The last word:
The i9-14900K, the new king of benchmarks, but at what price?
So, what are we to make of this 14th generation from Intel? Well, as you’d expect, there’s no revolution under the sun. The word ” refresh ” takes on its full meaning here, because that’s exactly what we’re entitled to expect from this 14th generation. We’re even entitled to ask ourselves if it was really necessary? Indeed, even if our i9-14900K becomes the new king of most benchmarks, its performance is (too) close to that of the i9-13900KS. In fact, the two processors are almost identical, but we’ll wait for our gaming tests to find out for sure. Now, it remains to be seen how this i9-14900K will stack up on the price front, as stocks of 13th-generation processors should not be empty just yet.
Now, this performance comes at a price, in terms of power consumption, which exceeds 500 watts for our complete multi-threaded configuration, and temperatures that are even more complicated to control. Today, such a processor requires a liquid cooling solution, but we find it hard to believe that a basic 240 mm AIO can still keep this chip cool inside a case. If you already own a 13th-generation i9, we see no reason to migrate to this 14th generation. In fact, we’re preparing an article for you in the next few days, designed to bring down the temperature of this high-end processor.
The i7-14700K, a surprise with the addition of 4 E-Cores :
On paper, this is the processor we found most interesting, as it boasts 4 additional E-Cores and higher frequencies than the previous generation. Unsurprisingly, performance is much better than that of the i7-13700K. In fact, it’s now closer to an i9-14900K than to its little brother, the i5-14600K. The unknown factor is, of course, its price in Europe, since if it were to be very close to the i7-13700K, it would become much more attractive. As with the i9, power consumption increases by over 20% due to the extra cores and higher frequencies.
The i5-14600K, the choice of reason?
It certainly is. If you don’t yet have a Raptor Lake processor and are planning to change your configuration, this i5-14600K may be a better choice than the i5-13600K, since performance is slightly higher.
Consumption, meanwhile, does not increase significantly. Whether or not the i5-14600K is more attractive than the i5-13600K will depend on price.
The final word:
As you’ll have gathered, we weren’t thrilled with this 14th generation, which is only logical since it’s a refresh. It’s hard to recommend these processors if you’re already equipped with a 13th-generation CPU, especially as the socket on future motherboards is also likely to change. Now, if you’re switching to the LGA-1700 socket for the first time, then take a look at the price differences between these two generations of processors and opt for the best performance/price ratio. We’ll be bringing you a brief update in the next few days when the processors hit the stores, to help you make the best choice.
Finally, as we’ve said, we’re busy redoing all our tests on our upgraded platforms in terms of OS, BIOS and drivers. It’s a time-consuming job, since we’ve also decided to add new benchmarks. The gaming part will arrive early next week, so we’ll know if this i9-14900K can take first place from the AMD Ryzen 7800X3D processor?
Thanks to Intel France and Asus France for making the processors and motherboard available.
