great processor and complements my workload nicely (no games here). The new cooler is a Reeven Justice, $45 right now. I has the same size 120mm fan however it has six heat pipes instead of four and the tower is about %50 thicker and fins stacked closer together. Temps, while still pretty hot, have come down 8-10 degrees on Cinebench R-20. It still gets up to 80-82 Celsius but instead of hitting 80 right away as it did before, it takes until the render is almost complete and seems to level off there. I feel better about the temps now that It's not riding on the ceiling, especially since all core full load is not a typical workload for me. The fan is much quieter during typical use. I would recommend that cooler for those who are looking for a good compatible cooler.

It feels pretty nice to double my core and thread counts with this CPU from the 6700k. I currently have mine overclocked at 5.2ghz with a push-pull radiator liquid aio system and I'm maxing in the 70s as far as temperature goes. Definitely adds some fps to call of duty and control. I haven't tried red dead or gta v yet, but since they're usually so CPU bottlenecked, I'm sure they'll run great with this.

My config in case anyone wanted to know:
CPU- 10700k
Cooler - Corsair H105
MB- Gigabyte Aorus Z490
Graphics- RTX 2080 Super
Ram - 4 x 4gb ddr4
2 Samsung 860s and 1 M.2 870 (I'd recommend picking up an M.2 if you go with gigabytes now motherboards.. theyre putting 2-4 slots on their MBs now so I feel like it's just untapped potential if you're not going to be using at least one of those slots)
Power- EVGA 750w (80+ gold I think?)
Case - I did have everything in an NZXT S340, but I just moved it all into that new Corsair mesh case that came out (TD500 Mesh) and airflow and aesthetics are superb.