I currently have a Z790 motherboard paired with an i5-12400F. I bought the board partly so I could upgrade the processor later, and my budget now only covers a CPU rather than a new motherboard. I've been considering the i7-14700K, but I've also seen concerns that it runs very hot and that this generation has reliability issues. I mainly use the computer for gaming, editing, and streaming. Would upgrading to the 14700K be worthwhile, and is there anything important I should do before installing it?
2 Answers
Coming from an i5-12400F, the i7-14700K would be a substantial upgrade, especially for editing, streaming, and other heavily threaded workloads. It can also help in CPU-limited games, although the benefit depends on your graphics card and resolution. Before installing it, update the motherboard BIOS while the current CPU is still installed. Buy a new retail chip rather than a used or refurbished one, and make sure you have a capable cooler because the 14700K can run hot under sustained loads.
The upgrade makes more sense for your mixed gaming, editing, and streaming use than it would for gaming alone. If you mostly play at high resolutions with a GPU bottleneck, the frame-rate improvement may be modest, but the extra cores and threads should make editing and streaming noticeably smoother.
Updating the BIOS first is especially important since older firmware may not properly support the newer processor or its recommended power settings.