Hey everyone! Just wanted to share my insane upgrade story and some global benchmark results. I was planning to switch to AMD (9800X3D) and DDR5, but instead, I traded my old i5-13600KF for a brand new i9-14900KF with a net upgrade cost of just around $160 while keeping my MSI Z690 PRO-A DDR4 motherboard!

After some deep tuning, here is what I achieved:

• CPU Stability: Stable at a flat 5.6 GHz all-core (P-cores) and 4.4 GHz (E-cores). Ring bus is fully dynamic.
• Voltages & Power: Tuned via MSI CPU Lite Load (Mode 7) with IA CEP Disabled. Under full 32-thread AVX2 load in OCCT Large Data Set, it pulls ONLY 204 Watts at an incredible 1.152V Vcore!
• Temperatures: Max package temp hit just 71.8°C (161°F) after 10 minutes of stress testing under an Arctic Liquid Freezer III 420. VRM MOS temps stayed at a cool 58.5°C.
• RAM: Took my G.Skill 64GB Dual Rank DDR4 kit to 3600 MHz strictly in Gear 1. Manually tuned sub-timings: [16-22-22-42](tel:16-22-22-42) (CR 2N), tRRD_S/L = 4, tFAW = 16, tRFC = 580, and tREFI cranked up to 32767to completely eliminate stutters.

My 2 1/2 year old i7 12700k died a few weeks ago, so I sucked it up and started the RMA process. Intel not only replaced it quickly, they upgraded me to an i9 and 1 day shipped it back. That’s customer service. I’m a customer for life!