Overclocking
Running Intel's fastest-ever consumer chip at stock speeds, while impressive, isn't what the enthusiast is after. They'll likely want to push it further and see just how far it will go.
We used a middle-of-the-road Zalman CNPS11X Performa heatsink and managed a stable 4.5GHz (45x100MHz) by raising the default voltage from 1.125V to 1.325V. Incidentally this is exactly the same frequency achieved by the Core i7-3960X (SNB-E) chip. Turbo Boost was disabled and all cores were set to run at the quoted 4.5GHz frequency.
There's absolutely no surprise in seeing the Core i7-4960X cement its position as the premier processor for heavily-threaded applications.
