14 DAY TRIAL // Leaks about the future "Skylake," which is coming in August at Gamescom, start to flow all over the Internet. The latest info shows us the upcoming Core i7-6700K overclockable "Skylake" going as far as 5.20GHz without liquid cooling.
Intel's Chinese partners that received the "Skylake" chip for testing before the official launch start to leak photos and info about the upcoming CPU, sometimes with disappointing news that it may still be covered with NGPTIM paste. Other leaks, from HKEPC's Facebook page, show us the incredible overclockability of the future Core i7-6700K.
Apparently, the voltage of the CPU has been increased to 1.35V, and only air cooling has been used to reach such speeds. There are no details on the stability of the chip; however, this video shows just 1.28V required to reach 5GHz from a default 4.00GHz. This is very impressive, as stability is clearly maintained as long as the chip is air-cooled. Also, the Z170 chipsets have better functionality than previous chipsets, so add to that liquid-cooling solutions and you'll find an overclocker's dream.
Overclockers, rejoice!
Using the LGA 1151 form factor and featuring four cores with Hyper-Threading technology, 4.0GHz/4.20GHz base/turbo default clock-rates and 8MB last level cache, the "Skylake" Core i7-6700K will probably be the next go-to CPU when computer enthusiasts start building their gaming platforms this August. We don't know yet whether Intel has officially replaced the NGPTIM paste, but unfortunately, this could be a serious hindrance to overclocking enthusiasts if the leaked photos show the truth.
Inferior to the soldered Indium-based alloy that was found on the "Haswell-E," the Next-Generation Polymer Thermal Interface Material is placed between the die and the heat spreader, having poor heat conductivity, and is regularly scraped by overclocking enthusiasts for pastes that have better conductivity properties, like Coollaboratory Liquid Pro compound, for instance.
However, the leaked information shows much better overclocking potential than the Haswell's even with less-than-perfect pastes applied, so it's likely that overclocking tweaks will be applied when the CPU sees the light of day in August, and people will get better assessments of its performance while in consumer use.
