expired Posted by BeigeRoad455 • Nov 21, 2023
Nov 21, 2023 5:30 PM
Item 1 of 4
Item 1 of 4
expired Posted by BeigeRoad455 • Nov 21, 2023
Nov 21, 2023 5:30 PM
Intel Core i7-13700K + ASUS Z790-P Prime WiFi DDR5 + G.Skill 32GB DDR5-6000 Kit, Microcenter In Store Bundle - $449.99
$450
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The mobo I got and ram are better than in the
Is deal but I'm tempted to get this, sell the mobo and ram in deal and return 13600k I purchased.
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The intel i7-13700k is a 16 core (8 p-core 8 e-core) hybrid architecture raptor lake cpu. It is immensely similar to the 12th gen alder lake i9-12900k, but with a slightly tweaked architecture, slightly higher clocks, and some additional L2 cache. The 13700k is consistently faster in every way than the 12900k, though the difference isn't terribly large. In gaming at 1080p with a 4090 the 13700k is ~9% faster on average than the 12900k, and in a variety of productivity applications it can be up to 10% faster, though typically the performance difference is in the lower single digits. There is a $400 i9-12900k bundle available, however between the marginally slower cpu and the meaningfully cut down motherboard I don't think anyone should consider that bundle over this one. The 13700k is an excellent gaming cpu, but its primary benefit over other cpus in its price range is multithreaded performance for productivity applications. Compared to any single ccd amd zen 4 chip (7700x and below) the 13700k has a massive multithreaded advantage. Many productivity applications are better optimized for intel, and intel quick sync (hardware accelerated video encoding using the igpu) provides a major advantage in certain video editing productivity tasks. The largest flaw of the 13700k, and of intel 12th gen and higher cpus in general, is low power efficiency and extremely high power consumption. In both gaming and productivity the 13700k will consume a massive amount of additional power compared to its amd zen 4 competitors, such as the 7900x. For example, when running blender render cycles, the 7900x will actually outperform the 13700k while using a whopping 80 watts less power! When it comes to power usage in gaming, this article compares a wide variety of intel and amd cpus, if you scroll down you'll find charts showing both gaming performance and power draw to achieve that performance: https://www.techspot.co
Peruse the charts for yourself, but the difference in power draw even while doing lighter tasks such as gaming can be immense. While you can undervolt to reduce power draw, high voltage is necessary to reach the clock speeds intel, and motherboard vendors, have pushed these cpus to (unless you win the silicon lottery). Compared to zen 4 cpus, reducing power draw to more reasonable levels will lead to a greater performance loss, and may in fact necessitate underclocking for meaningful efficiency improvements. This increased power draw means you will pay more for electricity (both to power your computer and for air conditioning to remove the extra heat from your room), will need a better cooler, and said cooler will be louder due to needing the fans to run at a higher rpm. The other major downside to purchasing an intel cpu is that the lga 1700 socket is a dead end platform, 14th gen raptor lake refresh is the last cpu generation which will go in that socket. This means any future upgrade will require purchasing a completely new motherboard. On the other hand, amd has committed to release cpus on the am5 platform until at least 2025, and has said that they intend for am5 to have similar longevity to am4. So someone purchasing an am5 build now will be able to at minimum slot a zen 5 cpu into their existing system, and most likely will be able to upgrade to zen 6 or higher without needing to replace any other components. This obviously saves you a significant amount of money.
The intel 14700k is a quite minor improvement over the 13700k, with the primary change being 4 additional e-cores. The 14700k is negligibly faster than the 13700k in gaming, a couple of percentage points faster at best. In terms of productivity there is a marginal uplift, though for most applications it's around ~5% and only a few applications reach a 10% boost in performance. Intel has introduced a new software-based application-specific processor optimization called APO for 14th gen processors. This feature can improve performance in certain applications (only two games are supported currently), and it is currently only available on the 14900k. This feature should eventually come to the 14700k as well, but will not be available on 13th gen cpus. Everything I discussed about intel cpus in general when talking about the 13700k still applies to the 14700k. Overall, the 14700k is only slightly better than the 13700k, and if your use case is primarily gaming the difference is practically nonexistent. However, when also considering the better motherboard included in the 14700k bundle, the combined improvements may be worth the $50 premium over this 13700k bundle.
The amd zen 4 7700x is an 8 (full size) core cpu available in a bundle for $400, and is suited for a different type of user. The 7700x gets absolutely decimated by the 13700k or 14700k in multithreaded performance, so if productivity is a concern then it should be avoided. The 7700x's gaming performance is moderately worse the the 13700k, the 13700k is around ~10% faster in gaming on average at 1080p with a rtx4090. The benefits of massively better power efficiency and platform longevity, as detailed in the paragraph discussing the 13700k, are the primary reasons to to purchase this cpu. The motherboard included in the 7700x bundle is of a similar tier to the one included in this 13700k, being a decent lower mid-tier board.
The 7800x3d, and the 7950x3d, are the fastest gaming chips available. The 7800x3d is a 8 (full size) core cpu available in a bundle with the same motherboard and ram as the 7700x bundle for $470. While technically the better binned 7950x3d can slightly beat the 7800x3d when the ccd parking functions properly, that chip is far more expensive and aimed at individuals who are doing both gaming and intensive productivity work. Additionally, in any case where the ccd parking isn't properly functional, the 7950x3d trails behind. The 7800x3d is an exceptionally low power and power efficient chip, when compared to the intel 13700k in gaming at 1080p with a rtx4090 the 7800x3d is 11% faster on average while consuming on average 100 fewer watts of power, which is an absolutely insane difference. Eight cores is entirely sufficient for current gen gaming, and while it's theoretically possible that games will gradually start being able to take advantage of additional cores over the next 5 years or so, the 7800x3d should remain highly competitive in gaming for years to come. If your use cases are more varied and cpu intensive than just gaming, then the 7800x3d becomes a significantly less compelling option. The 7800x3d has rather mediocre multithreaded performance, it's essentially a marginally slower 7700x when used for productivity. If your use case is only gaming, then the 7800xd bundle is by far your best option.
The 5600x3d bundle is a last gen zen 3 bundle that is excellent for a budget build solely for gaming use. The 5600x3d is a 6 (full size) core cpu with excellent gaming performance on average being similar to the zen 4 7600x. The motherboard is competent (though only ddr4 since it's a previous generation part) and the ram is decent. Overall, if you're only gaming and are an exceptionally tight budget the 5600x3d bundle at $270 (if it goes back on sale at that price) is probably the best value gaming option available.
I won't go into much detail on the 7900x bundle since it's not currently on sale at a good price, if you want context on the 7900x bundle versus this 13700k bundle I went into detail in this post: https://slickdeals.net/f/17040193-amd-ryzen-7-7800x3d-msi-b650-p-pro-wifi-ddr5-g-skill-flare-x5-series-32gb-ddr5-6000-kit-computer-build-bundle-at-microcenter-499-99?p=166884745#
With regards to the $700 14900k bundle, it's a significantly worse value unless you use your computer professionally and the 14900k would meaningfully benefit your workflow.
Moving on to the motherboards, the motherboard in this 13700k bundle is a decent lower midrange board with some compromises. Here's a link to the asus specs page: https://www.asus.com/motherboards.../techspec/
And the manual: https://dlcdnets.asus.c
The z790 chipset isn't a major improvement over the z690 chipset, but at least it's liable to get updates a bit longer. The pcie, m.2, and usb available on this board should be perfectly acceptable for the vast majority of users. There are a few unfortunate tradeoffs as it is a lower-midrange board, such as wifi 6 instead of 6e, a pcie gen5 x16 slot but no gen5 m.2 slot, no integrated io shield (a separate io shield is included), the cheap realtek alc897 audio chip (common in midrange and budget boards), and only 1 m.2 heatsink. That being said, for the average user this board should be more than sufficient.
The board included in the $500 14700k bundle is moderately better than the one in this 13700k bundle, but still remains a lower midrange board. Here's a link to the msi spec page: https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/P...cification
And the manual: https://download.msi.co
As you can see from the specs, the msi board has better wifi (6e vs 6), additional storage support (an additional m.2 slot and 2 extra sata ports), and variety of marginally better (and some inferior) specs all around. That being said, while I'd say the msi board is better, the difference isn't extremely massive.
Moving on to the 7700x and 7800x3d bundles, the msi b650-p pro motherboard included in those bundles is acceptable, but it's a lower midrange board with several compromises. Here's a link to the specs page: https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/P...cification
And here's a link to the manual: https://download.msi.co
First off, it entirely lacks pcie gen 5 support, which realistically isn't a big deal currently. The pcie 5x16 slot included in the intel z790 boards mentioned above is not a huge selling point considering the chances of a gpu needing a gen 5 x16 slot in the next several years is low. However, considering one of the primary benefits of building an am5 system is being able to slot in a new cpu years down the line, 4+ years from now the lack of pcie gen5 might be of much greater concern. Pcie, m.2, and sata configurations should be acceptable for the majority of average users, though once again there's nothing particularly impressive. It has 2 pcie gen4 m.2 slots, though only one comes with a heatsink. The realtek alc897 is a cheap low end audio chip fairly common on low to midrange boards. It also lacks an integrated io shield, but does come with a separate one you can install. The networking is good, with realtek 2.5gb lan and intel wifi6e with bluetooth 5.3. Overall, I'd say the b650 pro board is of a similar tier to the board in this 13700k bundle and slightly worse than the board included in the 14700k bundle.
The 7900x bundle has a higher tier motherboard than any of these other bundles, refer to the post I linked above for more info.
The ram included in the 13700k, 14700k, 7700x, and 7800x3d bundles is ddr5 6000 cl36 36-36-36-96 using samsung b-die memory chips. Samsung memory chips are inferior to hynix memory chips in just about every way, having worse compatibility, reliability, timings, and worse overclocking/tuning potential. If you are willing to manually tune your ram then the performance delta will actually be meaningful compared to manually tuned hynix ram. Intel cpus are less sensitive to memory timings, so while this ram is somewhat disappointing it is unlikely to have any major impact on performance for the 13700k and 14700k bundles unless you wish to manually overclock/tune your ram.
Amd zen 4 cpus are rather sensitive to memory timings, the current performance/value sweet spot is ddr5 6000 cl30. While this ram isn't awful, it's still something of a letdown, and will likely cost you a couple percentage points of performance. Ram using samsung memory chips have had compatibility issues with the am5 platform in the past, the latest agesa updates have supposedly fixed those compatibility issues.
The 7900x bundle has twice as much higher quality ram compared to the ram in these other bundles, refer to the post I linked above for more info.
In conclusion, if you want a cheap cpu which will be used for tasks more intensive than gaming this 13700k bundle at $450 is a very good value. The 14700k bundle offers a marginal increase in productivity performance and a somewhat better motherboard for $50 more. The 7700x bundle at $400 is best for gaming if you don't have an absurdly powerful gpu (such as a 4090), and provides a meaningful upgrade path. The 7800x3d bundle at $470 is the best value high end option for gaming as long as you don't require multithreaded performance for productivity. It also has exceptional power efficiency and a meaningful upgrade path. The 5600x3d bundle, if it goes back on sale at $270, is by far the best value option for only gaming if you're on a very tight budget. The 7900x bundle, if it goes back on sale at $550, provides by far the best upgrade path (best motherboard by a wide margin, and twice as much higher quality ram using hynix memory chips) while trading blows with the 13700k in productivity using far less power.
I hope this post provides some help to people looking to choose between these bundles. I apologize for the massive unedited wall of text, I sort of just let my flow of consciousness dribble onto the page.
The intel i7-13700k is a 16 core (8 p-core 8 e-core) hybrid architecture raptor lake cpu. It is immensely similar to the 12th gen alder lake i9-12900k, but with a slightly tweaked architecture, slightly higher clocks, and some additional L2 cache. The 13700k is consistently faster in every way than the 12900k, though the difference isn't terribly large. In gaming at 1080p with a 4090 the 13700k is ~9% faster on average than the 12900k, and in a variety of productivity applications it can be up to 10% faster, though typically the performance difference is in the lower single digits. There is a $400 i9-12900k bundle available, however between the marginally slower cpu and the meaningfully cut down motherboard I don't think anyone should consider that bundle over this one. The 13700k is an excellent gaming cpu, but its primary benefit over other cpus in its price range is multithreaded performance for productivity applications. Compared to any single ccd amd zen 4 chip (7700x and below) the 13700k has a massive multithreaded advantage. Many productivity applications are better optimized for intel, and intel quick sync (hardware accelerated video encoding using the igpu) provides a major advantage in certain video editing productivity tasks. The largest flaw of the 13700k, and of intel 12th gen and higher cpus in general, is low power efficiency and extremely high power consumption. In both gaming and productivity the 13700k will consume a massive amount of additional power compared to its amd zen 4 competitors, such as the 7900x. For example, when running blender render cycles, the 7900x will actually outperform the 13700k while using a whopping 80 watts less power! When it comes to power usage in gaming, this article compares a wide variety of intel and amd cpus, if you scroll down you'll find charts showing both gaming performance and power draw to achieve that performance: https://www.techspot.co
Peruse the charts for yourself, but the difference in power draw even while doing lighter tasks such as gaming can be immense. While you can undervolt to reduce power draw, high voltage is necessary to reach the clock speeds intel, and motherboard vendors, have pushed these cpus to (unless you win the silicon lottery). Compared to zen 4 cpus, reducing power draw to more reasonable levels will lead to a greater performance loss, and may in fact necessitate underclocking for meaningful efficiency improvements. This increased power draw means you will pay more for electricity (both to power your computer and for air conditioning to remove the extra heat from your room), will need a better cooler, and said cooler will be louder due to needing the fans to run at a higher rpm. The other major downside to purchasing an intel cpu is that the lga 1700 socket is a dead end platform, 14th gen raptor lake refresh is the last cpu generation which will go in that socket. This means any future upgrade will require purchasing a completely new motherboard. On the other hand, amd has committed to release cpus on the am5 platform until at least 2025, and has said that they intend for am5 to have similar longevity to am4. So someone purchasing an am5 build now will be able to at minimum slot a zen 5 cpu into their existing system, and most likely will be able to upgrade to zen 6 or higher without needing to replace any other components. This obviously saves you a significant amount of money.
The intel 14700k is a quite minor improvement over the 13700k, with the primary change being 4 additional e-cores. The 14700k is negligibly faster than the 13700k in gaming, a couple of percentage points faster at best. In terms of productivity there is a marginal uplift, though for most applications it's around ~5% and only a few applications reach a 10% boost in performance. Intel has introduced a new software-based application-specific processor optimization called APO for 14th gen processors. This feature can improve performance in certain applications (only two games are supported currently), and it is currently only available on the 14900k. This feature should eventually come to the 14700k as well, but will not be available on 13th gen cpus. Everything I discussed about intel cpus in general when talking about the 13700k still applies to the 14700k. Overall, the 14700k is only slightly better than the 13700k, and if your use case is primarily gaming the difference is practically nonexistent. However, when also considering the better motherboard included in the 14700k bundle, the combined improvements may be worth the $50 premium over this 13700k bundle.
The amd zen 4 7700x is an 8 (full size) core cpu available in a bundle for $400, and is suited for a different type of user. The 7700x gets absolutely decimated by the 13700k or 14700k in multithreaded performance, so if productivity is a concern then it should be avoided. The 7700x's gaming performance is moderately worse the the 13700k, the 13700k is around ~10% faster in gaming on average at 1080p with a rtx4090. The benefits of massively better power efficiency and platform longevity, as detailed in the paragraph discussing the 13700k, are the primary reasons to to purchase this cpu. The motherboard included in the 7700x bundle is of a similar tier to the one included in this 13700k, being a decent lower mid-tier board.
The 7800x3d, and the 7950x3d, are the fastest gaming chips available. The 7800x3d is a 8 (full size) core cpu available in a bundle with the same motherboard and ram as the 7700x bundle for $470. While technically the better binned 7950x3d can slightly beat the 7800x3d when the ccd parking functions properly, that chip is far more expensive and aimed at individuals who are doing both gaming and intensive productivity work. Additionally, in any case where the ccd parking isn't properly functional, the 7950x3d trails behind. The 7800x3d is an exceptionally low power and power efficient chip, when compared to the intel 13700k in gaming at 1080p with a rtx4090 the 7800x3d is 11% faster on average while consuming on average 100 fewer watts of power, which is an absolutely insane difference. Eight cores is entirely sufficient for current gen gaming, and while it's theoretically possible that games will gradually start being able to take advantage of additional cores over the next 5 years or so, the 7800x3d should remain highly competitive in gaming for years to come. If your use cases are more varied and cpu intensive than just gaming, then the 7800x3d becomes a significantly less compelling option. The 7800x3d has rather mediocre multithreaded performance, it's essentially a marginally slower 7700x when used for productivity. If your use case is only gaming, then the 7800xd bundle is by far your best option.
The 5600x3d bundle is a last gen zen 3 bundle that is excellent for a budget build solely for gaming use. The 5600x3d is a 6 (full size) core cpu with excellent gaming performance on average being similar to the zen 4 7600x. The motherboard is competent (though only ddr4 since it's a previous generation part) and the ram is decent. Overall, if you're only gaming and are an exceptionally tight budget the 5600x3d bundle at $270 (if it goes back on sale at that price) is probably the best value gaming option available.
I won't go into much detail on the 7900x bundle since it's not currently on sale at a good price, if you want context on the 7900x bundle versus this 13700k bundle I went into detail in this post: https://slickdeals.net/f/17040193-amd-ryzen-7-7800x3d-msi-b650-p-pro-wifi-ddr5-g-skill-flare-x5-series-32gb-ddr5-6000-kit-computer-build-bundle-at-microcenter-499-99?p=166884745#
With regards to the $700 14900k bundle, it's a significantly worse value unless you use your computer professionally and the 14900k would meaningfully benefit your workflow.
Moving on to the motherboards, the motherboard in this 13700k bundle is a decent lower midrange board with some compromises. Here's a link to the asus specs page: https://www.asus.com/motherboards.../techspec/
And the manual: https://dlcdnets.asus.c
The z790 chipset isn't a major improvement over the z690 chipset, but at least it's liable to get updates a bit longer. The pcie, m.2, and usb available on this board should be perfectly acceptable for the vast majority of users. There are a few unfortunate tradeoffs as it is a lower-midrange board, such as wifi 6 instead of 6e, a pcie gen5 x16 slot but no gen5 m.2 slot, no integrated io shield (a separate io shield is included), the cheap realtek alc897 audio chip (common in midrange and budget boards), and only 1 m.2 heatsink. That being said, for the average user this board should be more than sufficient.
The board included in the $500 14700k bundle is moderately better than the one in this 13700k bundle, but still remains a lower midrange board. Here's a link to the msi spec page: https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/P...cification
And the manual: https://download.msi.co
As you can see from the specs, the msi board has better wifi (6e vs 6), additional storage support (an additional m.2 slot and 2 extra sata ports), and variety of marginally better (and some inferior) specs all around. That being said, while I'd say the msi board is better, the difference isn't extremely massive.
Moving on to the 7700x and 7800x3d bundles, the msi b650-p pro motherboard included in those bundles is acceptable, but it's a lower midrange board with several compromises. Here's a link to the specs page: https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/P...cification
And here's a link to the manual: https://download.msi.co
First off, it entirely lacks pcie gen 5 support, which realistically isn't a big deal currently. The pcie 5x16 slot included in the intel z790 boards mentioned above is not a huge selling point considering the chances of a gpu needing a gen 5 x16 slot in the next several years is low. However, considering one of the primary benefits of building an am5 system is being able to slot in a new cpu years down the line, 4+ years from now the lack of pcie gen5 might be of much greater concern. Pcie, m.2, and sata configurations should be acceptable for the majority of average users, though once again there's nothing particularly impressive. It has 2 pcie gen4 m.2 slots, though only one comes with a heatsink. The realtek alc897 is a cheap low end audio chip fairly common on low to midrange boards. It also lacks an integrated io shield, but does come with a separate one you can install. The networking is good, with realtek 2.5gb lan and intel wifi6e with bluetooth 5.3. Overall, I'd say the b650 pro board is of a similar tier to the board in this 13700k bundle and slightly worse than the board included in the 14700k bundle.
The 7900x bundle has a higher tier motherboard than any of these other bundles, refer to the post I linked above for more info.
The ram included in the 13700k, 14700k, 7700x, and 7800x3d bundles is ddr5 6000 cl36 36-36-36-96 using samsung b-die memory chips. Samsung memory chips are inferior to hynix memory chips in just about every way, having worse compatibility, reliability, timings, and worse overclocking/tuning potential. If you are willing to manually tune your ram then the performance delta will actually be meaningful compared to manually tuned hynix ram. Intel cpus are less sensitive to memory timings, so while this ram is somewhat disappointing it is unlikely to have any major impact on performance for the 13700k and 14700k bundles unless you wish to manually overclock/tune your ram.
Amd zen 4 cpus are rather sensitive to memory timings, the current performance/value sweet spot is ddr5 6000 cl30. While this ram isn't awful, it's still something of a letdown, and will likely cost you a couple percentage points of performance. Ram using samsung memory chips have had compatibility issues with the am5 platform in the past, the latest agesa updates have supposedly fixed those compatibility issues.
The 7900x bundle has twice as much higher quality ram compared to the ram in these other bundles, refer to the post I linked above for more info.
In conclusion, if you want a cheap cpu which will be used for tasks more intensive than gaming this 13700k bundle at $450 is a very good value. The 14700k bundle offers a marginal increase in productivity performance and a somewhat better motherboard for $50 more. The 7700x bundle at $400 is best for gaming if you don't have an absurdly powerful gpu (such as a 4090), and provides a meaningful upgrade path. The 7800x3d bundle at $470 is the best value high end option for gaming as long as you don't require multithreaded performance for productivity. It also has exceptional power efficiency and a meaningful upgrade path. The 5600x3d bundle, if it goes back on sale at $270, is by far the best value option for only gaming if you're on a very tight budget. The 7900x bundle, if it goes back on sale at $550, provides by far the best upgrade path (best motherboard by a wide margin, and twice as much higher quality ram using hynix memory chips) while trading blows with the 13700k in productivity using far less power.
I hope this post provides some help to people looking to choose between these bundles. I apologize for the massive unedited wall of text, I sort of just let my flow of consciousness dribble onto the page.
https://slickdeals.net/f/16659797-tustin-micro-center-intel-core-i7-13700k-cpu-asus-z790-p-prime-mobo-32gb-2-x-16gb-g-skill-ddr5-6000-cl36-ram-bundle-410-free-store-pickup?src=Site
And it hit $449 a month ago:
https://slickdeals.net/f/16990264-yymv-microcenter-intel-core-i7-13700k-asus-z790-p-prime-wifi-ddr5-g-skill-32gb-ddr5-6000-kit-computer-build-bundle-449-99?src=SiteSear
I'm waiting until this bundle goes <$400.
https://slickdeals.net/f/16659797-tustin-micro-center-intel-core-i7-13700k-cpu-asus-z790-p-prime-mob...
And it hit $449 a month ago:
https://slickdeals.net/f/16990264-yymv-microcenter-intel-core-i7-13700k-asus-z790-p-prime-wifi-ddr5-...
I'm waiting until this bundle goes <$400.
The second deal you linked was where microcenter had a typo in their add banners indicating a price of $450 (the price of this deal I posted) for this 13700k bundle instead of $500. That thread was full of people trying to figure out how to get microcenter to honor the price of $450.
Deals on this bundle from the past three months:
At $500, frontpage: https://slickdeals.net/f/16881698-intel-core-i7-13700k-asus-z790-p-prime-wifi-ddr5-g-skill-32gb-ddr5-6000-kit-bundle-500-microcenter
At $500, frontpage again: https://slickdeals.net/f/16978465-microcenter-intel-core-i7-13700k-asus-z790-p-prime-wifi-ddr5-g-skill-32gb-ddr5-6000-kit-computer-build-bundle-499-99
At $450, frontpage: https://slickdeals.net/f/17020960-micro-center-intel-core-i7-13700k-asus-z790-p-prime-wifi-ddr5-g-skill-32gb-ddr5-6000-kit-computer-build-bundle-449-99
Compared to purchasing similar components separately, this bundle saves a massive amount of money. Even if you take in to account the single day flash sale microcenter had for the 13700k at $270, $75 cheaper than it's ever been from another retailer, this bundle still ends up being cheaper. Getting a comparable z790 motherboard should be ~$150 on a great sale, if you're willing to go z690 maybe ~$125 on a fantastic sale. 32gb ddr5 6000 cl36 is worth ~$75, meaningfully better ram is ~$90 on a good sale. So assuming you got that single day microcenter flash sale price on the cpu, you'd still be paying almost $50 more.
The intel i7-13700k is a 16 core (8 p-core 8 e-core) hybrid architecture raptor lake cpu. It is immensely similar to the 12th gen alder lake i9-12900k, but with a slightly tweaked architecture, slightly higher clocks, and some additional L2 cache. The 13700k is consistently faster in every way than the 12900k, though the difference isn't terribly large. In gaming at 1080p with a 4090 the 13700k is ~9% faster on average than the 12900k, and in a variety of productivity applications it can be up to 10% faster, though typically the performance difference is in the lower single digits. There is a $400 i9-12900k bundle available, however between the marginally slower cpu and the meaningfully cut down motherboard I don't think anyone should consider that bundle over this one. The 13700k is an excellent gaming cpu, but its primary benefit over other cpus in its price range is multithreaded performance for productivity applications. Compared to any single ccd amd zen 4 chip (7700x and below) the 13700k has a massive multithreaded advantage. Many productivity applications are better optimized for intel, and intel quick sync (hardware accelerated video encoding using the igpu) provides a major advantage in certain video editing productivity tasks. The largest flaw of the 13700k, and of intel 12th gen and higher cpus in general, is low power efficiency and extremely high power consumption. In both gaming and productivity the 13700k will consume a massive amount of additional power compared to its amd zen 4 competitors, such as the 7900x. For example, when running blender render cycles, the 7900x will actually outperform the 13700k while using a whopping 80 watts less power! When it comes to power usage in gaming, this article compares a wide variety of intel and amd cpus, if you scroll down you'll find charts showing both gaming performance and power draw to achieve that performance: https://www.techspot.com/review/2...-gen-cpus/ [techspot.com]
Peruse the charts for yourself, but the difference in power draw even while doing lighter tasks such as gaming can be immense. While you can undervolt to reduce power draw, high voltage is necessary to reach the clock speeds intel, and motherboard vendors, have pushed these cpus to (unless you win the silicon lottery). Compared to zen 4 cpus, reducing power draw to more reasonable levels will lead to a greater performance loss, and may in fact necessitate underclocking for meaningful efficiency improvements. This increased power draw means you will pay more for electricity (both to power your computer and for air conditioning to remove the extra heat from your room), will need a better cooler, and said cooler will be louder due to needing the fans to run at a higher rpm. The other major downside to purchasing an intel cpu is that the lga 1700 socket is a dead end platform, 14th gen raptor lake refresh is the last cpu generation which will go in that socket. This means any future upgrade will require purchasing a completely new motherboard. On the other hand, amd has committed to release cpus on the am5 platform until at least 2025, and has said that they intend for am5 to have similar longevity to am4. So someone purchasing an am5 build now will be able to at minimum slot a zen 5 cpu into their existing system, and most likely will be able to upgrade to zen 6 or higher without needing to replace any other components. This obviously saves you a significant amount of money.
The intel 14700k is a quite minor improvement over the 13700k, with the primary change being 4 additional e-cores. The 14700k is negligibly faster than the 13700k in gaming, a couple of percentage points faster at best. In terms of productivity there is a marginal uplift, though for most applications it's around ~5% and only a few applications reach a 10% boost in performance. Intel has introduced a new software-based application-specific processor optimization called APO for 14th gen processors. This feature can improve performance in certain applications (only two games are supported currently), and it is currently only available on the 14900k. This feature should eventually come to the 14700k as well, but will not be available on 13th gen cpus. Everything I discussed about intel cpus in general when talking about the 13700k still applies to the 14700k. Overall, the 14700k is only slightly better than the 13700k, and if your use case is primarily gaming the difference is practically nonexistent. However, when also considering the better motherboard included in the 14700k bundle, the combined improvements may be worth the $50 premium over this 13700k bundle.
The amd zen 4 7700x is an 8 (full size) core cpu available in a bundle for $400, and is suited for a different type of user. The 7700x gets absolutely decimated by the 13700k or 14700k in multithreaded performance, so if productivity is a concern then it should be avoided. The 7700x's gaming performance is moderately worse the the 13700k, the 13700k is around ~10% faster in gaming on average at 1080p with a rtx4090. The benefits of massively better power efficiency and platform longevity, as detailed in the paragraph discussing the 13700k, are the primary reasons to to purchase this cpu. The motherboard included in the 7700x bundle is of a similar tier to the one included in this 13700k, being a decent lower mid-tier board.
The 7800x3d, and the 7950x3d, are the fastest gaming chips available. The 7800x3d is a 8 (full size) core cpu available in a bundle with the same motherboard and ram as the 7700x bundle for $470. While technically the better binned 7950x3d can slightly beat the 7800x3d when the ccd parking functions properly, that chip is far more expensive and aimed at individuals who are doing both gaming and intensive productivity work. Additionally, in any case where the ccd parking isn't properly functional, the 7950x3d trails behind. The 7800x3d is an exceptionally low power and power efficient chip, when compared to the intel 13700k in gaming at 1080p with a rtx4090 the 7800x3d is 11% faster on average while consuming on average 100 fewer watts of power, which is an absolutely insane difference. Eight cores is entirely sufficient for current gen gaming, and while it's theoretically possible that games will gradually start being able to take advantage of additional cores over the next 5 years or so, the 7800x3d should remain highly competitive in gaming for years to come. If your use cases are more varied and cpu intensive than just gaming, then the 7800x3d becomes a significantly less compelling option. The 7800x3d has rather mediocre multithreaded performance, it's essentially a marginally slower 7700x when used for productivity. If your use case is only gaming, then the 7800xd bundle is by far your best option.
The 5600x3d bundle is a last gen zen 3 bundle that is excellent for a budget build solely for gaming use. The 5600x3d is a 6 (full size) core cpu with excellent gaming performance on average being similar to the zen 4 7600x. The motherboard is competent (though only ddr4 since it's a previous generation part) and the ram is decent. Overall, if you're only gaming and are an exceptionally tight budget the 5600x3d bundle at $270 (if it goes back on sale at that price) is probably the best value gaming option available.
I won't go into much detail on the 7900x bundle since it's not currently on sale at a good price, if you want context on the 7900x bundle versus this 13700k bundle I went into detail in this post: https://slickdeals.net/f/17040193-amd-ryzen-7-7800x3d-msi-b650-p-pro-wifi-ddr5-g-skill-flare-x5-seri...
With regards to the $700 14900k bundle, it's a significantly worse value unless you use your computer professionally and the 14900k would meaningfully benefit your workflow.
Moving on to the motherboards, the motherboard in this 13700k bundle is a decent lower midrange board with some compromises. Here's a link to the asus specs page: https://www.asus.com/motherboards.../techspec/ [asus.com]
And the manual: https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASU...WEB_EN.pdf [asus.com]
The z790 chipset isn't a major improvement over the z690 chipset, but at least it's liable to get updates a bit longer. The pcie, m.2, and usb available on this board should be perfectly acceptable for the vast majority of users. There are a few unfortunate tradeoffs as it is a lower-midrange board, such as wifi 6 instead of 6e, a pcie gen5 x16 slot but no gen5 m.2 slot, no integrated io shield (a separate io shield is included), the cheap realtek alc897 audio chip (common in midrange and budget boards), and only 1 m.2 heatsink. That being said, for the average user this board should be more than sufficient.
The board included in the $500 14700k bundle is moderately better than the one in this 13700k bundle, but still remains a lower midrange board. Here's a link to the msi spec page: https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/P...cification [msi.com]
And the manual: https://download.msi.com/archive/...-PWIFI.pdf [msi.com]
As you can see from the specs, the msi board has better wifi (6e vs 6), additional storage support (an additional m.2 slot and 2 extra sata ports), and variety of marginally better (and some inferior) specs all around. That being said, while I'd say the msi board is better, the difference isn't extremely massive.
Moving on to the 7700x and 7800x3d bundles, the msi b650-p pro motherboard included in those bundles is acceptable, but it's a lower midrange board with several compromises. Here's a link to the specs page: https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/P...cification [msi.com]
And here's a link to the manual: https://download.msi.com/archive/...-PWIFI.pdf [msi.com]
First off, it entirely lacks pcie gen 5 support, which realistically isn't a big deal currently. The pcie 5x16 slot included in the intel z790 boards mentioned above is not a huge selling point considering the chances of a gpu needing a gen 5 x16 slot in the next several years is low. However, considering one of the primary benefits of building an am5 system is being able to slot in a new cpu years down the line, 4+ years from now the lack of pcie gen5 might be of much greater concern. Pcie, m.2, and sata configurations should be acceptable for the majority of average users, though once again there's nothing particularly impressive. It has 2 pcie gen4 m.2 slots, though only one comes with a heatsink. The realtek alc897 is a cheap low end audio chip fairly common on low to midrange boards. It also lacks an integrated io shield, but does come with a separate one you can install. The networking is good, with realtek 2.5gb lan and intel wifi6e with bluetooth 5.3. Overall, I'd say the b650 pro board is of a similar tier to the board in this 13700k bundle and slightly worse than the board included in the 14700k bundle.
The 7900x bundle has a higher tier motherboard than any of these other bundles, refer to the post I linked above for more info.
The ram included in the 13700k, 14700k, 7700x, and 7800x3d bundles is ddr5 6000 cl36 36-36-36-96 using samsung b-die memory chips. Samsung memory chips are inferior to hynix memory chips in just about every way, having worse compatibility, reliability, timings, and worse overclocking/tuning potential. If you are willing to manually tune your ram then the performance delta will actually be meaningful compared to manually tuned hynix ram. Intel cpus are less sensitive to memory timings, so while this ram is somewhat disappointing it is unlikely to have any major impact on performance for the 13700k and 14700k bundles unless you wish to manually overclock/tune your ram.
Amd zen 4 cpus are rather sensitive to memory timings, the current performance/value sweet spot is ddr5 6000 cl30. While this ram isn't awful, it's still something of a letdown, and will likely cost you a couple percentage points of performance. Ram using samsung memory chips have had compatibility issues with the am5 platform in the past, the latest agesa updates have supposedly fixed those compatibility issues.
The 7900x bundle has twice as much higher quality ram compared to the ram in these other bundles, refer to the post I linked above for more info.
In conclusion, if you want a cheap cpu which will be used for tasks more intensive than gaming this 13700k bundle at $450 is a very good value. The 14700k bundle offers a marginal increase in productivity performance and a somewhat better motherboard for $50 more. The 7700x bundle at $400 is best for gaming if you don't have an absurdly powerful gpu (such as a 4090), and provides a meaningful upgrade path. The 7800x3d bundle at $470 is the best value high end option for gaming as long as you don't require multithreaded performance for productivity. It also has exceptional power efficiency and a meaningful upgrade path. The 5600x3d bundle, if it goes back on sale at $270, is by far the best value option for only gaming if you're on a very tight budget. The 7900x bundle, if it goes back on sale at $550, provides by far the best upgrade path (best motherboard by a wide margin, and twice as much higher quality ram using hynix memory chips) while trading blows with the 13700k in productivity using far less power.
I hope this post provides some help to people looking to choose between these bundles. I apologize for the massive unedited wall of text, I sort of just let my flow of consciousness dribble onto the page.
https://slickdeals.net/f/16659797-tustin-micro-center-intel-core-i7-13700k-cpu-asus-z790-p-prime-mob...
And it hit $449 a month ago:
https://slickdeals.net/f/16990264-yymv-microcenter-intel-core-i7-13700k-asus-z790-p-prime-wifi-ddr5-...
I'm waiting until this bundle goes
This is not a Slick Deal.
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The mobo I got and ram are better than in the
Is deal but I'm tempted to get this, sell the mobo and ram in deal and return 13600k I purchased.
And both finally back in stock at my MC. Thinking I'll hold out just a bit longer to see if any Christmas deals.
And both finally back in stock at my MC. Thinking I'll hold out just a bit longer to see if any Christmas deals.