No retail package for us, just a little blue storage box holding our engineering sample, direct from Intel.
You would be hard pressed to tell the difference between a 2600k and the 2700k.
CPUz highlights the ‘engineering sample (ES)' moniker … same architecture as the Core i7 2600k, but clocked slightly higher.
We updated the Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 bios to the latest version and experienced no problems with system stability or validation. You can see it over here.
With the ThermalTake Frio OCK, we found that the Core i7 2700k would often hold constantly at 3.9ghz, even when all 4 cores were loaded 100%.
£10 is great. I wish AMD had kept true to the FX name and released a new class leader. but they got it all wrong. ah well……