Intel Core i9 13900KS Review

Conclusion

Occasionally when wrapping up our thoughts on a product the parts that are less positive require more writing than the bits that are positive, so whilst the raw word count might be skewed in one direction it is important to state the following at the beginning.

If you want the fastest desktop processor Intel currently offer then the Intel Core i9-13900KS is the one for you. If you want to have a system that has the kind of clockspeed that was previously reserved for people playing around with liquid Nitrogen, the Core i9-13900KS is for you. If you just want to make the most of your LGA1700 socket, yes that’s right, the Core i9-13900KS is the one for you. It’s insanely capable.

As is often the case with anything this close to the edge of technology there is a small caveat. If the Core i9-13900K required a seriously high-end CPU cooler then the KS model is that but even more so. To the point that we’re reserving our full core 6 GHz overclock testing for a future review. Additionally whilst cores definitely do turbo boost up to 6 GHz, it’s usually one or two of them rather than all of them. Most things you’ll use will take advantage of this, as our testing showed, but it’s something to bear in mind if you think that the whole CPU will hit those levels. The E-Cores never will, and the P-Cores don’t all do so by default.

The only other negative is more of a taste thing. The OG Core i9-13900K was only launched in October, and if you’d leapt upon the bandwagon then it would be a bit galling to see a faster processor appear just three months later. Technology moves on apace, but this still feels a bit quick, especially as it’s not a wholesale revision but merely some cherry picked cores. So they’ve deliberately sold you a CPU that didn’t win the silicon-lottery so that they can sell you one that did later on. How you feel about that is entirely up to you. Good news for those who were waiting, less so for the early-adopters. Maybe the sugar that helps that particular bit of medicine go down is how the Core i9-13900KS, whilst the fastest CPU Intel sell, isn’t a quantum leap ahead of the regular K model. It’s quicker, but not “well damn” levels of quicker.

Despite those things which are very much a matter of personal taste and dependant upon whether you’ve already built a 13th Generation system, the facts are that the Intel Core i9-13900KS is everything a flagship Intel processor should be, and the first processor in the world to hit 6 GHz at stock. Intel also aren’t gouging you on the price – £699.98. If you have a good amount of CPU cooling to help it run at its peak without toasting your case internals then it’s undeniably the best CPU for creation tasks. If you’re just gaming then it is overkill unless you demand the best regardless.

A CPU with 32 threads, some of them hitting 6 GHz and with the potential for all the P-Cores to hit 6 GHz is enough to win the Intel Core i9-13900KS our OC3D Enthusiast Award.

  

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