We only received our copy late on Tuesday, so we couldn’t give you a full review in time. What’s more, today is a special day for me, which didn’t make testing any easier. So here we are with a copy of Intel’s latest processor, the i9-14900KS, which brings even more excess to what was already the i9-14900K.
The box that houses our Intel Core i9-14900KS is the same as that of the previous generation. We’re on a blue cardboard box, which unfolds to reveal a silver wafer. And guess what’s hidden inside? The precious… and in this case, of course, it’s Intel’s latest baby.
What’s the difference between the i9-14900K and the i9-14900KS?
Not much, really. We’re still using a “hybrid” architecture, since it mixes two types of cores. There are still P-Cores and E-Cores. The number of cores remains unchanged from the i9-14900K, with 8 P-Cores and 16 E-Cores. The difference lies in the frequencies. With our i9-14900KS, the P-Core frequency on single-core tasks rises from 6 to 6.2 GHz. On multi-core tasks, P-Core frequency rises from 5.8 to 5.9 GHz. E-Core frequency also increases, from 4.4 to 4.5 GHz.
If you haven’t yet had a chance to read our article on the i9-14900K, i7-14700K and i5-14600K, this is the place to do it.
Frequencies well achieved with our i9-14900KS?
Here we go. As you can see, we opened several windows to check the frequency and temperature. The options in our BIOS were left in AUTO, but we’ll talk more about this in our full test.
In single-core mode, cores #4 and #5 can be seen alternating at a frequency of 6200 MHz, in line with Intel’s claims. The temperature of the two cores alternating at 6.2 GHz is 59/72°C. When the 24 cores of our i9-14900K are called upon, the frequency is fixed at 5.8/5.9 GHz on the P-Core and 4.4 GHz on the E-Core. The temperature of the hottest P-Core is 100°C, and that of the E-Core is 85°C. Now it’s time to tell you about our cooling system, which is a custom watercooling system with a 480 mm radiator! Strangely enough, we didn’t reach a frequency of 5.9 GHz on all the P-Cores, but that’s certainly due to the very high temperatures.
In the screenshot above, you can see the score obtained with a run under Cinebench R23. We obtain a score of 42836 points compared with 41801 with our i9-14900K. Note also the very high temperatures. As for the price, it should be around $750, so we’ll have to wait and see what price we find in Europe.
