The only thing I noticed from intel's statement where they might have dropped the ball is not informing users of their performance tuning plans. They went outside the scope of normal use (stock configuration) and mentioned delidding in addition to overclocking, the 7th gen cpu's like past cpu's are covered under additional protection plans users can purchase.
For the 7700k it's $30 and offers the user a 1 time replacement of the cpu even if it was damaged from being run outside the factory specs. For what it's worth I'm not sure amd has such a program for users even though people have be overclocking their chips for years.
https://click.intel.com/tuningplan/
Their statement sounds like a standard coya comment. No company vouches for their product if it's run outside of the factory specs. While the k series are seen as overclocking 'capable', there's never been a guarantee of suitability in terms of clock speeds, voltages or temps beyond factory specs. All they've done is left the multiplier unlocked for people to tinker - at their own risk and with unknown results. It's uncharted territory and always has been. There's never been a k series cpu that says 'good for a 500mhz oc!'.
Some are better overclockers than others, it's part of the silicon lottery. People shouldn't be surprised by that. Just as people were complaining that their cooling fans were constantly spinning up and idling down. How is it intel's fault that users apparently don't understand how fan curves work? That's not something the cpu manufacturer should have to inform folks of considering it's controlled via the bios which is a motherboard situation.
It's not the first time I've seen fluff pieces done by wccftech or seen them quick to try and 'call out' intel. Where is their in depth article covering their experience overclocking kaby lake, or have they even bothered? Anandtech reported their findings along with plenty of details along the way such as thermals, core voltage, tests run. So has hardocp, including using a review chip, a plain off the shelf retail chip, performance with and without delidding.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10968/the-intel-core-i7-7700k-91w-review-the-new-stock-performance-champion/11
https://www.hardocp.com/article/2017/01/26/intel_kaby_lake_i77700k_cpu_overclocking_followup/
Tom's put in the work.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/kaby-lake-de-lidding-overclocking-test,4970.html
Looking for anything wccftech's actually done beyond whisper and regurgitate gossipy news from other sources still leaves me empty handed. Sort of like when they tried to turn it into 'bend gate' or something when a remark about the thin pcb's causing skylake and newer cpu's corners to bend because of 'heavy coolers'. Then of course if someone went far enough to track down the original story it was a review done by someone who admittedly used a power driver to tighten their heatsink to the cpu. A thinner pcb may have contributed to the issue but it didn't cover for plain old human error and was more about the mounting pressure which doesn't equate to heatsink weight. Even a waterblock (which is lighter than the stock cooler) can be over tightened and cause damage.
Fair to say wccftech enjoys 'juicy' news stories.
Similar to eximo, I'm running a devil's canyon i5 so essentially haswell. It has the funky tim instead of the soldered ihs that sandy bridge used. Coming up on my 3rd year of ownership, it's been oc'd to between 4.6 and 4.5ghz since day 1 depending on summer/winter (the room the pc is in often gets up to 32c+ in summer). No delidding, no custom water loop, just a large air cooler. Haven't even changed the thermal paste. It stays around 80-82c running p95 v26.6 and remains much lower during normal tasks and gaming.
Considering stock turbo only allows it to go up to around 3.7ghz with all 4 cores loaded I'm enjoying a solid 800-900mhz over stock. Not bad for the extra $20 or so I paid for a k series and that's running on the factory tim under the ihs. It doesn't mean the tim under the ihs is the best solution they could have used or that it might not be an issue for a few folks but in all fairness it's not
that horrible.
Mine wasn't a cherry picked cpu from someplace that pretests chips and sells 'golden' cpu's or anything, just luck of the draw. Plenty of others with higher clocked cpu's than mine and with lower vcore. The idea that the factory tim is the worst thing ever and the downfall of desktop cpu's as we know them might be a little over dramatic.
Neither company is without their issues. Amd had trouble with the fx lineup and trying to sort out what actual core temps were, even their own overdrive software wasn't 100% accurate with the thermal algorithms. Those things still haven't been entirely addressed or there wouldn't be all the confusion over ryzen and why if they use the same basic 4 core clusters between the r7's and r5's, why is it only some of the r7's use a 20c offset? They don't use a different die than r5's and the 20c offset only applies to the 1700x and 1800x, but not the 1700. Reviewers are still scratching their heads trying to sort out whether those cpu's are or aren't overheating if and when the offset does or doesn't apply. Pick your poison.