Review: Intel Core i9-9900KS

Conclusion

Core i9-9900KS represents the culmination of Intel's mainstream desktop processor strategy for this year. The underlying Coffee Lake blueprint, still based on 14nm technology, provides decent IPC that enables the chip, at its lofty 5.0GHz all-core speed, to exhibit class-leading gaming performance, superb system responsiveness, and huge versatility thanks to myriad of supporting motherboards.

This £500 limited-edition 8C16T CPU, which is only available through the 2019 holiday season, and backed by a meagre one-year warranty, is effectively an Intel-overclocked Core i9-9900K - a processor that's already been out for a year.

Even if the Core i9-9900KS is more of a marketing stunt than volume-selling product, such a chip would ordinarily have stood tall in the enthusiast or gamer's mind had rival AMD not made significant strides with its Ryzen processors. While Intel has spent the year massaging frequencies on a long-in-the-tooth architecture, AMD has successfully introduced Zen 2 and, crucially for the content creator, upped the mainstream core count to 16C32T, all the while providing impressive motherboard features and support.

Problematic for the Core i9-9900KS is that though it is better at gaming than the price-equivalent Ryzen 9 3900X, the lead is mostly less than 10 per cent, which is unlikely to be meaningful once the resolution is turned up enough for the game to become limited by the GPU. On the other hand, content creators running big projects see immediate and obvious benefit in going down the more-core route offered by the available12C24T Ryzen 3900X chip. When Intel wins the gain is small. When AMD wins the gain is big.

All of this means that, right now, no one mainstream chip is the best at everything. The Intel Core i9-9900KS therefore occupies a niche segment of the premium desktop CPU market where class-leading gaming is the most important criterion. Enough to tempt you? Feel free to let us know.

Intel Core i9-9900KS

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The Intel Core i9-9900KS processor is available to buy at Scan Computers.

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