Intel Core i9-14900K

The Intel Core i9-14900K is an absolute beast of a processor, topping almost all of the benchmarks I could throw at it. However, it also represents the absolute limit of what’s possible with the Rocket Lake architecture, with temperatures and power draw being off the charts. If you’re looking for a versatile chip, capable of handling anything you throw at it, the Core i9-14900K is the one for you.

The Intel Core i9 14900K struggles to consistently compete with cheaper AMD Ryzen X3D CPUs in gaming, and while it does show its strength in other areas, its marginal generational improvements and insatiable appetite for watts can’t be ignored.

It’s hard to recommend the 14900K this year unless you really want the best creator performance out there and you don’t care about your energy bills or the sheer heat it produces. AMD’s 7800X3D is simply a better choice for gaming, particularly as it’s easy to find for under $400 compared to the $589 (and likely above) pricing for the 14900K.

There are no tangible benefits to buying the pricier Core i9 14900K over the often cheaper Core i9 13900K. Prices will eventually come down, the 13900K will sell out, and the 14900K will sit top of the pile. Until then, just stick with whichever Core i9 you can find cheapest.

Averaged over the 45 tests in our application test suite, the Core i9-14900K confirms that Raptor Lake is extremely impressive. It achieves performance that's always near the top of our charts. The differences are small though. Compared to the 13900K the performance uplift is 3%, the 13900KS is a tiny bit faster, but a 0.5% difference is close enough to call it even.

The Intel Core i9-14900K and Intel Core i5-14600K are easily the best mainstream processors on the market right now, having unseated AMD’s Ryzen line when it comes to creative applications and gaming. However, the high temperatures that result from their off-the-charts power consumption means you're going to need to design your entire PC build toward delivering extreme amounts of power and cooling.

Intel’s Core i9-14900K still offers some of the best performance around — albeit at a similarly beastly power draw — but offers negligible performance improvement over its direct predecessor, the 13900K. New support for Wi-Fi 7, Thunderbolt 5, and performance-boosting AI features are a nice touch, though.

The Intel Core i9-14900K only offers a frequency increase compared to the 13900K and KS. Its single-threaded performance however is seriously fast. Multi-threading is a little so-so in applications (compared to 13900K), however, in games this CPU does rock. Basically this is a rebadged 13900KS. Performance can and will vary widely across different media outlets.