Question 1

I have an Asus X79 Sabertooth, is this CPU compatible? X79 boards are socket 2011, this CPU is 2011 V3. What's the deal?

Accepted Answer

Hi from what I see of the SABERTOOTH X79 Product Overview, of your board I can not be 100% shore that this will work, but it Should. Now the box that my I7 came in ONLY has mine listed on the box as a  i7-6950X  3 GHZ 25MB Cache LGA2011, So to be 100% shore I would call Asus tech support and ask them if it will work.   I do not have the same Mother Board as you, I have the X99A GAMING PRO CARBON MS-7A20  with 128G DDR4. But I WILL tell you to get a Good CPU Cooler as one dose not come with the CPU. I just love the one that I have, it runs all my 4k stuff perfectly.
                                                              Hope this helped you.  jtb8

Question 2

Can this handle ms paint?

Accepted Answer

I'm glad you asked! I've had this CPU since it became available and have been rather happy with its performance. On my previous i7, I could barely open Paint and draw a line before it would start to hang. On this puppy, I've been able to place several lines, squares and circles on a single page before it starts to slow!

Question 3

can overclock?

Accepted Answer

This processor will easily overclock to 4.3 GHz stable with auto overclocking software like AISuite from Asus.. I run this at 4.5 GHz stable on water with a CPU/VRM mono block (this CPU can easily go higher but there is no real practical reason to.). My water loop has this 6950x, VRM, Dual 980TIs, and Ram all on the same loop with a 120mm X 360mm radiator and it stays below 50c under full load with my Noctua static pressure fans still running silent.

Question 4

How many programs currently on market will be able to use 10 cores??

Accepted Answer

No, but whether that matters depends on whether or not you are planning to run only one resource intensive program at a time.

Oversimplified, there are often more applications running, vying for CPU time, than there are logical cores available. Your operating system or hypervisor level scheduler distributes resources to each program in turn as requested (intentionally oversimplified). Therefore, having additional cores available improves preemptive multistasking scenarios (many programs), and parallel programming scenarios (one program that parallelizes its workload).

For example, I have 8 cores in my current setup and I play StartCraft II, a CPU bound game that was unfortunately not designed for more than 2 cores. If StarCraft II is the only active program running, I will never see more than 25% CPU usage (usually more like 20%), but if I run StarCraft II and Visual Studio and a virus scan at the same time, I can see close to max utilization when Visual Studio is compiling in parallel.

Question 5

can anyone recommend a good gaming board to use this cpu with? Trying to go all out, just not sure what boards are even in the top ten of being the best.

Accepted Answer

any socket x99 mobo will take it, but i'd suggest looking at asus mobos. The x99 has been out for a bit, but asus just refreshed their older models. Personally i went with the Asus Rampage V 10 year edition and the Asus x99-e-10g WS

Question 6

I can't tell if this cpu LGA 2011 v3 is a square type or a narrow type?

Accepted Answer

The 6950x is not exactly square being slightly more tall than wide.    What motherboard are you trying to use this in?

Question 7

Can this i7 use 128GB of ram?

Accepted Answer

Yes, I'm setting it up now in an Asus X99 Deluxe II. Working fine. Still building, have not overclocked it yet. Will be for content creation.

Question 8

The product description says "4 Channels DDR4 2400; one DIMM per Channel." Does this mean only 4 DIMMs can be installed on the motherboard even if it has 8 slots?

Accepted Answer

No, I think that might be an error because I am currently using 64gb ddr4 ram (8x 8gb) in eight slots and my bios and system stats recognize all the ram. To be fair though 16gb is way more ram than you will ever need unless you are going to stream massive amounts of data for a minecraft server like me.

Question 9

Does any part of a PC come with windows 10 or do you have to buy it separately?

Accepted Answer

Windows 10 is operating system that runs on a computer without a computer does not work, computers can come with Windows 10 or Windows 7 or Windows 95. but no Windows 10 does not come with parts of a computer,rather it is the part of a computer that makes the computer work.

Question 10

Is anyone successfully using this CPU, under heavy load, with an air cooler. If so, can you recommend a solid option? 
I ask because I do not with to use water cooling at this time and would like to overclock this to around 4.0GHz and stay under 70 C (preferably far lower tempts, but that will suffice).

Accepted Answer

I am running it at 4.3 with a corsair h110i. I only use about 20% load. But when when I first got it I stressed it at 4.3 at full load and 2 cores got to 100c. There was a huge difference between 4.2 and 4.3 I would think at 4.0 with a closed loop cooling unit would not exceed 67c on the cap and no where close to 100c on any one core. Of course there are other factors that are involved. I use gelid extreme thermal paste and the ambient temp by me never gets close to 90f.

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