I’m a firm believer that if you want the absolute best computer, you need to build it yourself. If you don’t build it directly then you should at least work closely with a company that builds it for you. Yes, you have to research all of the different parts to find the ones that best meet your needs and budget.

Unfortunately Intel hasn’t provided me a free chip. But I do earn a small commission from Amazon if you use the links I’ve included to purchase something.

It all starts with the processor and we’re going to talk about one of the best currently available. Once you’ve chosen the right processor, then you can select the other parts you need. Intel just released the “Kaby Lake” series of processors and today I’m featuring the top of that line, the i7-7700K.

This cheap has four cores and allows for hyper-threading so that it can run eight threads at once. Yes, speed matters. But having eight fast things running at the same time makes all the difference in the world. As for the speed, the base clock on this chip is 4.2GHz and the Turbo Boost can take it to 4.5GHz. Yea, that’s crazy fast! And if you are one who likes to tinker, you can tweak it to run even faster.

It uses the Socket LGA 1151 so you’ll obviously want to find a motherboard with the appropriate socket. As with other new Intel chips, you’ll find Intel HD Graphics 630 on the chip itself. For those who don’t have the need for high-end graphics performance, the onboard video may be enough.

I last upgraded my CPU and motherboard in November 2014 and thought I got a great processor at the time. But writing this post has shown me how much things have changed in the last 2.5 years. I’m probably still a year away from an upgrade, but this chip has me itching to do it a bit earlier.