(There is TLDR down there)
So last December I decided to complete my build without breaking the bank too much and thought of going for a i7 skylake CPU.
There were engineering samples of skylake processors (i7 6400T ES) being sold for 500-600 Yuan on taobao.com. (this was March 2016 - now it goes for about 900). People weren't exactly interested in them since you know, engineering sample and potentially how poor they must be. They were clocked at ridiculously low speeds, from 1.2Ghz to about 2.2-2.4Ghz, depending on the batch and stepping. So people weren't interested - until they found out that you can overclock them using BCLK method. Benches showed that they perform almost identical to i7-6700 when overclocked to similar speeds, and it didn't even need much extra voltage.
But motherboards with BCLK overclocking functions are quite expensive. You have to have a Z170 chipset motherboard, and the mobo manufacturer had to be either ASUS or ASRock, because only those motherboards recognized the revision and step numbers on the CPU. It was still a sweet spot - you paid the price of a decent i3/i5 to get a premium motherboard and an underclocked i7 - until ASRock released the B150M PRO/HYPER, which is a budget board that allows BCLK OC without having a fancy chipset. The board goes for R1150, but unfortunately it is quite market-restricted and not available in South Africa.
View attachment 61754View attachment 61755
So now there is a cheap BCLK OC capable mobo and a cheap skylake i7. And these two didn't even cost much. 500 Yuan for the CPU - that's about R1000, and the motherboard is R1150. Total R2150. Looks like a deal too good to be true, but how does it perform? I paired these with 2 x 8GB Samsung DDR4 PC4-19200 and GTX 1070 and here are the benches from CPU-Z and Cinebench @ 3.6GHz.
Results:
View attachment 61756View attachment 61757View attachment 61758
(RAM was clocked to 2550MHz)
Temps reached 73 degrees, with occasional 'jumps' to 84 (comes back down to 73 in less than a second). I'm using Masterbox Lite 3 which is an mATX case with a single 120mm Sickleflow as an exhaust, and the CPU cooler is a cheap ZALMAN CNPS80F. So not too shabby. Core voltage at around 1.184, which means I could try clocking it higher if I'm lucky enough, and with a better cooler.
But of course, the downside is that there is just about no warranty whatsoever. The CPU is an ES, and you need to send motherboard overseas for warranty. While Samsung RAMs do have lifetime warranty, it must be claimed in South Korea so there's that (but R1200 for the kit so, there's that). But the motherboard/CPU combo does really open up your budget for other components, which is great.
TLDR: it's a cheap bang-for-buck build and I just wanted to show off lol. Performs like 6700 for the price of a celeron.
CPU - i7 6400T ES - R1000
Mobo - ASROCK B150M PRO/HYPER - R1150
Subtotal R2150
RAM - SAMSUNG 2 x 8GB PC4-19200 - R1200
GFX - GALAX GTX 1070 - R5100 (exchange rate ftw)
PSU - MICRONICS CLASSIC II 500W - R600
Case - COOLERMASTER MASTERBOX LITE 3 - R550
Subtotal R7450
Grand total R9600
So last December I decided to complete my build without breaking the bank too much and thought of going for a i7 skylake CPU.
There were engineering samples of skylake processors (i7 6400T ES) being sold for 500-600 Yuan on taobao.com. (this was March 2016 - now it goes for about 900). People weren't exactly interested in them since you know, engineering sample and potentially how poor they must be. They were clocked at ridiculously low speeds, from 1.2Ghz to about 2.2-2.4Ghz, depending on the batch and stepping. So people weren't interested - until they found out that you can overclock them using BCLK method. Benches showed that they perform almost identical to i7-6700 when overclocked to similar speeds, and it didn't even need much extra voltage.
But motherboards with BCLK overclocking functions are quite expensive. You have to have a Z170 chipset motherboard, and the mobo manufacturer had to be either ASUS or ASRock, because only those motherboards recognized the revision and step numbers on the CPU. It was still a sweet spot - you paid the price of a decent i3/i5 to get a premium motherboard and an underclocked i7 - until ASRock released the B150M PRO/HYPER, which is a budget board that allows BCLK OC without having a fancy chipset. The board goes for R1150, but unfortunately it is quite market-restricted and not available in South Africa.
View attachment 61754View attachment 61755
So now there is a cheap BCLK OC capable mobo and a cheap skylake i7. And these two didn't even cost much. 500 Yuan for the CPU - that's about R1000, and the motherboard is R1150. Total R2150. Looks like a deal too good to be true, but how does it perform? I paired these with 2 x 8GB Samsung DDR4 PC4-19200 and GTX 1070 and here are the benches from CPU-Z and Cinebench @ 3.6GHz.
Results:
View attachment 61756View attachment 61757View attachment 61758
(RAM was clocked to 2550MHz)
Temps reached 73 degrees, with occasional 'jumps' to 84 (comes back down to 73 in less than a second). I'm using Masterbox Lite 3 which is an mATX case with a single 120mm Sickleflow as an exhaust, and the CPU cooler is a cheap ZALMAN CNPS80F. So not too shabby. Core voltage at around 1.184, which means I could try clocking it higher if I'm lucky enough, and with a better cooler.
But of course, the downside is that there is just about no warranty whatsoever. The CPU is an ES, and you need to send motherboard overseas for warranty. While Samsung RAMs do have lifetime warranty, it must be claimed in South Korea so there's that (but R1200 for the kit so, there's that). But the motherboard/CPU combo does really open up your budget for other components, which is great.
TLDR: it's a cheap bang-for-buck build and I just wanted to show off lol. Performs like 6700 for the price of a celeron.
CPU - i7 6400T ES - R1000
Mobo - ASROCK B150M PRO/HYPER - R1150
Subtotal R2150
RAM - SAMSUNG 2 x 8GB PC4-19200 - R1200
GFX - GALAX GTX 1070 - R5100 (exchange rate ftw)
PSU - MICRONICS CLASSIC II 500W - R600
Case - COOLERMASTER MASTERBOX LITE 3 - R550
Subtotal R7450
Grand total R9600
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