Benchmarks: CPU
Intel's range-topping Core i9-11900K failed to capture our imagination in our in-depth 11th Gen review, but the Core i7-11700K positioned further down the 14nm range comes across more favourably. The £400 octo-core chip provides excellent single-thread performance and decent competition for the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X in the multi-threaded workloads.
There is a caveat, however, in that 11th Gen chips are proving to be quite thirsty. During the Blender benchmark, system-wide power consumption ballooned to 300W for the Core i7-11700K rig. That's some 60-80W more than we'd expect from an equivalent Ryzen 7 5800X build.
