Intel i3-7350K Temperatures vs. i5-7600K, i7-7700K

For thermals, we’re seeing the i3-7350K operate at around 65C when under the same AVX intensive workload as the 7700K and 7600K shown in the below table. The 7350K has a power draw closer to 60W when under load, and we’re operating at the same 1.275 fixed voltage as in other tests. It’s not necessary to use the Kraken X62 at max RPMs that we’re using to cool this CPU; you’d be able to keep the 7350K under control with a wide variety of simple air coolers, making this chip easier to work with than its hotter counterparts.

As a reminder, auto vCore on some motherboards can drastically increase temperatures, and does so beyond actual usefulness for stability. Gigabyte recently resolved their issues pertaining to high auto vCore, as we reported, but we still recommend venturing into BIOS and manually tuning vCore if it seems high.

Intel i3-7350K Blender Rendering Benchmark

Starting off with Blender and the custom render benchmark we made, where we’re rendering various monkey heads with different effects applied, we’re seeing the i3-7350K at 4.2GHz stock complete the scene render in about 91 minutes. This is slower than the overclocked 2500K and faster than the i5-3570K stock. Compared to the previous generation i3, we’re seeing an improvement of about 9 minutes, or roughly a 9% reduction in total render time required. For comparison, the i5-7600K lands us at around 68 minutes pre-overclock, with the 7700K chart-topping at 42 minutes pre-OC.

Overclocking the i3-7350K won’t get us to the top of the chart, but our 5.0GHz overclock gets us to 78.3 minutes required. That’s a reduction of about 16-17% in total render time from the stock version, at which point we’re now running into severe thread limitations. This also lands us ahead of the i5-4690K stock CPU, and just under the stock i7-2600K. Once overclocked, this new i3 K-SKU is on-par with a five generation-old i7 CPU. Not bad.

Intel i3-7350K Cinebench vs. i3-6300, i5-7600K

To throw some standardized synthetics in here, Cinebench posts the 7350K just below the i5-3570K stock CPU, scoring 466.5 cb marks, though the i3 has stronger single-core performance thanks to the boosted frequency. The i3-6300 last-gen CPU that we had on-hand is awarded 422 cb marks, or 163 cb marks for single-threaded performance.

After overclocking the new i3-7350K Kaby Lake CPU to 5.0GHz with a 1.35 vCore, we land just below the overclocked i5-2500K at 4.5GHz for multi-core performance. We’re well ahead in single-core performance, granted, and overall land just below the i5-4690K stock. – though well ahead in single-core performance – and also below the i5-4690K stock CPU.

3DMark Firestrike – i3-7350K vs. i3-6300, 7600K

Running 3DMark Firestrike on ‘Normal,’ we’re seeing the i3-7350K performing about on-par with an i5-4690K in physics processing, though total scores place us closer to the 2500K & 3570K. With overclocking, the i3-7350K is able to produce about the same performance as an i7-2600K with hyperthreading enabled (stock frequency), providing yet another data point indicating comparable performance to a 5 generation-old i7 CPU.

Here’s the FPS chart:

3DMark TimeSpy – i3-7350K vs. i7-2600K, i3-6300K, etc.

More of the same here: The i3-7350K sits near the i5-3570K, and just ahead of the i3-6300. The i5-2500K struggles a bit with TimeSpy, and the i7-2600K (both Sandy Bridge) is just ahead of the i3-7350K. Once overclocked, the 7350K lands just under the stock i5-4690K.

Continue to the next page for gaming benchmarks & the conclusion.