What does unlocked cpu mean

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What does "Unlocked" mean? Forums Hardware CPUs. JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. Previous Next Sort by votes.

Feb 29, 95 0 10, 0. I am building a computer and coming to the choice between the Intel Core i5 or Intel Core i5 K. My understanding is that the "k" means unlocked but what does it actually mean?

What are the advantages? Thanks in advance, Logan Oct 5, 21, 59, 1, Motopsychojdn :. The other thing I am confused about is Turboboost. Both the and the K are 3. Well, when it comes to gaming, the answer is usually: no. Of course, this would depend largely on how CPU-intensive a game is and whether the CPU is bottlenecking the GPU, but in general, the in-game performance gain from CPU overclocking generally comes down to a handful of frames.

This goes for both AMD and Intel. As the saying goes, getting there is half the fun, so the very process of trying to squeeze every bit of processing power out of a CPU is part of the fun for the overclocking enthusiast. Well, if you feel like you could really benefit from the performance boost, i. Samuel is GamingScan's editor-in-chief. Unlocked processors, denoted with a k at the end of the model number like the Skylake Core ik and Haswell-E Core ik , are made with an unlocked clock multiplier.

This means when paired with the proper chipset like the Z and in the hands of a knowledgeable techie, unlocked processors can be Overclocked for faster than factory core speeds. Locked processors cannot be Overclocked. So does this mean for the non-overclocker that these unlocked processors should just be avoided? Not entirely. This is the Turbo feature included with these processors, and while similar in concept to Overclocking, is not the same thing as we refer to it here.