In October 2017 we raved about Intel Core i7-8700K and the watershed move from the quad core 7th Gen to the 8th Gen i7-8700K that came packed with six cores. In our conclusion we said “Core i7-8700K is fabulous and performs like a champ ... It is painful to consider that if Intel soldered the package and allowed it to cool properly that we would be able to move to a new era of PC gaming.” And here we are 12 months later with the launch of Intel’s 9th Gen Core i9-9900K that boasts eight cores, a soldered heat spreader and a maximum Turbo Frequency of 5GHz. More cores, better thermals and higher clock speed sounds like the perfect recipe for a gaming CPU, however we had a moment of concern at the Intel launch when the stratospheric price was confirmed. We hit a further bump in the road when Intel’s chosen testing house chose some inexplicable settings for their benchmarking and we had to wonder whether Intel was trying to hide something. At the very least, they seemed to be less sure of themselves than we would have expected. On the face of it Core i9-9900K looked like a sure-fire winner but just beneath the surface we found there was quite a bit more to the story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eXIY18bih0 Note: if the above images are not displaying properly, you may need to disable Ad Block as it is known to interfere with our display code Specification: 8 Cores and 16 Threads 3.6 GHz Base Clock Speed 5.0 GHz Maximum Turbo Frequency LGA 1151 Socket 9th Generation (Coffee Lake Refresh) 14nm++ Fabrication Process 16MB Cache Memory x16 PCIe 3.0 for CPU up to x40 PCIe for Platform 95W TDP 130W Thermal Solution Intel UHD Graphics 630 (350-1200 MHz) Dual-Channel DDR4 2666-4600MHz Memory 64GB Maximum Memory Support Supports Intel Optane Memory Intel 300 Series Chipset Compatible Only 3 Year Warranty Intel has launched three CPUs from its 9th Generation that are all unlocked K SKUs with more models sure to follow in time. The microarchitecture inside Core i9-9900K appears to be little changed from 6th Gen Skylake (Intel has given no details, so we cannot be sure) and while we quibble in our video about calling the new CPUs 9th Gen, it does in fact make a certain amount of sense as Intel has torn up its own rule book. Model code Cores/Threads Base Speed Max. Turbo TDP Cache UK Price Core i9-9900K 8/16 3.6GHz 5.0GHz 95W 16MB £600 Core i7-9700K 8/8 3.6GHz 4.9GHz 95W 12MB £500 Core i5-9600K 6/6 3.7GHz 4.6GHz 95W 9MB £350 Core i7-8700K 6/12 3.7GHz 4.7GHz 95W 12MB £450 Core i5-8600K 6/6 3.6GHz 4.3GHz 95W 9MB £300 The new Core i9-9900K has eight cores with Hyper Threading, while Core i7-9700K and Core i5-9600K have eight and six cores respectively and do not use HT. Intel introduced HT back in 2002 as part of Pentium 4, long before the first Core CPUs were launched in 2008. And now it seems that HT is vanishing from the desktop, without a word of explanation. This means that Core i9-9900K looks like a bigger, better version of Core i7-8700K as it has extra cores and extra clock speed. Core i5-9600K sounds like it will be a faster version of Core i5-8600K with a slightly higher price, however Core i7-9700K is a new type of CPU as Intel has not previously produced an eight core CPU with eight threads. Core i9-9900K uses the same 14nm++ fabrication process as Coffee Lake and while the name Coffee Lake Refresh has only been used as shorthand, it appears these 9th Gen CPUs bring nothing new to the party. It seems fair to say that Intel has taken the building blocks used inside Skylake, Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake and has simply tacked another pair of CPU cores onto the guts of Coffee Lake. Intel hasn’t given details of the transistor count or die area in recent generations of CPU, however so many Coffee Lakes have been delidded that we can clearly see there is plenty of room to increase the size of the silicon die. The reason so many people delidded recent generations of Intel CPU was the inexplicable use of TIM (Thermal Interface Material) that acted as a thermal barrier and led to unnecessarily high temperatures in these enthusiast CPUs. One of the major announcements for 9th Gen, including Core i9-9900K, was the welcome return of the soldered heat spreader. Intel has come up with the term STIM or Soldered TIM, to describe this process which is a neat move as it suggests that a conventional engineering process is an Intel technology. Say hello to the Z390 chipset Both Z390 and Z370 chipsets support a total of 14 USB ports with a maximum of 10x USB 3.1 Gen1 ports, however Z370 does not natively support USB 3.1 Gen2. The new Z390 adds support for a maximum 6x USB 3.1 Gen2 ports, along with integrated 802.11ac Wi-Fi. Intel 9th Gen and 8th Gen CPUs will run on any 300 series chipset so you do not require a Z390 motherboard to run a Core i9-9900K, although it is safe to say you will need to install the latest BIOS on your motherboard. We successfully swapped Core i9-9900K and Core i7-8700K between Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Master and ASRock Z370 Extreme4. Having said that, the Auto voltage setting for the Core i9 on the ASRock Z370 was enormous at 1.512V which is clearly a sign that BIOS support will need to be tweaked for existing motherboards as the new CPUs hit the market. Testing To test Core i9-9900K we used three distinct platforms with a number of common components, exactly as you will have seen in our video. We limited DDR4 speed to 3400MHz (still pretty fast, however) to ensure that AMD wasn’t shown at a disadvantage that skewed our figures. The only significant difference between the platforms is that Core i7-7820X uses quad channel DDR4. We adjusted the XMP speed of our Corsair Dominator Platinum SE down from 3466MHz to 3400MHz to match the G.Skill SniperX. In our review of AMD Ryzen 7 2700X we concluded that manual overclocking was fairly pointless as the increase in performance was minimal. With this in mind we left the 2700X CPU on Auto settings with an all-core clock speed of 4.05GHz. Similarly, we overclocked our pseudo Core i7-9700K (i9-9900K with HT disabled) to 5.2GHz but did not run benchmarks at stock clock speeds. We were working with an engineering sample CPU and felt it would be unwise to draw too many conclusions about the performance of a genuine Core i7-9700K. Test systems used: CPU: Intel Core i9-9900K Motherboard: Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Master RAM: 16GB G.Skill SniperX DDR4-3400MHz CPU: Core i7-8700K Motherboard: ASRock Z370 Extreme4 RAM: 16GB G.Skill SniperX DDR4-3400MHz CPU: Intel Core i7-7820X Motherboard: Asus ROG Rampage VI Extreme RAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum SE DDR4-3466MHz CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Motherboard: Gigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi RAM: 16GB G.Skill SniperX DDR4-3400MHz Common components CPU Cooler: Fractal Design Celsius S24 Graphics: Nvidia RTX 2080 Founders Edition 8GB GDDR6 SSD: 1TB WD Black M.2 NVMe and 512GB Samsung 960 Pro Power Supply: Seasonic Prime Platinum 1300W Performance Overview The BIOS of the Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Master has Turbo Boost Settings for: 50x one or two cores 49x three cores 48x four or five cores 47x six, seven or eight cores We found our Core i9-9900K had an All-core Turbo of 4.8GHz and we occasionally saw glimpses of 5.1GHz on single cores, so something doesn’t quite add up there as we appear to have gained 100MHz across the board. With that said, it is clear that in a world of 8-core CPUs the Core i9-9900K is king. The combination of eight cores and 16 threads running at 4.8GHz with good support for fast DDR4 is a winner and that is the end of the argument. By contrast the 4.0GHz Ryzen 7 2700X loses out on clock speed and the Core i7-8700K only has six cores. Core i7-7820X is already showing its age. We shall look at the bigger picture in our Closing Thoughts but the short version is that Core i9-9900K exhibits superb performance and does a wonderful job. Our graphs tell the tale here as the Core i9-9900K tops almost every chart and does very well in the remaining handful. Overclocking Gigabyte gave us overclocking settings to use on the Z390 Aorus Master that were expected to yield a clock speed of 5.2GHz on 1.30V-1.35V. The CPU sample sent to KitGuru was unstable beyond 5.0GHz at 1.35V and we couldn’t go any faster with an increased voltage of 1.40V. We also created our very own Core i7-9700K by disabling Hyper Threading and found we could run the CPU at 5.2GHz with 1.40V Vcore. Clearly this only gives an indication of what we might expect from Core i7-9700K but we have to confess we thought that halving the core count would yield higher clock speeds. Nonetheless, it performed well. Overclocking Overview Our results clearly show the many-times-refreshed Skylake/Kaby Lake/Coffee Lake architecture has been pushed to the limits and is surely at the edge of its performance. We know full well that Intel had intended to move from 14nm++ to 10nm and that Coffee Lake/Refresh was never supposed to be on the roadmap, however we have to deal with the CPU that is sat in front of us, regardless of its heritage. With Core i9-9900K we see no useful scope for overclocking. Run your CPU out of the box with decent cooling on a motherboard with decent power delivery and the job is done. Intel has arrived at the same place as AMD, albeit at higher clock speeds. Cooling Performance Cooling Performance Overview We used a 240mm Asetek cooler from Fractal Design, and while there may be scope for improved cooling with a larger custom loop we feel confident the figures we have are representative for this new 8-core CPU. The two extra CPU cores have driven CPU temperatures significantly higher than Core i7-8700K. Intel has soldered the heat spreader through necessity as a way of maintaining clock speeds. If they had stuck with conventional TIM we are sure Turbo clock speeds would have been a few hundred MHz lower. On Auto settings the Core i9-9900K behaves perfectly well but as soon as you overclock the thermals race up to the line for throttling. Core i9-9900K is delivered on the edge of its thermal limits. Power Draw We used Powenetics Project software from Cybenetics to fully analyse the performance of our CPUs in conjunction with a 1300W Seasonic Prime Platinum power supply. Power Draw Overview On Auto settings the Core i9-9900K draws significantly more power than Core i7-8700K (175W against 110W), however the clock speed is 4.8GHz over 4.4GHz. The intriguing thing is that an overclocked Core i9-9900K draws 205W which is barely more than the 190W demanded by Core i7-8700K. Intel has said nothing about the process used in Core i9 but it feels to us that some minor improvements have been made. Take a tour along the shelves of KitGuru’s testing hardware and we are quite sure the enthusiast gamer would happily select Core i9-9900K running on a high end Z390 motherboard. Performance is excellent and the addition of two cores is welcome. We begged Intel to follow in AMD’s footsteps by increasing core count whilst maintaining clocking speeds around the 5.0GHz mark and to kindly solder the heat spreader and help the thermals. They have delivered on every one of those points with Core i9-9900K and in addition have maintained socket compatibility with 300 series motherboards. Bravo, Intel. We salute you. Should you buy Core i9-9900K? Well, the price tag of £599.99 here in the UK is outrageous but Apple, Samsung and Nvidia have demonstrated that customers are insensitive to price. We can carp and moan all we like but Intel has added one third extra cores to the i7-8700K and has jacked up the price by one third, which is even-handed to say the least. It feels like a similar situation to the time when Core i7-6950X moved the upper limit of HEDT from US$999 to US$1499, essentially because Intel ruled the roost and AMD was nowhere, however the situation has changed dramatically since then. AMD is offering a serious challenge with Ryzen 7 for gamers and general desktop duties, while workstation users can look towards Threadripper with 12 or 16 cores at reasonable speeds and 24 or 32 cores at somewhat slower clocks. In addition Intel has announced a new wave of Core-X CPUs that run from 8- to 18-cores that will all have soldered heat spreaders. A couple of years ago we were stuck at quad core and now we have a vast range of options, all with soldered heat spreaders, and all with decent DDR4 memory support. Intel Core i9-9900K is somewhere in the middle of the stack and in our chosen selection of CPU tests it does a stunning job. On the other hand if you try and demonstrate a compelling case for a gamer with a GTX 970 to buy i9-9900K over, say, i5-8600K you will have a tough time. Similarly the video editor or CAD operator will demand more cores and double (or more) the raw performance offered by Core i9-9900K. If Intel had delivered this CPU last year instead of the i7-8700K we would have been deeply impressed as we would effectively have seen HEDT move down to the desktop. We can think of no technical reason that would have prevented this move and have to assume it was all about Intel protecting their product stack and healthy profit margins. Part of the reason we applaud AMD Ryzen 7 is that it offers extra CPU cores effectively free of charge. Clearly this is AMD’s way to make up for their relatively low clock speeds, however the balance of cores, speed and price works well. By contrast Intel has pushed to the limit with Core i9-9900K and has demonstrated their continuing technical advantage over AMD. It also means they are in a place where they desperately require software developers to get their skates on and make proper use of all those cores. You can pre-order the i9-9900K from Overclockers UK HERE. Pros: Eight cores running close to 5GHz Soldered heat spreader helps thermals Compatible with Z370 motherboards Excellent DDR4 memory support Cons: Very high price Minimal headroom for overclocking Very few games make use of more than four cores This refreshed architecture is still not proofed against security problems KitGuru says: There is a great deal to admire about Core i9-9900K, but damn is it expensive.
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