Intel Core i9-12900KS Review

overpriced ... not much more to say.


as most reviewers pointed out, the performance is bad for the price.Quote

Idk myself in my view it's not overpriced really as they are doing what sites done years ago and would have charged the same kind of costs if not higher, also if you'd been doing this yourself trying to find such a chip well that would work out majorly expensive.

The main difference and tbh it's smart by intel is they are profiting from the chips rather than external sources.

If you look at it as a comparison to the normal version then it's obviously not really worth it to you as your missing the point that to some out there it's worth alot too.

Myself i never had golden chips or ever looked for them but for those that do this is a good option on something that died off over the years as the gap got smaller and so not as promising enough to be viable for the sites to run.Quote

It is not worth it for most people but if you want to overclock and push your CPU to the edge I would recommend this over the regular one. Here is why:

My very good friend saved money for months and he bought himself a new system. 9900K Strix Z390-E board and Kraken X62 cooler with a plan that he doesn't need 9900KS, and he will just OC 9900K close to those speeds. But...

I think that he got the worst 9900K on the continent. No matter what we did it wouldn't go past 4.9GHz all core. And he really wanted to reach 5. He then went and bought a custom WC loop so we could ramp voltages a bit more without the CPU soldering itself to the motherboard, again, it wouldn't budge. He always wanted a custom loop, this was an excuse to go and do it. Then he ordered a de-lid kit from Rokit. After days of waiting we de-lided the chip and lapped it. But no matter what we did it wouldn't go past 4.9GHz all core.

The sadness and disappointment on his face when he settled on 4.9GHz... OMG Just buy KS. Those $150 more are nothing.

Don't get me wrong, he would have probably water-cooled and de-lided 9900KS but those $150 extra guarantees you that you won't get a dud. And trust me, after being with him through all the pain and suffering I would gladly pay extra for KS at any time if I was building a balls to the wall system.

It is that enthusiast thing that we all have in us, and we pay more for the privilege.Quote

I can get 5.20GHz completely stable on my 12900K on all p-cores and 4GHz on all e-cores, Performance vs this is practically identical, I legit like seeing binned products though as to me it's very nostalgic of days gone when overclocking gave pretty huge tangible benefits and we'd see special Extreme versions of CPU's.Quote

TBH having used both for the type of gaming I do, I would rather use a 5950X.Quote