Intel Core i9-9900K Retail - (1151/8 Core/3.60GHz/16MB/Coffee Lake/95W/Graphics)

The i9-9900K has been an absolute beast in my system. With 8 cores and 16 threads, it handles everything I throw at it—gaming, streaming, video editing, and multitasking—all without breaking a sweat. Games run buttery smooth, and rendering times are noticeably faster compared to my old CPU. Overclocking is straightforward, and with decent cooling, it stays stable even under heavy loads. The single-core performance is still excellent, making it one of the best CPUs for gaming even today. Pair it with a good GPU, and you’ve got a system that can handle modern titles with ease. Yes, it runs a bit hot if you push it, but that’s to be expected with this much performance. As long as you’ve got proper cooling, it’s rock solid. Overall, the 9900K is a fantastic balance of speed, reliability, and multitasking power—well worth the investment.

I was torn between buying this CPU or the i7-9700k until the i9-9900k came up for sale cheaper than the i7 2 days after Prime Day. Having built it into a new rig (Specs below if you care) I'm remarkably glad that I did. All the games I own run at top settings and without a hitch, even Fallout 4 (Which is a single core heavy game), heavily modded and with HUGE settlements. This CPU eliminates the eyestrain, motion sickness and headaches I was having with some titles (I'm looking at you Fallout 4 you pos). It does this because it's so ridiculously powerful that it serves frames to the GFX card as fast as they're needed, which means no invisible lag, stutter, frame drop or any other irritating, headache causing issues. I've owned it for a month now (August 2019). It's built into an Aorus Z390 AORUS PRO WIFI with 32GB DDR4 and a BE QUIET Dark Rock 4, running off two M.2 NVME SSD's and with a 1080ti into an ASUS ROG SWIFT PG279Q with two 24inch 1080p side screens. I use this for work and play, it's not just a toy. You will need a aftermarket cooler, it doesn't ship with a fan at all. I'm not a fan of water cooling so I bought the Be Quiet Dark Rock 4. When I'm gaming the fan kicks in, the rest of the time it doesn't turn, at all making the PC remarkably quiet. I tend to upgrade every 4 years, and I always agonise over the hardware as I always pass it on to family members when I am done with it and I expect not to have to upgrade until 4-5 years have passed. I alternate this with my GFX card which I upgrade every 2-3 years. I am more than happy with the longevity inherent in this build. Conclusion: this was a damn fine purchase, especially at the HUGE reduction I got in the sales. Credentials: Professional games reviewer and journalist, former game dev.

The Intel i9-9900K is an absolute powerhouse of a processor that has exceeded all my expectations. From the moment I installed it in my system, it has consistently delivered unparalleled performance in every task I throw at it. The 8-core, 16-thread architecture of the i9-9900K ensures seamless multitasking, effortlessly handling resource-intensive applications, gaming, and content creation with ease. It's a beast of a processor that never breaks a sweat, even under heavy workloads. Gaming on the i9-9900K is an absolute joy. It provides smooth frame rates, eliminates stuttering, and drastically reduces loading times, creating an immersive gaming experience like no other. This CPU truly lets you unleash the full potential of your high-end graphics card.

Okay my gaming rig pc's weakest point was my i5 processor. I thought my set up was nearing the end of its life as a big tech company told me my motherboard couldn't take anything other than a 8th gen processor. I asked the great community on here and was informed by a couple of great fellow consumers that if I did a BIOS update I could install a ninth generation processor and this little baby was in my basket and on its way to me within a few minutes. I done the BIOS update- relatively straightforward procedure after a little research online. When the i9 arrived I'd also watched a few videos on YouTube on how to swap out my old i5 for my beefy new i9- I was a little nervous if I am honest but really it was easy. I can't express this enough- what a huge difference it has made to my machine. I now have: Motherboard: Z370 AORUS Gaming K3-CF. Processor: i9-9900k. Ram: x4 DDR4 8GB sticks (32gig). Hard Drive: Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500 GB PCIe NVMe M.2 (For OS) Hard Drive: Samsung 970 PRO 1 TB PCIe NVMe M.2 (For games). HDD: Kingstone 2 TB (for all other media storage). Video Card: NVIDA RTX2070ti. Running all my games great. One happy gamer!

thanks a lot been wanting one for awhile

The reason I picked this CPU is for me single core performance remains important as a lo tof games I play are reliant on that type of workload, as well as been able to have 16 threads because some new software loves to have many threads. Another reason was I didnt need to buy a motherboard as I already owned a z370 board. Now as for my ratings. Performance did not get 5 stars since this is a R0 stepping cpu and it means many of the firmware updates are shipped, e.g. on my board I have to go almost the newest bios version to be compatible with this chip, which means it wont run as fast as the original 9900k's which can run on older bios versions. The cpu is not terrible in its binning, I was able to significantly reduce the voltage without any stability issues. Not really overclocking it but the voltage change has worked well to reduce power draw and heat. The packaging is kind of fancy looking, but ultimately the box is excessively sized so I am more likely to throw it away and trying to get into it took me over an hour, and eventually had to watch a youtube video to see how to do it. This harmed my presentation score. A final note, if you buying one of these chips, you probably should be prepared to disable the security mitigations, otherwise you may as well go ryzen as those will eat into the single core performance advantage.

I upgraded from an i5 9600kf and the difference was very noticeable with loading, compression and other everyday tasks just is a lot faster, this has also improved most of my games fps by minimum of 10 fps. I already had a decent motherboard with 32gb RAM etc but wanted to boost the processor: It is still an OTT processor for today's applications and now its coming down in price, it is a no brainer to purchase this over 10th gen i7, or Ryzen (because of having to change motherboard and most likely ram as well ie 2666 to 3600 as example and in AMD's case lack of stock). So if you have a 8th/9th gen motherboard and are looking to upgrade from an i3/i5 and even an i7 then this processor is a cheap way in getting near top performance.

Great CPU, fantastic for gaming and anything else you may want to do with it.. Very fast, stays around 40c under load and 27-30c idling... the on board graphics are pretty good, if your not a massive gamer or do a lot of video work I doubt you would need a standalone GFX card. I have mine in the following build Intel core i9 9900k 3.6ghz MSI z390 A pro mobo 32gb Corsair vengeance pro white (2 x 16gb 3200) MSI Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 super 8gb Corsair icue 220t RGB mid tower Corsair H100i platinum SE AIO cooler Corsair commander pro 500gb WD blue SSD 2tb WD green SSD The above combined, makes for a very fast a attractive PC