If you want to be one of the first people to get your hands on the Intel Core i9-10900K, B&H Photo Video already has the CPU up for preorder. Be warned, though; it comes with a hefty early adopter tax that may be be hard to swallow.
Intel announced the flagship Core i9-10900K, which has a $488 MSRP, a little over two weeks ago as part of the 10th Generation Comet Lake-S launch. B&H has the chip listed for $600.
The Core i9-10900K utilizes the 14nm process node. The chip flaunts nothing less than 10 CPU cores, 20 threads and 20MB of L3 cache.
In terms of clock speeds, the Core i9-10900K operates at different configurations, depending on the workloads. It comes with a default 3.7 GHz base clock at 125W. The chip can be configured down to 95W, but the base clock drops to 3.3 GHz. The single-core and all-core boost clock speeds for the Core i9-10900K are 5.2 GHz and 4.8 GHz, respectively, when Intel's Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0 is active.
Furthermore, the Core i9-10900K exploits Intel's Thermal Velocity Boost (TVB) Technology, which allows the chip to boost to 5.3 GHz on a single core and 4.9 GHz on all 10 cores. However, the processor's operating temperature needs to be lower than 70 degrees Celsius for TVB to work. Cooling is important as always.
The Core i9-10900K's other attributes include native support for DDR4-2933 RAM modules, 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes and the presence of the Intel UHD Graphics 630 iGPU.
Like any other Comet Lake-S offering, the Core i9-10900K will only fit on a Intel 400-series motherboard with a LGA1200 CPU socket. If you want to do some overclocking, the Z490 chipset is the only path available.
If overclocking isn't in your plans, motherboard vendors should be revealing more budget-friendly options very soon. ASRock, for one, has jumped ahead of the pack and revealed its complete H470, B460 and H410 lineups.
