which will gain a 300MHz boost over the other two CPUs. In
fact, most of the old Core i9-9900K CPUs will only reach 5GHz
with an all-core overclock, so here, you’re essentially getting a
pre-overclocked version of Intel’s former mainstream flagship.
That 5GHz clock was certainly the limit with our old 9900K
sample – we could only get to 5.1GHz on the Core i5-9600K
and Core i7-9700K.
Intel is essentially binning CPUs, cherry-picking the very
best batches from the Core i9-9900K silicon lottery and
putting the Core i9-9900KS name on them. However, that
status also brings the possibility of even higher overclocks,
since these chips will be the more favourable ones to have
come off Intel’s 14nm production line.
Otherwise, the Core i9-9900KS and Core i9-9900K are
practically identical. They both sport 16MB of L3 Cache –
admittedly far less than AMD’s similarly priced Ryzen 9
3900X, which has 4MB of L3 cache per core, compared to
2MB for the Core i9-9900KS. The Core i9-9900KS’ single-
core peak boost limit is also 5GHz, so single-threaded
performance is unlikely to see much of a boost – only loads
that stress three or more cores will benefit.
The downside to the extra grunt is that it comes with
additional power consumption. Intel states that the Core
i9-9900K has a TDP of 95W. The Core i9-9900KS, though,
comes with a TDP of 127W, which is significantly higher than
that of the 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X. The trouble here, though,
is that the Core i9-9900K was already a toasty customer
when it comes to high-load tests and even more so when
overclocking. It doesn’t look like the Core i9-9900KS is going
to change that situation.SUPPLIER overclockers.co.ukINTEL CORE
I99900KS
/£500 inc VAT
LGA1151 PROCESSOR
B
ack in early summer this year during the Computex
trade show, Intel announced, much to our surprise,
the Core i9-9900KS. The CPU, which was
completely unexpected, came just as AMD was launching its
3rd-gen Ryzen products, which have done rather well since
launching in July. The Core i9-9900KS, though, only landed in
our lab hours before we went to press near the end of October,
so it’s rather late to the 2019 CPU war.
While we’ve grabbed a full suite of benchmark results
before these pages flew out the door, there is one aspect of
the new CPU we’re not sure about and that’s the price. The
review embargo sat a week in the future of when we were
writing this review, so there were no concrete retail prices
available. However, several US websites have revealed initial
figures in the $550-600 US price range, meaning that the
Core i9-9900KS is likely going to tip the scales at a little over
£500 inc VAT. The Core i9-9900K, meanwhile, retails for
under £460 inc VAT, and the GPU-free Core i9-9900KF going
for around £15 lower still?
On the plus side, that extra dough gets you the first desktop
CPU with a stock speed all-core turbo boost clock of 5GHz.
Unlike the Core i7-8086K, which could boost to 5GHz on a
single core, the Core i9-9900KS can get there across all eight
cores out of the box. By comparison, the Core i9-9900K and
Core i9-9900KF can only reach 4.7GHz in their all-core boost
state, although they can also hit 5GHz
with up to two cores in lightly
threaded workloads.
The main benefit of
the 9900KS, then, is
mainly seen in multi-
threaded workloads,
Intel is essentially
binning CPUs, cherry-
picking the very
best batches from its
eight-core wafersREVIEWS / PROCESSOR