Fellow tech enthusiasts, hear me out—I recently picked up the B850 Tomahawk missile motherboard, fully expecting to upgrade my CPU down the line. Little did I know, after installing this 9700X, it idles at a cool 40 degrees but skyrockets to 60–70 degrees just by opening a single webpage. *Facepalm.* My primary use for this rig is work-related tasks, with the occasional gaming session thrown in.
Now, could I have drawn the short straw and landed a poorly binned CPU because I bought it as part of a bundle? Honestly, for work purposes, the 9700X isn’t too shabby. Before this, I was stuck with an i7 11700K—a real nightmare. That thing would frequently spike to 99% usage and freeze without warning. In comparison, the 9700X is far more stable, but having the fan scream at 60 degrees is still incredibly frustrating. Should I bite the bullet and swap it out for a 9950X instead?
Zachary Ruiz 
Miles Holt 
Paul Miller
I feel you on the heat issue; I’ve seen similar temps with my 9700X, especially when gaming. For pure gaming performance, the 9950X might offer a slight edge, but if your rig spends more time on work tasks, the extra cores of the 9700X could still be worth keeping around. Just make sure your cooling solution can handle the load!