Intel 10th Gen Review: The Core i9

Intel’s 10th gen Core i9-10900K is—without a doubt—exactly as Intel has described it: “the world’s fastest gaming CPU.”

Intel’s problem has been weaknesses outside of gaming, and its overall performance value compared to AMD’s Ryzen 3000 chips. With the Core i9-10900K, Intel doesn’t appear to be eliminating that gap, but it could get close enough that you might not care

What is Core i9-10900K?
Despite its 10th-gen naming, Intel’s newest desktop chips continue to be built on the company’s aging 14nm process. How old is it? It was first used with the 5th-gen Core i7-5775C desktop chip from 2015. Many tricks, optimizations, and much binning later, we have the flagship consumer Core i9-10900K, announced April 30. The CPU features 10 cores and Hyper-Threading for a total of 20 threads, with a list price of $488.

The Core i9-10900K does bring a few changes. Intel officials said the chip uses a thinner die and thinner solder thermal interface material (STIM) to improve thermal dissipation. Intel also had to make a thicker heat spreader (that little metal lid to keep you from crushing the delicate die).

Why make the die and STIM thinner, but the heat spreader thicker? The reason is cost. Intel said it had to keep the height of the heat spreader on all of its CPUs the same so they’d be compatible with existing cooling hardware. Intel officials did say the materials used for the heat spreader help compensate for that compromise, so overall the new chip is better at power dissipation.