Intel CPUs have disappointed twice this year, first with the why-even-bother Raptor Lake Refresh generation and now with a notable lack of decent Black Friday deals. There’s a small handful of 13th-gen chips at good prices, but nothing on par with the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X or Ryzen 7800X3D that Will highlighted earlier this week.
I have, however, spotted a surprise £20 discount on the Intel Core i7-14700K, which just happens to be the only CPU in the new 14th-gen lineup that actually is worth buying. And so, just as it carried the Raptor Lake Refresh launch, so too must it redeem Intel’s Black Friday showing.
I admittedly haven’t had the time to scribble down a full Core i7-14700K review, but I have tested it in all our gaming, productivity and temperature benchmarks, and it’s simultaneously faster than the Core i5-14600K and much better value than the Core i9-14900K. It even outpaced the latter in a few 1080p games, averaging 166fps in Total War: Warhammer III on an RTX 4070 Ti; with the i9, I got 158fps. Horizon Zero Dawn also scored 194fps, edging out the i9’s 188fps. So, even if £20 isn’t the meatiest saving you’ll see this Black Friday week, it’s still a fair few coins off what is arguably Intel’s best current-gen CPU.
UK deals:
The main drawback is heat: the Core i7-14700K doesn’t get particularly toasty while gaming, but even on an AIO watercooler it was hitting 100°c on some of its Performance cores while running Cinebench R20. Make sure you’ve got some premium cooling hardware if you intend to use your PC for more rigorous work than occasionally rendering some men shooting each other.
We’ve got a few more CPUs going cheap in our main best Black Friday PC gaming deals hub. Want more frames by different means? The best Black Friday graphics card deals may well have what you need.
For all our top picks of the Black Friday season, check out our guides to the best Black Friday PC gaming deals and the best Black Friday Steam Deck accessories deals. We’ll be updating these with all the best-value offers on quality hardware, right up to the day itself on November 24th (and Cyber Monday on November 27th).
