hey PC world fans Adam here with Gordon and we get a lot of questions on our
weekly podcast a full nerd you can send in your questions to the full nerd at PC
Worldcom and if we don't answer them on the show
maybe we'll answer them here in this kind of little segment thingy one of the
things I want to know for people who are trying to buy Intel systems is is it
worth it to pay the little extra premium for that little K right next to the part
number so my general advice is know generally what you get with a K part 1
it's unlocked ok so that means you can overclock it
yeah I can run at higher clock speeds than it's supposed to for people who are
just getting into this that's always a plus right more performance the actual
truth is very few people actually ever overclock there are K parts I will say
over the years Intel has said over and over and over again we're always
surprised by the amount of people who buy K parts because the K part has
turned into the CPU that everyone once has the best reputation it gets reviewed
all the time those are the high performance parts they can be
overclocked that's all the coolness will you go to the store you want the exact
same thing they're talking about on the forums on the YouTube yeah you buy the K
part that machine never sees any overclocks its entire lifetime so why
pay the 40 to 50 bucks for it right so generally I think you won't miss it I
think you can be fine without it the other thing is if you buy a K part and
you do intend to overclock you also have to have a motherboard that supports
overclocking true higher-end Intel motherboard z series newer chipset
supported a lot of the older ones don't support it lower end the lower one lower
end ones are intentionally nerf to keep you from overclocking probably fair fair
to keep you from blowing the motherboard up too but they also are locked so
remember K part also means generally price your motherboard in fact that's
probably what the salesperson is going to talk to you into is like well you're
overclocking a this now you need this big cooler
that's the other thing k parts don't come with coolers true so if you buy a
non k part you're gonna get the minimum piece of flair Intel cooler it'll run
all day fine never you'll never have a problem with it now I say all that and I
know that most people go well I do get what do I get out of K parts well
generally at the higher end anyway the i7 i-9
well here's no i9 non K well yours you get higher clocks yeah so even if you
never overclock you might get to maybe 300 higher clock speeds out of it
sometimes on turbo they may also be you know quote unquote better CPUs who knows
but I will say most people cannot feel 2 to 300 megahertz hmm right you'd be
pretty tough unless you play the game benchmark to see the difference so I
think again it's fine to go with the non K part interesting yeah and but again
this all does come back to I say this and then you will go to the store and
you will talk yourself into the K part because you go in years we'd rather have
yeah maybe you want that option ap I wanna you know put a custom water loop
in there and overclock it so a lot of people you know you're sold on the
performance nobody likes to intentionally wall themselves wall
themselves off from potential performance upgrades yeah so maybe that
50 bucks is worth it in his up it's more than 50 because you got to buy heatsink
2 and other board might be cheaper you might feel better yeah I mean that's
honestly what a lot of people who buy k part are it's just performance it's just
performance interesting cuz it looks better okay well which which scenario
would you rather do would you rather buy the non k part save little money on the
processor save a little money on the motherboard and upgrade sooner or get
that K part and then later down the road overclock it to get yourself that little
extra that little extra boost boy that's a tough one if you're being very very
pragmatic very very practical you're gonna go for save money now put it into
other components get you more in the longer run but your friend shows up they
got a brand-new 99 okay you only have a 9900 he or she's
got two to three hundred more megahertz than you that's some people that's
really gonna burn them especially if your friend is kind of gonna rub it in
your face Wow you know the K part I have the K
part so yes if you want to avoid those situations which is real that is a real
situation that is not even made-up then yes it's worth it yeah
and they are the K parts also are higher performing parts if you're gonna
overclock them a little bit if you even do the auto overclock by turning MCE on
you can get a little more performance out of it I were to argue for the
average person you won't see it but some people who like to run the drag strip
they want to they like to run the quarter-mile they like to run those
benchmarks then yes it is worth it hmm okay well I want to hear from those and
non K users out there please chime in in the comments I know we got plenty of the
K users out there so I'm excited to hear from you tell us why you went to non K
and maybe how much money you actually ended up saving and if you have a
question like I said you can email it into the full nerd at PC world com if we
don't answer it on the show maybe we'll answer it in a little
segment like this so thanks for taking the time to answer the questions Gordon
and we will see you later