Intel Core i9 14900KS Review

Test Setup, Clock Speeds and Temperatures

Test Setup

Intel Core i9-14900KS
MSI Maestro 700
MSI Ace Max Z790 Motherboard
MSI MEG Ai 1300p PSU
Nvidia RTX 4090 FE
G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo 6000 32GB
Sabrent Rocket 2TB
EK Nucleus CR360 Direct Die AIO

If you followed along with our recent undervolting guide, you’ll have seen how well the MSI setup performed. The ability of their Z790 Ace Max motherboard to keep things cool, whilst also being easy to use, is why we went with that today. We already knew the Core i9-14900K was hot, and the i9-14900KS is faster, so it’s bound to be hotter. Thus any help we could get would be of great utility, and the MSI Z790 Ace Max did just that.

As you’ll have seen on the previous page, and we discuss in the conclusion, we tried an awful lot of things to tame the temperatures of the Core i9-14900KS. In the end we’ve gone with the EK Nucleus CR360 Direct Die AIO. By de-lidding our CPU we obviously need a robust cooling method. We’ve already seen how good the regular EK Nucleus CR360 AIO is, and the Direct Die one is easy to fit and does the job. But rather than tell you it does the job, scroll down for the graphs.

Clock Speeds and Temperatures

We tested four different cooling methods. Initially the Arctic MX-6 thermal paste. We’ve got our own undervolting – because you can’t run this CPU at auto volts. Thirdly, and a thing we spent a long time trying to make work, is the Contact Frame. Then lastly the EK Direct Die AIO. How the temperatures fair is impressive, but knowing how much we love performance above most other considerations, the clock speed graph demonstrates the need for good cooling the clearest. To wit; Three of our cooling options allowed the Core i9-14900KS to hit its rated 6.2 GHz boost. However, only the final cooling we chose, the EK Direct Die option, kept the P-Cores at their 5.9 GHz speed. The rest saw massive fall-off. When you’re paying this much for performance, you want that speed all the time.

Clearly the Intel Core i9-14900KS isn’t mucking about. It’s insanely hot. Those with even good cooling solutions need not apply. Nothing but the best will remotely suffice, and even then you need to fine tune things. Thankfully the EK AIO works well enough we can do our testing.