The Intel Core i9-9900KS Review: The 5 GHz Consumer Special
by Dr. Ian Cutress on October 31, 2019 10:45 AM ESTTest Bed and Setup
As per our processor testing policy, we take a premium category motherboard suitable for the socket, and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the manufacturer's maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.
| Test Setup | |
| Intel 9th Gen | Intel Core i9-9900KS |
| Motherboard | MSI Z390 Gaming Edge AC (A.60 BIOS) |
| CPU Cooler | TRUE Copper |
| DRAM | Corsair Vengeance 2x8 GB DDR4-2666 |
| GPU | Sapphire RX 460 2GB (CPU Tests) MSI GTX 1080 Gaming 8G (Gaming Tests) |
| PSU | Corsair AX860i |
| SSD | Crucial MX200 1TB |
Many thanks to...
We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our multiple test beds. Some of this hardware is not in this test bed specifically, but is used in other testing.
| Hardware Providers | |||
| Sapphire RX 460 Nitro | MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X OC | Crucial MX200 + MX500 SSDs |
Corsair AX860i + AX1200i PSUs |
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| G.Skill RipjawsV, SniperX, FlareX |
Crucial Ballistix DDR4 |
Silverstone Coolers |
Silverstone Fans |
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Supercell99 - Thursday, October 31, 2019 - link
Yea you are not going to be able to OC a 9900K much. They have panned through all the 9900 goldJorgp2 - Thursday, October 31, 2019 - link
This is a new stepping.TEAMSWITCHER - Thursday, October 31, 2019 - link
The time to hop on the 9900K train was at the introduction.. Now just wait for Comet Lake.AshlayW - Friday, November 1, 2019 - link
Or be a smart consumer and wait for 3900X to be back in stock :)Sivar - Friday, November 1, 2019 - link
Most PC users make better use of fast cores than more cores.GreenReaper - Friday, November 1, 2019 - link
Historically this has been very true. However browsers nowadays can take advantage of many cores, as can games - they have been forced to, or else be outcompeted by those who do.Kjella - Thursday, October 31, 2019 - link
Considering it's a brief holiday special I would think this is all the golden samples from the past year. I'm quite sure they all pre-bin and keep chips that are "perfect" in some way like no defects/high frequency/ultra low voltage even though they don't have an SKU for it yet. Normally they'd launch one notch up as a 9950K or something, with this time limited special I guess Intel is saying we'll never produce these chips in enough volume to justify that so we're doing a limited edition for PR instead.Spunjji - Friday, November 1, 2019 - link
Nailed it.GreenReaper - Saturday, November 2, 2019 - link
They keep the duds, too. That's one reason the Pentium and Celeron come out later. The other being they don't want to spoil the market for higher-end chips.DigitalFreak - Thursday, October 31, 2019 - link
Once you cut through all the Intel marketing BS, to run all cores at 5Ghz as advertised it's a 172W processor.