a few weeks back we looked at Intel's latest Kaby Lake processors featuring the
i7 7700K and the i5 7600k and while these new chips didn't offer a
significant increase in performance compared to their predecessor the
skylake platform people who are looking for an upgrade from their existing Sandy
Bridge or Ivy Bridge systems could benefit from new features and noticeable
performance gains while many of Kaby Lake's true benefits will only be realized by
people with older systems or those who absolutely want support for intel's
upcoming optane technology there are still people who will see value in these
new cpus today we're taking a look at yet another Kaby Lake processor but
this time one that costs less than $200 and this is it the i3-7350k now you may
ask what's so special about the CPU well it comes unlocked for easier
overclocking and I feel like it's a pre reaction to a in these upcoming writes
and architecture rather than a favor being done for budget-minded
overclockers so let's dive in and take a closer look at this little monster from
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a closer look at the CPU I want to get something off my shoulders you see many
here at Hardware Canucks still believe that the i3 6100 was one of the best
options during the skylake generation it had two physical cores clocked at 3.7
gigahertz along with hyper-threading and it just costs $120 while it may not have
been a chart topper in synthetic benchmarks or high-level rendering its
performance and games was extremely good the i3 7350k follows a similar
tradition but it offers a few extra goodies that budget focus overclocking
enthusiasts would love to play around with but that comes with a cost
now the specs on the 7350k CPU are pretty
thing the 4.2 beginners base clock speed aligns perfectly with the $245 i5 7600K
processor that also features 4 threads though across a native quad-core
layout also remember ikely processors don't have access to Intel's
photographers technology and comes with very limited cache so don't expect
performance metrics to match the 7600K CPU despite the clock speed similarities
turbo-boost max maybe the biggest omission here since without it the 7350K
won't be able to consistently remain at higher frequencies so what will the
difference be well we'll find out about that during the benchmarks one small
hiccup in this equation may come from the current pricing of this processor
even though Intel says it's supposed to cost about 170 US dollars actually
finding it for less than $190 is a challenge right now price wise that
causes the i3 7350K to compete against the i5 7500 and as you'll see in a bit
later that's a site it just can't win another factor that most people should
take into consideration is compatible motherboard pricing right now you need a
Z270 motherboard to at least take advantage of the overclocking
capabilities of these 7350k and these boards are not cheap they're almost as
pricy as the CPU which really questions the price to performance aspect it's
already obvious that Intel's higher in unlocked Kaby Lake CPUs reach the 4.9 to
5.2 gigahertz mark provided they're adequately cooled in the launch review I
was easily able to hit over 5ghz with both the 7700K and the 7600K but
realistically speaking you're not going to spend $150 on a CPU cooler to cool
$170 processor it just doesn't make any sense so with that in mind I approached
overclocking from a slightly more budget focused mindset and used a natural Nhu
12s which cost between 40 to 50 dollars the end result was that the i3 7350K
was easily able to hit 5 gigahertz with just a few tweaks within the BIOS
and it was debt stable during our six-hour I 264 system stability test
which is our gold standard for determining whether or not an
overcompensating to note is that even though 5.1 gigahertz and even five point
two gigahertz were stable for many benchmarks neither was able to stay
over the long term so how does the reference clock in overclock 7350K
stack up with other CPUs we've reviewed over the last few years we try to
equalize the test systems as much as possible with all memory GPUs etc
running at the same speed note that slightly older video drivers
were used since this allowed us to standardize testing procedures across
multiple CP generations so let's get on with this and start with basic synthetic
benchmarks as you can see the 7350K at 5 gigahertz breaks the barrier between the
lower end i3 6100 and the mid-range i5 6400 CPU there isn't a massive
difference between the stock and the overclock speeds but later on in the
test it stacks up really well against the very popular i5 4670K CPU which is
an old clock by the way now I can't say exactly how this processor would stack
up against the i5 7500 but as you can see even when overclocked the 7350K
traits below the shock i5 6500 this is likely due to the limited amount of
cache becoming a bottleneck in some scenarios moving on to single toilet
testing where multi-threading and cache don't matter as much as you can see that
the i3 7350K both some amazing results this will likely translate into
some very competitive gaming results - there's no doubt this chip will perform
really well in programs that are emphasized for single threaded
performance mind you the other high end CPUs were not overclocked for our test
this is just to give you a rough idea as to how well $870 overclocked dual core
for thread CPU performs against its much expensive counterparts that is
particularly true in the real world benchmarks you're seeing now many of
these tests stress all four threads with the only exception being our dolphin
emulation that uses a single thread to process a simple game scene while
overclocking doesn't speed things up significantly the premium you pay for
the k-series chip doesn't translate into performance that can consistently beat
Intel's ëyesí processors gaming on the other hand was a pleasant surprise our
initial tests use a lower 720p resolution in an effort to take the GPU
out of the equation and allow the processors to shine on their own as you
can see the 5 gigahertz 7350K CPU stacks up amazingly well with Intel's
Broadwell-E CPUs and the gap between the stock and the
overclocked frequencies is pretty significant to what's important to take
away from these results is that not too many games properly use more than two
threads so these 7350K is able to climb its way near the top of the charts
and now on to 1080p where most people are gaming here we can see that the GPU
becomes more of a bottleneck and as a result many of the processors aligned
with one another overclocking makes a very little
difference so while it might look good to be running at 5 gigahertz in reality
it doesn't really change frame rates that much now this situation might
change as multi-core aware API is like Vulcan and dx12 become more popular but
for the next little while at least if you're on a budget it doesn't make sense
to pay a fortune for your processor instead put that money towards beefing
up your graphics card I mean seriously just do that
power consumption was just as expected running stock it's actually quite
impressive almost tying with the i3 6100 but when overclock things shift a little
north the 7350k consumes a lot more power than the i5 6500 but it offers
similar multi-turreted performance so there's a give and take policy here oh
hey there nc XCOM is Canada's leading a tailor for anything your mind desires
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weekly deals visit ncx dot-com Hold Em sweet deals so what can I say about the
i3 7350k to be honest it's a very confusing CPU because you see the
performance is fantastic when compared against Intel's other i3 series chips
and the ability to overclock does give you some benefits in many applications
what bothers me the most is the price that you pay for this at $170 it's
already pretty expensive and with current pricing hovering around $190
there are far better options out there that don't necessarily need overclocking
to grant you amazing performance not only that but it's also the other
components like the motherboard cooling GPU Ram etc that all come into the
equation if you're going to z270 you might as well spend an extra $75 and
pick the i5 7600K CPU because you get fantastic multi-threaded performance
when overclocked and if you want more power you can easily up
to the i7 7700K at this price there's very little value with the 7350K
especially if you have to pay over $170 for it
if budget is first and foremost on your mind when amazing option might be the
i5 7500 or i5 7400 alongside b250 based motherboard with that combination
you'd be able to invest in a much better graphics card and still achieve CP
performance that's similar or better than an overclocked
i3 3750k and that's what I'm going to end this review what do you guys think
of the i3 7350k does the performance justify its price tag or would you spend
the extra cash on a much powerful processor let us know in the comments
down below I'm Eber with Hardware Canucks thank you so much for watching
and we'll see you in the next one